Where to start???

Hi, I am not from South Africa but I'll take a crack at your questions and you can choose to consider it or not.

1- where in canada? Meaning what part? Vancouver/ toronto/calgary?? Im from vryheid ( farming area) .

If you read through this thread, https://www.expat.com/forum/viewtopic.p … =5#2514492 , you'll get some idea about the different places. You want to consider a few things about the place you choose to settle down:
1) Long term vs short term - if you want to stay long term than you want to consider cost of home ownership. Otherwise, you can choose to rent ant that'd be ok. Vancouver for one, has the highest cost of home ownership. But its pretty new place to live in. Calgary is up and coming. However, its been hit hard recently with the drop in oil price. Toronto is a lil' balance. You can choose from the many suburbs in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area).  Cost of homeownership is more reasonable here. But do not discount other places which are also part of Canada, like Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton, etc.
2) You also want to look at other aspects as to whether your jobs are easy to come by where you are going to settle. As you mentioned that your husband, owned a restaurant, you might want to setup shop where you settle too. Then, you'd consider the population size and age as they will be the patrons of the restaurant. What the rental cost is, how easy it is to find sou chefs, good waiters etc. How easy is it to access local produce? and its freshness, etc etc. You want to compare side by side with other restaurants too in that area. Calgary has quite a vibrant night life and is as I mentioned up and coming. Toronto and Vancouver is already up there, so you'd probably could going to have strong some competition coming in the downtown core. You might try somewhere in the suburbs if that is the case e.g. Mississauga in Toronto.

2- how to i start the process?

You start by going to visit the CIC website and know what your options are. You can choose Express Entry via the Federal or via Provincial Nominee Program. The later is usually fast track.
Either way, you start off by having your local certifications send to http://www.wes.org/ca/immigrants/ to get them verified (typically anything after high school only). It doesn't come cheap and cost $CAD200/person.

There's another option which is business but usually requires quite a very high investment.

3- how are the schools and education?

That depends on where you go. Schools are managed by the province. And even each school may be different. People normally choose where they start base on what school they want to send their children to. The more ghetto an area is, chances are your children will go to the same school with the likes of tugs and all that. So pick the area you want to stay carefully. Other than that, Canada has a pretty high standard of education.

4- how is the work situation? My husband  is a chef and has his own restuarant for the past 6 years.
I am a nail tech and currently studying for my teachers diploma (grade R)

Well I guess my answer to the 1st question pretty much sums it up.

5- do i go through a agent and if so who can you recommend.

Depends on how complicated your case is and also how busy you guys are. The more complex your case is, its better to have an immigration consultant help navigate your way through the process. I got mine done by an immigration consultant although its not highly complex. My reason for it is that there are things through the process are not written in black and white and you have to read between the lines. You can attempt to figure it out by trying to sift through the hundreds of forums and threads on immigration but it takes time and there's no guarantee. Since its going to be a big expenditure, it made sense for me to pay an extra cost for the help of an immigration consultant so that I don't put my investment to waste by having an unsuccessful attempt. I can recommend an agent for you which is a buddy of mine. I'll pm (private message) you his details.