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By Zelda Venter 
18h ago
Pretoria – The thousands of enrollment students across the country anxiously waiting to know if they will have to rewrite Math Exam 2 and Physical Science Exam 2 next week should be certain by the end of this week.
Judge Norman Davis, sitting in Gauteng Superior Court, Pretoria, commented that this issue had to be decided no later than Friday.
Four separate groups have submitted urgent requests calling for the decision made by Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga last week that the two leaked exams be rewritten by all matrices be annulled.
The only request is from the civil rights organization AfriForum, which is helping four students in this legal offer; the other by a group of individual students from Ermelo, in Mpumalanga; the third by the Democratic Union of Teachers of South Africa and the fourth by another group of five pupils from Gauteng.
The urgent requests were supposed to be heard together, but the lawyer acting on behalf of the minister indicated that his opposition affidavit was not yet ready. The judge was assured that he would be ready in time for the process to continue tomorrow.
Judge David questioned why the minister’s papers were not ready and commented that he had only received them from the exam insurer Umalusi. This, he said, although he had already received all the papers from the applicants.
He said it was too late to hear the request on Friday only and urged respondents to be ready on Thursday.
The minister told him that there were many things to respond to when opposing requests and that the time to do so was short.
Some of the applicants also complained that they did not receive the record of the proceedings, leading the minister to decide that the two leaked exams should be rewritten.
Judge Davis ordered that the record be released to them after court proceedings.
The court was told that while all four requests boiled down to the same legal issue, if the minister’s decision to order the rewrite was rational, some of the arguments presented will be slightly different.
However, all are calling for the minister’s decision to be reviewed and overturned and that she be barred from continuing with the rewrites next week on Tuesday and Thursday.
Teachers union general secretary John Maluleke said in an affidavit that the minister appeared to have made the decision to have the exams rewritten “at gunpoint at the hands of the twelfth respondent (Umalusi).”
This cannot be acceptable in an open and democratic society rooted in the rule of law, Maluleke said.
He added that “the panicked first respondent (minister) seems to be very afraid of the twelfth respondent (Umalusi) who has unjustifiably entered the field of the test leak …”
“The information that the first respondent uses to infringe the rights of thousands and thousands of students, some of whom come from destitute families and who do not even have the luxury of technology, constitutes a serious violation of the rights of these students.”
Maluleke said the minister does not explain the need to rewrite.
“It can hardly be suggested that rewriting is the simplest solution to achieve the desired end.”
He added that a grave injustice is about to be inflicted on thousands upon thousands of defenseless and voiceless students.
AfirForum, meanwhile, said in its requests that the minister cannot simply order everyone to rewrite, while only around 195 students saw the leaked documents.
He said the department should focus on the culprits and that there are means to determine which students unfairly benefited from the leaked documents.
Several students from the individual applications also submitted affidavits asking not to be punished for the transgression of a few who saw the leaked documents.
A 17-year-old Mamelodi student, who lives with her domestic worker mother and four siblings, said she hoped she would do well in the math and science papers she wrote.
He said he did not have access to the leaked documents and that he had already turned in his school books.
A Montana High School tuition student also confirmed that she had turned in her books and disposed of her exam notes as she never expected to rewrite the exams.
She added that on Tuesday, when she is expected to rewrite math, she and her parents are supposed to go on vacation.
Pretoria News
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