Registering with Department

1. If a homeschooling parent fails, without just cause, (good enough reason) to register a home learner for education at home, the parent can be prosecuted and, if found guilty, can be sentenced to up to six months in jail OR a fine. (SA Schools Act).
2. If a parent fails to protect and fulfill a child’s right to education or any of the child’s other rights, including the right to privacy, in a manner that is in the child’s best interests, the parent can be prosecuted and can, if found guilty, be sentenced to up to ten years in jail AND a fine. (Children’s Act).
3. Therefore, parents must be very sure that education officials do not infringe the rights of their children in the manner in which they perform the registration of home learners. If the processes and procedures for registering home learners, or the officials implementing them, infringe the rights of the children, the parents can plead that they have “just cause” for not registering.
4. Up to now, about 98% of all homeschooling parents have concluded that the processes and procedures by which home learners are registered will infringe the rights of their children and that they must not, therefore, subject their children to those processes and procedures without the risk of being guilty of a far greater crime (child neglect), than the crime of failing to register. 

(At the same time, if they have to protect their children against unlawful infringement of their rights by registration officials, they are by definition not guilty of failing to register without just cause. Because they have just cause.)

Yes, the above does not constitute simple terms. However, if one reads it carefully a few times, it might become clearer. (Tuisonderwys egroup, 17 March 2015)

“The law in Gauteng does not differ much from the other provinces…There is a national law that says that you must register your child, unless you have good reason not to do so.

The provinces use this law and then set all sorts of unreasonable and even unlawful requirements for registration. In other words, they use an otherwise lawful registration requirement to force people to comply with a battery of requirements, which they otherwise could not force upon you.

The result is that about 95% of all homeschoolers have come to the conclusion that they are legally justified in not registering, as a result of the unlawful requirements of the department, and because many of the unlawful requirements, in their judgment, are in conflict with their children’s best interests.

One example of a general requirement is that homeschooling must comply with the national curriculum.
This is illegal. What the law says, is that it must meet the MINIMUM requirements of the curriculum in public schools. Now the rules of interpretation of the law determine that we don’t have to meet ALL the requirements of the national curriculum. Thus this requirement is unlawful.

Furthermore, it is very easy to show that nearly all state schools do not fulfill the requirements of the national curriculum. This means that the departmental demands of homeschoolers are not fulfilled by their own schools, which is unfair and therefore unlawful. It would also mean that should anyone’s homeschooling possibly be refused because he does not meet the demands of the national curriculum, that the children could be sent to a state school that meets even less of their requirements! Unreasonable!
…
Another example is that the department insists on inspecting the homes of homeschoolers (they call this ‘visiting’). Such visits involve an invasion of the children’s right to privacy, and that of the people who live in the home.

Such an invasion of a fundamental right could be acceptable if it was justified. There is, however, no information that officials need in order to do their work with regard to the homeschooling of the children, which could not be obtained by less invasive means (if they wish to see the children’s schoolwork, they could accomplish this by inspecting it in their own offices). [More detail at Are Home Visits Legal?]

Regarding Curriculum Suppliers

There is no law that demands that curriculum suppliers require that their clients must be registered. Just like there is no law that a car dealership is required to only sell cars to people with driver’s licences. (A child of four can own a car, he may just not drive it! Therefore the control of driver’s licences is the function of the traffic department and not of the car dealer.)

Being private undertakings, curriculum suppliers can set any requirements for the use of their products that they wish. If they want to refuse to sell the product to you unless you sing “Jan Pierewit” on the steps of the town hall, they can do it.

I personally, would shy away from products sold by organisations that require that I must sing “Jan Pierewiet” on the town hall steps or any other place. I also think it’s not very wise to do business with enterprises that interfere with things that they have no right to, and which gives them the power to set requirements that they legally have no right to set.” [end quote]