The DBE textbook story that South Africa isn’t being told

Joyce Nompumelelo Makutsoane has spent her working life watching a language die.

Agonisingly, classroom by classroom, year by year: isiXhosa vocabulary quietly replaced by English, children arriving in high school unable to read fluently in their mother tongue. As a writer, editor and proofreader, Makutsoane has witnessed this happen and felt largely powerless to stop it.

“I saw our children struggling, or unable, to read in their own language at high school level, and I realised that something drastic had to be done at the Foundation Phase,” she told Daily Maverick.

So when she was invited to join a team building something that might change that, she said yes — even though there was no guaranteed income, only a royalty agreement paying out if government orders arrived.

“It was a dream come true. I finally had the chance to be part of meaningful change.”

Makutsoane is one of 135 people who spent four months in 2024 building what would become the most contested educational publishing submission in recent memory. The company behind it is called Lighthouse Publishers: registered just days after the Department of Basic Education (DBE) published terms of reference for a potentially lucrative new textbook contract.

In April 2026, Lighthouse received more approved titles on the Foundation Phase National Catalogue than Oxford University Press or any other established publisher — and all hell broke loose in South Africa’s publishing industry.

There is much more at stake here than money.

South Africa placed last among 57 countries in the 2021 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, and the current learning materials in Foundation Phase classrooms date back to 2011.

The catalogue determining which materials millions of Grade 1 to 3 children are taught to read with had been closed for 14 years.

When it finally reopened, a team of educators and tech geeks working from kitchen tables and WhatsApp groups thought they had a chance to do things differently. Maybe even better.

They had underestimated the extent to which a publishing industry increasingly economically dependent on government textbooks might push back.

The story behind the story

Within days of the DBE releasing the approved titles for the new Foundation Phase textbook catalogue, a narrative had taken hold.

News24 described Lighthouse as a “company with no publishing history” that had won “the lion’s share of a R1.6bn textbook tender”.

It would go on to report that Lighthouse’s tax compliance had lapsed, its VAT registration was absent, and the ownership arrangement, “which was listed as two-thirds black women-owned, is no longer accurate”.

An anonymous insider was quoted as saying: “There is no way a new entrant has the ability to spend millions on developing material, paying authors, freelance editors, and designers and submit truckloads of materials to Pretoria.”

The clear implication of the coverage was that Lighthouse’s success was a result of some form of corruption. No proof of this was provided.

But in a country as corruption-jaded as South Africa, any perceived anomaly in a government procurement process will inevitably be interpreted as suspicious. Public outrage towards Lighthouse, in response to News24’s reporting, spread and kept spreading. A petition circulated among publishing insiders to protest against Lighthouse’s dominance of the catalogue.

Conspiracy theories sprouted like weeds. Lighthouse’s directors were smeared across social media, with its majority shareholder, Michael Mugoya — a South African citizen — subjected to racist and xenophobic online attacks.

Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube speedily announced that an investigation would be carried out in the wake of News24’s first exposé.

What News24 did not initially tell its readers is that its parent company had a direct financial stake in the same catalogue it was reporting on.

News24 is owned by Media24, which also owns Via Afrika — an educational publisher that submitted to the same catalogue, received nine approved titles, and placed 15th out of 19 publishers in terms of titles won. Via Afrika and News24 share a building.

Daily Maverick asked News24 editor Adriaan Basson if this apparent conflict of interest should have been disclosed.

“No,” replied Basson via WhatsApp.

“Our reporting so far has focused on an unknown company scooping 27% of the catalogue. Via Afrika and its ownership by Media24 has not been relevant to this. News24 enjoys full editorial independence and is not the spokesperson for or enforcer of its mother company. When we report on Via Afrika, or any other Naspers subsidiary, we always declare our shared ownership.”

Yet the impact of Via Afrika’s failure to win more titles appears to be fairly financially significant to Media24.

When Naspers released its latest annual report in June 2025, the corporate giant explicitly attributed a weak financial performance by Media24 in that year in part to “an investment in foundation-phase schoolbook submissions”.

After the DBE released the new catalogue, Via Afrika sent a letter to its authors dated 5 May 2026, in which it announced that it would be winding down its operations because “Via Afrika was unsuccessful in getting books approved on the recently issued Foundation Phase catalogue”.

The letter continued: “This has resulted in the write-off of a significant investment.”

A rival publisher who submitted to the same catalogue told Daily Maverick, on condition of anonymity, “A media house that happens to own one of the participants was the leader in the coverage without indicating clear conflict of interest. I would have thought the other media houses will see through this.”

But the horse had already bolted. The chair of Parliament’s basic education committee, Makhi Feni, publicly called the catalogue outcome “rotten” and “sinister”.

Lighthouse’s directors were left reeling. What they saw as a David and Goliath story of a plucky local start-up beating legacy publishing giants against the odds was being transformed before their eyes into a narrative in which they had already been found guilty of some unnamed form of corruption in the public court of opinion.

They are guilty of one thing only, they maintain: naivety as to the backlash their success might attract.

Daily Maverick spent almost two weeks examining primary documents, corporate structures and specific allegations. Detailed questions sent to the DBE were not answered in time for publication, despite repeated requests.

The people behind Lighthouse

News24’s initial report on this issue portrayed the people behind Lighthouse as untested amateurs whose success was thus by default suspicious — while simultaneously painting them as embedded DBE insiders who may have irregularly benefited from “privileged information”.

Lighthouse’s own account of who they are, given to Daily Maverick, is that directors Michael Mugoya (28) and Georgia Groome (35) are the youthful and tech-savvy engines of the company, supported by the decades of educational experience contributed by Georgia’s mother, Penelope Groome, and her network.

Mugoya, the 51% shareholder, is a data scientist and systems engineer currently studying at Zhejiang University of Science and Technology in China, who says he purpose-built the technical infrastructure for Lighthouse’s work.

“My main contributions were the implementation and utilisation of smart systems, database utilisation and role-based access control,” he told Daily Maverick.

According to Georgia Groome’s written responses, Mugoya built an access-controlled file sharing system; created automated editing processes; and developed the Lighthouse Canon — a database of standard phrasing drawn on systematically across seven languages.

In questions sent to Mugoya by News24, Mugoya was asked whether the Groome family had met him in a shopping mall and offered him money to list him as a director — a scenario which would amount to illegal BBBEE fronting.

The Groomes sent Daily Maverick photographs of Mugoya with their family over the years, dating back to 2012. Mugoya met Georgia’s brother Josh when the two were schoolboys, and they remain close friends.

“The insinuation that I was paid off in a shopping mall is not only offensive, but also racist,” Mugoya told Daily Maverick.

“My work as an engineer is independent of my race. My contribution to Lighthouse is genuine and authentic, and to be accused of anything otherwise diminishes the credibility of my work.”

Because everyone involved in Lighthouse works remotely, the majority of their communication is via WhatsApp. Mugoya shared WhatsApps with Daily Maverick dating back to July 2024, the month of Lighthouse’s registration, which show him working on the company’s tech requirements from that point on.

The fact that there is documentary evidence of Mugoya playing an operational role within Lighthouse from its launch makes the charge of BBBEE fronting hard to stick.

Company records show, however, that Mugoya was only appointed as a director of the company on 1 March 2026, around two months before the catalogue was announced. Mugoya freely admits that he was not initially a director.

“At the time of Lighthouse’s inception, I was building a career in IT and had just been accepted to a degree in data science in China. The idea of taking on a leadership role in a new business seemed overwhelming at the time, so I was reluctant,” said Mugoya.

“However, we plunged headfirst into the work, and I realised that I did not want to miss out on the potential I saw in Lighthouse.”

The context suggests that appointing Mugoya as director in March 2026 was also a pragmatic necessity for Lighthouse’s BBBEE status, because two black directors with whom the company had launched, alongside Georgia Groome, had resigned in 2025.

Company records list the two, Thato Molosiwa and Innocentia Mokwebo, as sharing a resignation date of 8 October 2025.

Though this shared date looks significant, Lighthouse insists that it is not. Groome told Daily Maverick that, in reality, the two directors had resigned on different dates, but 8 October 2025 is when the company accountant registered the change on the official record. Daily Maverick has not seen evidence to either confirm or disprove this.

Lighthouse and Mokwebo appear to have the same understanding of why these resignations happened: it just didn’t work out, and the intensity of the commitment required, when juggled with their other responsibilities, made it difficult for Molosiwa and Mokwebo to sustain.

In response to Daily Maverick’s queries, Mokwebo wrote: “I was a director of Lighthouse Publishers during its early establishment phase and, as previously indicated, I resigned some time ago to focus on my career. I have not been involved in the company’s subsequent activities.”

Daily Maverick was unable to reach Molosiwa. Neither Molosiwa nor Mokwebo appear to have made any negative public comments about Lighthouse to date, and neither has alleged BBBEE fronting.

News24’s reporting that Lighthouse’s ownership arrangement, as registered in July 2024, “is no longer accurate” is factually correct.

The fact that directors changed between July 2024 and the announcement of the final catalogue is, however, both permissible and common. Company records suggest that at least two of the other successful publishers registered new directors in 2026.

Groome, whose directorship has been consistent since inception, was described by News24 simply as a former au pair franchise owner. Groome says that the more pertinent aspects of her background are that she holds a postgraduate certificate in Education and has nine years of experience in education and training.

Nobody disputes, however, that Georgia’s mother, Penelope, is the primary pedagogical brains of the Lighthouse operation. Originally a teacher, Penelope Groome has been the executive director of Class Act Educational Services, an NGO working in early grade literacy, since 2005.

Two education experts consulted by Daily Maverick said that Penelope Groome had an excellent reputation in the sector, though one declined to be quoted in this article.

Professor Arnold Mushwana of Unisa’s African Languages department, who has worked with Penelope Groome in the past, described her as “deeply dedicated to the wellbeing and education of the African child”, and commented that he had often witnessed her becoming emotional while talking about the subject due to the depth of her passion.

“As a linguist specialising in orthography and spelling in Xitsonga, I hold a strong professional background in this field. However, Penny is still able to identify discrepancies that I may have overlooked,” Mushwana told Daily Maverick.

Penelope Groome has previously worked on the Early Grade Reading Studies and has helped develop materials for the National Education Collaboration Trust (Nect), which partners with the DBE. This history is what led News24 to imply that Lighthouse may have benefited from inside information.

She told Daily Maverick: “The Nect is a registered trust with appointed trustees and its own governance structures. Class Act has, on a project-by-project basis, been contracted to develop materials for the Nect as an external service provider. My role has not given Lighthouse any unfair advantage."

One comparison News24 did not make: Oxford University Press (OUP) — second on the catalogue with 1,274 titles awarded — has previously been a service provider helping to implement the Early Grade Reading Programme for the DBE, as described on the DBE’s own website.

There was no suggestion in the reporting that OUP might have similarly benefited from its DBE programme relationship.

How the hell did they do it?

News24’s quote from an anonymous insider saying there was “no way a new entrant” could produce what Lighthouse submitted reflects a wider sentiment in the publishing industry.

The disbelief that Lighthouse could produce more than 1,700 textbook submissions within the four months allocated by the DBE, on a shoestring budget, is understandable.

Shuters (formerly Shuter & Shooter) was the only rival publisher canvassed by Daily Maverick willing to go on record with some details about what the submission had required in terms of labour and price.

“Shuters has 100 permanent staff members who all contributed in various ways to the project. Additionally, over a hundred other people in various capacities, such as authors, editors, proofreaders, translators, typesetters and designers, formed part of the Shuters economic ecosystem in this submission,” CEO Nomkhita Mona told Daily Maverick.

Mona said Shuters had spent “tens of millions of rand” on its submissions.

Another publisher told Daily Maverick that his company had spent in the region of R50-million.

Lighthouse says it scraped together funds — in some cases, savings — from family and friends amounting to a fraction of these kinds of amounts. The company had minimal overheads because everyone worked remotely.

“Many people worked for free because of long-held relationships based on respect and trust,” Georgia Groome told Daily Maverick.

“We did try to pay small monthly stipends to contributors who really needed them. And towards the end, when the deadlines were just hellish, we did offer some cash incentives.”

The 135 contributors were also aware from the start that Lighthouse had not yet made a cent in revenue and might never. One of the appeals of Lighthouse’s offer to them is likely to have been that the company has agreed to pay higher royalties than the standard industry 10%, but Groome says that is far from the whole story.

“People think everyone is just money-oriented, but that’s just not true. There’s a lot of passion in this area, because people care very, very deeply about having their languages well represented. People are very worried about losing their home language, and we take enormous care to be genuinely respectful of languages. Contributors responded to our innovation and our passion,” said Groome.

Lighthouse gave Daily Maverick access to all the materials it submitted for the catalogue.

The figure of 1,707 approved titles gives a slightly misleading impression, because it obscures the fact that the vast majority of these — 1,080 —are graded readers, which can be as short as eight pages.

Lighthouse contributors contacted by Daily Maverick attributed the fact that the deadlines could be met to the company’s innovative use of technology.

Writer and editor Kgomotso Phalatse, who contributed to the Setwana submissions, said that the shared digital platforms that writers and editors used helped to expedite the process.

“The track changes and live comments gave immediate and transparent feedback, which reduced delays and improved clarity on revisions. We also used the digital layout tools to test how the text and illustrations interact on a page,” she said.

Another Lighthouse contributor, isiXhosa writer Sipho Kekezwa, told Daily Maverick that they were able to use WhatsApp groups to collaborate effectively despite being geographically distant, so that the experience was never isolating.

One of the most damning allegations against Lighthouse, without any proof supplied, is that the company may have received advance warning of the catalogue opening ahead of the other publishers and was able to get a head start on preparing materials.

“Absolutely untrue. We had no prior knowledge,” said Groome.

A rival catalogue bidder, meanwhile, told Daily Maverick in writing that the DBE held a meeting with “representatives from the industry” around November or December 2023 to tell them that submissions would be invited in early 2024. Most publishers, in other words, would have been aware some months in advance that the terms of reference were imminent.

Lighthouse also raised the question of why they would have waited to register the company until after the terms of reference for the catalogue were published if they had been tipped off in advance. The company registration date, though not disqualifying, has been pointed to by critics as indicative of some unspecified funny business.

In Lighthouse’s telling, it is simply a reflection of their hasty scrambling to get things together when its core team decided that the opening of the catalogues was an opportunity they couldn’t miss.

The directors freely acknowledge that the time pressure they were under also led to some missteps in other areas. As News24 reported, Lighthouse was tax-compliant at the time of submission, but let the tax compliance lapse in 2025. The news outlet did not mention that this is not a disqualifying factor, because the terms of reference state that publishers must be tax-compliant at the time of submission and at the time of procurement, which has not yet happened. The tax affairs are now in order.

As to why the company was not VAT-registered, Groome responded: “The company had not done any turnover. All there is really is a shared debt.”

The textbooks themselves

Arguably, the most critical aspect of this all is something that has received no media attention at all: what are Lighthouse’s textbooks actually like?

Daily Maverick asked an independent expert to critically assess three Lighthouse titles chosen at random. They agreed to do so on condition of anonymity.

On the issue of how well the titles matched CAPS (curriculum) requirements, the verdict was: “Strong and precise alignment.”

On pedagogical quality: “High, sophisticated design.”

The reviewer did note that one particular title — a teacher’s guide — was “quite visually spare”.

Their overall assessment was as follows: “Credible, professionally produced, pedagogically sound materials. Do not seem to be the product of a fraudulent or incompetent operation. Their approval rate is not implausible on the evidence of these three.’

Lighthouse is currently in limbo until the Treasury investigation into the catalogue procurement process is complete, not knowing if the team can proceed with the arrangements they need to make with printing and logistics brokers.

One possibility is that current or future investigations could yet unearth irregularities in the procurement process from the side of DBE officials without the knowledge or consent of Lighthouse.

“We are not aware of, and neither have we experienced, any conduct that would support such a suggestion,” Groome told Daily Maverick in response.

“We participated in the process in good faith and remain confident in both our operational capability and our ability to deliver on the mandate awarded to us.”

For Groome, one of the most demoralising aspects of the fallout has been how it threatens to eclipse all that she considers exceptional about the Lighthouse journey.

“In reality, it is a story of incredible collaboration — a group of like-minded, extraordinary people, determined to use their talent, experience and expertise to overcome the odds and build a business worthy of South African children and teachers. It was a journey filled with long nights of strategising, intense arguments fuelled by stress and pressure, prayer and comfort between team members who saw each other through a birth, deaths, a divorce, and all kinds of other human drama,” she says.

“Mostly, it was about exceptional camaraderie, loyalty and perseverance. It was about love.” DM