DURBAN - An urgent interim interdict stopping the Sunday Tribune from publishing information from a KPMG report into graft at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s medical school was obtained in the Durban High Court by the university on Saturday.
The information will be published at a later date if the constraint imposed by the court order is lifted.
The Sunday Tribune had earlier this year applied for the report to be handed over through a Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA) application, but the report was given to the newspaper before the PAIA request was granted.
In February the Sunday Tribune published a comprehensive summary of the findings in the report.
In a press briefing on Thursday, UKZN vice-chancellor Dr Albert Van Jaarsveld said the medical school’s ITS system, where information relating to students had allegedly been changed, was used by 17 other institutions in the country.
He said if UKZN had problems with the system, then there was a chance this was pervasive.
However the Sunday Tribune’s own investigation and interviews with students and staff showed that many people thought that it had nothing to do with “system errors” and there were staff accessing the university’s system and intentionally “regretting” applicants.
The Sunday Tribune found out, through interviews, that some students, (some who are no longer there), had been illegally admitted.
KPMG’s probe into the same issue was done after a whistleblower sent a report to Van Jaarsveld claiming some employees responsible for admissions to the medical school had requested or were offered bribes to facilitate entry for “wealthy” students.
A whistleblower also sent an email to the Sunday Tribune saying some students were misrepresenting their race to gain entry into the medical school. They were allegedly passing themselves off as “coloureds” when they were Indian – to cheat the quota system. The Sunday Tribune asked the Department of Home Affairs to confirm the race of the students but they said the government did not keep such records.
The Sunday Tribune has now been gagged, through the interdict, from publishing in the press, on the internet, on social media or any other forms of media, information pertaining to the KPMG report.
The Tribune will be opposing this order during next week.
Editor Mazwi Xaba said, “We have already published much of the information and we can’t understand what the secrecy is all about. We will comply with the order until we can have a fair hearing as soon as possible. This matter is of enormous public interest.”
How the Sunday Tribune reported.
Role players we are aware of being involved:
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MATTER OF FACT
The Sunday Tribune and our reporter Nabeelah Shaikh wish to give clarity as per a court order regarding a search and seizure operation conducted by the University of KwaZulu-Natal on Thursday, August 3. In an article posted online on August 3, the University claimed in the interdict application that the operation was not conducted by the SAPS Public Order Policing Unit (POP). The Sunday Tribune wishes to clear the misunderstanding as we did not say the operation was conducted exclusively by the POP unit, but said that it was conducted by an independent forensic team. The Sunday Tribune said the team worked in tandem with POP, meaning, POP officials were stationed outside the Nelson R Mandela School of Medicine for purposes of a strike, while the University was being searched by the independent forensic team inside the university. The reporter was at the medical school. An article was published online later that day giving further clarity on the search and seizure operation. We were asked to take down the initial August 3 story to comply with the court order. The Sunday Tribune/IOL was the first to break the story on the search and seizure operation before it was publicly revealed at a press briefing. As per the court interdict, we wish to retract the article and to clear any misunderstanding that may have lead the public to believe that the raid was done by the POP. We will shed more light on this if the order is lifted.
