Gwarube downplays dispute with department head over textbooks
Basic education minister Siviwe Gwarube has downplayed her differences with the department’s director-general, Mathanzima Mweli. She said there will always be tension between political and administrative leadership.
“We mustn’t equate disagreement with a broken-down relationship,” she said.
Recent media reports have painted a picture of the DA minister and the ANC director-general at loggerheads over the process for ordering textbooks for grades 1 to 3 in 2027.
Gwarube announced in early September she was suspending implementation of the new foundation phase catalogue for 2027 pending legal advice, while Mweli told provinces they could go ahead and order books from it.
In a further sign of the tension between the two, the Sunday Times reported this weekend that Mweli had refused to undergo a lifestyle audit.
The department signed an agreement with the Special Investigating Unit in June to conduct lifestyle audits of all senior officials.
Addressing the Cape Town Press Club on Monday, Gwarube said she is obliged by the Public Finance Management Act to provide executive oversight of the department.
“If holding people to account and asking questions … is viewed as interference, then so be it,” she said.
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“I can’t be expected to be accountable for a department but then have a hands-off approach,” she said, referring to the scrutiny she has demanded of the department’s procurement process for selecting titles and publishers for the new foundation phase catalogue.
The catalogue updates the list of foundation phase textbooks available to provincial education departments, which order material from a list developed 15 years ago.
The department regards updating the catalogue as an important part of its efforts to improve the literacy and numeracy skills of children in the early grades, which lag far behind their international peers.
The catalogue came under scrutiny after it emerged in April 2026 that the biggest share of the textbook titles were awarded to a new supplier called Lighthouse, which had no previous publishing experience.
Gwarube said she has ordered an independent investigation by Rakoma and Associates, which found material problems with the foundation phase catalogue awards, and she has therefore asked the state attorney’s office to obtain legal advice on how to proceed.
While some allegations were not substantiated, the investigation revealed procedural weaknesses, including pricing rules that are not disclosed to some publishers before they made submissions, and noncompliance with compulsory document requirements, she said.
“Finding that some allegations were not proven is not the same as giving the whole process a clean bill of health,” she said. It is vital, she continued, that the problems with the foundation phase catalogue be ironed out before the department moved to update textbooks for higher grades, she said.
