It was in October 2012 that Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga pronounced that the government's failure to deliver textbooks to tens of thousands of Limpopo pupils was neither a crisis nor a scandal, and that the entire affair had been blown out of proportion by the wicked media.
The sorry saga dragged on for the entire year, causing untold harm to schooling and triggering calls for Motshekga's head by an unprecedented range of interest groups, among them many ANC supporters, as well as a flurry of court challenges.
In any other constitutional democracy the responsible minister would have stepped aside before she was fired. But Motshekga, a loyal supporter of President Jacob Zuma, managed to convince her principal that responsibility for the mess lay not with her but with the dysfunctional provincial education department, which had been placed under administration.
She kept her job.
And so the news this weekend that thousands of Limpopo pupils are again without textbooks - and that the government is being dragged to court once more to put the matter right - is depressing in the extreme.
City Press reported yesterday that 23 schools were still short of more than 18000 books - three months into the school year. This is despite the fact that the education department repeatedly promised that all this year's teaching materials would be delivered by last December.
The Limpopo education department has supposedly been rehabilitated. So what excuse can senior education officials possibly have for this, their latest failure?
The first term of the new year is already done and dusted and pupils who have been deprived of textbooks have been cruelly short-changed.
We know the ANC is preparing for the May 7 election, but Motshekga needs to be given time out so she can fix the problem now. Not next month, but this week, during the school break.
Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package. 
