Three major publishers are taking the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Education to court over its textbook selection procedures, less than two weeks before the start of the new school year.
KwaZulu-Natal schools reopen on January 21.
New Generation Publishers (NGP), Lectio and Nasou Via Afrika are seeking an order from the Pietermaritzburg High Court to set aside the department’s new recommended textbook list, as well as any order arising from it. They claim the process was contaminated.
If the new list is declared illegal by the court, it will delay the arrival of new textbooks to schools. The selection process will have to start from scratch and new orders made from a new list.
The publishers want to know how the department selected its list of prescribed textbooks, which was the basis for orders worth R100-million. They have challenged the KwaZulu-Natal education and finance departments to prove in court that their screening process was above board. The case will be heard on Monday.
The aggrieved publishers’ books were cut from the department’s updated list, which means a substantial revenue loss for them.
An NGP representative told the Mail & Guardian that the department has not yet presented any evidence that a proper screening process took place in the compilation of the new list.
But the KwaZulu-Natal education department says the court action is endangering the future of 2,7-million learners in the province.
Mandla Msibi, a spokesperson for the department, said the court action could jeopardise the timely delivery of books to learners. ”The catalogue went through a due process of tendering and unfortunately they [the publishers] were not selected. We select suppliers who offer us the best quality with the cheapest prices. That is how the process works.”
He said the department was ready to go to court and show that no corruption had occurred.
But the NGP representative told the M&G: ”In the middle of the year the department had placed an order for about 20 000 new books for 2004 with us. But later in the year the department found an additional R100-million for textbooks somewhere and revised the catalogue … We were not on the new catalogue. We believe the department rushed through the process, and that it was not fair.”
Razia Aziz, general manager of NGP, said in a court affidavit that the publishing company ”held a legitimate expectation that textbooks, which already formed part of the KwaZulu-Natal textbooks catalogue, would remain there”.
In the past, said Aziz, a team with ”accumulated expertise, knowledge, integrity and experience ensured that the process [of compiling the catalogue] worked openly and transparently”.
A new team, however, was responsible for the new catalogue, which surfaced at the end of October last year. The team was led by two newly appointed officials from within the department.
In her affidavit, Aziz said NGP had written to the education department to ask for an explanation, but it had ”simply and arrogantly failed or refused to deal with any of the matters raised in various correspondence sent”.
The allocation of R100-million is a supplementary amount, over and above the usual textbook expenditure. The money has been made available for the purchase of textbooks and learner materials, said Aziz. When the extra money became available, textbooks had already been purchased for 2004.
NGP said the catalogue change has led to chaos: schools do not know which books they can use.