Expelled Rhodes University student Yolanda Dyantyi has been granted leave to take her fight against her permanent exclusion all the way to the SCA.

A Daily Dispatch report notes the case has been fraught with threats against the university and its legal counsel, ‘scandalous’ attacks on the integrity of the court, and a referral by the judge of some of these matters to the NPA for investigation.

Dyantyi was permanently excluded from the university in 2017 after she was found guilty in a disciplinary hearing of kidnapping, assault, insubordination and defamation during the so-called #RhodesReferenceList anti-rape protests in 2016.

In April this year Dyantyi failed in her High Court bid to have both her disciplinary conviction and permanent exclusion from the university set aside.

Yesterday, Judge Zamani Nhlangulela granted her leave to appeal his earlier judgment to the SCA.

He rejected almost all the grounds on which she sought leave to appeal. However, he said it was appropriate that the SCA should decide on the matter of whether she had effectively been denied her right to legal counsel.

The university proctor had refused to allow her a postponement in the middle of her disciplinary hearing because the legal counsel of her choice had not been available on a particular day.

The report notes Nhlangulela was scathing about a ‘misleading’ press statement issued by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute (Seri) a few days before the application for leave to appeal was argued before the Eastern Cape High Court (Makhanda).

In that statement Seri accused Rhodes of continuing to deny Dyantyi a hearing and of waging war against her.

Nhlangulela said the contents of the press statement were directly related to the merits of the case.

Full Daily Dispatch report (subscription needed)