“I dream about stun grenades, of choking on teargas… I can’t sleep. I can’t study. I can’t concentrate… "I knew the newspapers didn’t understand but I thought the courts would understand where we’re coming from.”
This was how final-year law student Seadimo Tlale, who was fighting back tears, took the news on Thursday that the high court in Johannesburg had dismissed an urgent application to have Wits University's exams postponed to next year.
Tlale was the first applicant from a group of students who launched the application last Friday, citing emotional trauma as the reason why the exams should be deferred.
In her founding affidavit, Tlale argued students had been left with little time to prepare for the exams because of the violent #FeesMustFall campaign.
“If the examination were to continue on that date, it would have the inevitable consequences that the vast majority of students will either fail (or substantially underachieve) or, to avoid that consequence, the university will have to impose a general increase in the marks of all students,” she wrote.
She insisted students had been traumatised by the violence and the heavy police presence on campus during the protests.
“Those who attend lectures are in constant fear for their well-being from both protesting students and police alike,” she wrote.
However, by the time the case was brought to court on Tuesday, the argument had changed, with the deferment application changed to an application to allow students in residences to stay on campus until they could write their exams.
On Thursday, Judge Willem van der Linde accepted, and sympathised with, the trauma faced by the students, but said that because of the change in the application, and the nature of the protests surrounding #FeesMustFall, he could not provide a reprieve.
In its counter-application, Wits management had said students with genuine reasons for not being able to sit exams could apply to have them deferred.
The judge noted that the university’s current deferred exam programme allowed enough flexibility to accommodate the students’ issues and that the trauma they had experienced could form the basis for an internal deferment application.
While Judge Van der Linde believed that the application had failed to establish a proper legal case, he said the students were asserting their constitutional rights and, therefore, should not be forced to pay costs.
“They are likely the innocent ones caught in the crossfire between students abusing their right peacefully to demonstrate and security forces trying to constrain them,” he said.
But the sympathetic judgment was no comfort to Tlale, who bemoaned Wits’s choice to maintain a heavy police presence on the campus while exams continued.
“We are not psychologically ready to write exams… They (Wits management) should be spending money on psychologists… not security,” she said outside the court.
The students’ lawyer, Thulani Nkosi, of the Socio-Ecomonic Rights Institute of South Africa, said he would need a few hours to examine the judgment before deciding whether to pursue any further applications. He could not be reached for further comment on Thursday afternoon.