EduSolutions wins new contract in Gauteng

The Gauteng Department of Education (GDE) has awarded a multi-million rand contract to provide textbooks and learner-support material to the controversial distribution firm, EduSolutions – just a month before Public Protector Thuli Madonsela completes her investigation into the company’s notorious bungling of a similar contract in Limpopo. EduSolutions will pocket part of the R155m set aside for textbooks and learning-and-teaching support material in 190 schools. The department pays EduSolutions a management fee of between 8 and 9 percent, for managing, ordering, procuring, warehousing and distributing of textbooks to schools. This means EduSolutions will pocket about R14m for the contract, which commenced yesterday.

Madonsela’s spokesperson Kgalalelo Masibi told The Sunday Independent that they were aiming to complete their investigation by the end of next month. In Limpopo, EduSolutions was paid more than R404m between December 2010 and March last year before its contract was terminated last June after a series of bungles. The Sunday Independent has learnt that EduSolutions’ initial Limpopo contract of R1.3 billion, awarded in July 2010, had not been approved by the provincial treasury. It was later dropped to about R600m after the Limpopo Education Department was placed under administration. Asked for comment, Gauteng education spokes-man Charles Phahlane responded: “How do you arrive at the conclusion that our contract is similar to Limpopo’s?”

Phahlane said the province had had over 98 percent of textbooks delivered by the first day of school in the past few years. EduSolutions had been awarded the Gauteng contract from April 2009 to March 2011 and the contract had been extended because of the company’s good performance and after a performance review and legal compliance check by internal and independent auditors. Moosa Ntimba, the chief financial officer of EduSolutions’ parent company, African Access Holdings, said there had been an open tender. “We believe that this award vindicates our stand that we’re competent and competitive,” he said. He said EduSolutions was contesting the termination of its contract through legal means but welcomed “any probe by a competent organ of state”.

“We fail to understand the logic that our business should be prejudiced due to unproven Limpopo allegations,” Ntimba said. The SA Booksellers Association previously failed to have EduSolutions’ contract with the Gauteng Education Department reviewed, so that procurement of textbooks, educational materials and/or equipment for the province’s schools may only be effected through EduSolutions. The association accused the department of preventing any public school governing bodies from purchasing textbooks, educational material or equipment from any other supplier. It also claimed its members had been barred from promoting its textbooks, educational materials or equipment to any school governing body in Gauteng.

EduSolutions has similar contracts in place in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal, where a section 21 school successfully challenged the decision that curriculum and assessment policy statement books had to be ordered from Edusolutions. The matter was settled before it went to court. African Access Holdings is headed by chief executive Shaun Battlemann and chairperson Seth Phalatse. Both are its founders and the company has donated generously to the Jacob Zuma RDP Education Trust. Battlemann is also a trustee of Zulu King Goodwill Zwelithini’s trust. The Sunday Independent has been reliably informed that EduSolutions’ sister company, Chanti Travel, has a share of the combined travel budget of nearly R350m of Correctional Services and Higher Education and Training. Both companies are owned by African Access Holdings.

Correctional Services awarded the contract to Chanti Travel in February last year, while Higher Education and Training awarded the company a three-year contract to arrange events, travel and accommodation. Chanti Travel lost out to HRG Rennies Travel when a similar tender was put out by the Department of Basic Education.