Legal Articles and Guides

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

The EFF made a call for intervention, to bring Rhodes University ‘to its senses’, in response to former student Yolanda Dyantyi being banned from the university for life, for a range of charges – including kidnapping, assault, defamation and insubordination.

The Congress of SA Students (Cosas) has threatened to shut down all private schools that remain open during the four-week Covid-19 break for public schools, arguing that having them open while public schools are closed is not fair.

The government will be taken to court after accusations that it pacified unions by deciding to close all public schools for four weeks, less than a month after it won a legal challenge to its decision to reopen the country’s economy along with its schools.

Six weeks after schools reopened, the Cabinet is again debating whether schools should remain open or close again ahead of the anticipated Covid-19 peak. Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga met with the Cabinet yesterday to discuss proposals made by stakeholders in the education sector about schooling ahead of the peak.

A Durban school can no longer suspend pupils from virtual classes for defaulting on school fees. A consent order granted by the Durban High Court ordered the Durban North Primary School to refrain from contravening the Schools Act by excluding pupils from online lessons because their fees were in arrears.

The school governing body (SGB) of Bloemfontein’s Grey College has been dealt a blow by the SCA, the latest instalment in its protracted power struggle with principal Deon Scheepers.

The constitutional injunction that South Africans have the right to education in the language of their choice ‘where that education is reasonably practicable’, is what made the difference between this week’s SCA ruling that the removal of Afrikaans as a medium of instruction at Unisa was unlawful and unconstitutional and previous rulings allowing the universities of Stellenbosch and the Free State to switch to tuition in English.

Last week’s Constitutional Court judgment in the Pridwin Preparatory School case took some 13 months to deliver. ‘When judgment day did finally arrive, what was handed down were two voluminous, and important judgments,’ says the anonymous legal expert, ‘Professor Balthazar’.

Government lawyers insist that the state’s decision to ease lockdown restrictions and reopen schools, at a time when SA’s Covid-19 infection rates are increasing, is not unreasonable – particularly given the economic crisis the country is facing, notes Business Day.

The Constitutional Court has ruled that private (or independent) schools may no longer rely on contracts with parents as the basis for kicking children out of school without a fair hearing, notes a GroundUp report.

The Constitutional Court will rule today on the obligations and duties of independent schools, says a report on the IoL site.

Attorney Comfort Ngidi is threatening legal action against KZN’s three top universities if lectures do not resume soon under alert level three, says a News24 report.

Equal Education and two Limpopo schools have taken the Department of Basic Education to court in an attempt to force them to feed all pupils who qualify for the government’s National School Nutrition Programme (NSNP).

Government’s plan to ensure the safety of pupils in schools should be supervised by the courts or an independent body. That’s what One SA Movement, a non-profit organisation, is fighting for in a new court bid, notes a City Press report.