The doctor parents of a girl desperate to study medicine at the University of Cape Town have taken the university to court after she failed to get a place in this year's intake.
The case has highlighted the university's application of complicated racial quotas when offering students places. More than 2 100 people applied to study first-year medicine at UCT this year, with only about 200 places available.
Student A, an Indian from Durban, decided to go to court after her friend, Student B, also an Indian girl, was accepted by UCT even though her marks were not as good.
It emerged in correspondence before the Cape High Court on Friday that the university had offered the second girl a place in the mistaken belief that she was African.
When it discovered its error, the university withdrew its offer, but reinstated it when the girl's parents threatened legal action.
The university's lawyers wrote to Student B's parents saying: "We record that had we assessed your client according to the target for Indian enrolment, it is unlikely that she would have been offered a place in the 2005 (medicine programme)."
On Friday the parents of Student A brought an urgent application in the Cape High Court for an order forcing UCT to register their daughter as a first-year medical student.
In papers they referred to UCT's "irrational" and unconstitutional decision not to allow their daughter to study medicine.
They also contended that the decision by UCT's faculty of health sciences selection committee not to admit their daughter - who achieved four distinctions in matric - was based on a "non-existent" or "unlawful" admissions policy.
The couple, who are both doctors, say their application is "not designed to displace or replace any of the successful applicants admitted onto the programme for 2005".
Letters between UCT and Student B have formed part of Student A's court papers.
Mr Justice Hennie Erasmus found the issue was not urgent, and put it down to be heard on March 3, after the university's counsel, John Rogers, said it would not be possible to argue the case this week. The university required time to answer the "very serious allegations" made against it by the parents, he said.
Rogers said the first-year medicine course was not structured to accept more than its allotted number of students and would not be able to accommodate Student A, even on a temporary basis.
"This is not a law or English class where one extra student makes no difference," he said, adding that the university had been consistent in its refusal not to admit her.
In papers before the court, her father alleged his daughter had applied for entrance to the UCT medical faculty last June and had "performed comfortably" in her September Health Sciences Consortium entrance exam.
Despite receiving four distinctions, including an A for mathematics, the girl's parents were informed that the 45-point score she had received would probably not be competitive enough.
Two days after the girl heard she had not been accepted, she and her parents learnt that her friend - who had 44 points - had been successful in her application. It later emerged the university had offered her a place in the belief she was African.
The first girl's father alleged that it had later come to his family's attention that UCT had "accepted other students of advantaged backgrounds with lower point scores than my daughter's" - undermining any claim by the university that only disadvantaged students with lower scores qualified.