An urgent application by students whose funding by the government had been withdrawn was struck off the roll this week.
The North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria ruled that the matter was not urgent and suggested that the applicants seek a special allocation in the court roll as the matter could affect thousands of students countrywide.
The application for an interdict was brought on behalf of students whose funding in terms of the N+2 rule had been withdrawn.
Minister of Higher Education and Training Dr Blade Nzimande and the National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) were cited as respondents.
The legal representative for the applicants, advocate Jazz Vilakazi, argued that the affected students were currently not receiving funding from NSFAS and were on the verge of losing the current academic year.
Vilakazi argued that the students were poor and relied on government funding to improve their lives and prior to the instructing firm of attorneys, had no access to legal representation.
“The court should regard them as vulnerable,” Vilakazi argued.
However, senior counsels for the minister and NSFAS refuted that the matter was urgent and argued that the application was seeking an “interdict under the guise of a review”.
Advocate Fana Nalane, for NSFAS, argued that the students had an option to appeal the decisions to withdraw funding through the NSFAS processes or “march on Parliament” to lobby for the change of rules governing the funding.
“If they don’t qualify, they can go work or borrow money from relatives,” Nalane submitted.
In court papers, the applicant argued that the N+2 rule was being applied in an incorrect manner thereby prejudicing thousands of students across the country.
They also argued that by being denied funding, they were being turned into a burden for the state and would later on in life not be.
In an affidavit, one of the applicants, Sabelo Mtyana, a student at Fort Hare, said the N+2 rule allowed an additional two years to the number of years it would take a student to complete their qualification.
In terms of the rule's funding criteria, for all returning students funded pre-2018 and already on NSFAS funding, they needed to have passed at least half of the courses annually.
Mtyana was funded by NSFAS since 2018, but in April last year during Covid-19, he was told he would no longer be funded.
He said he made several attempts to seek clarification from NSFAS on the decision, without success.
“On 2 June, I received communication from NSFAS notifying me that I was financially excluded on the basis that I had used up my allocated number of years available to students on the grant. I appealed and in September I was only paid an allowance and not for tuition.
“The academic year of 2020 ended with me not studying due to being financially excluded,” Mtyana said in court papers.
In April, Mtyana’s attorneys challenged the “incorrect” application of the N+2 rule and “unlawful denial” of funding for over 7 000 students across the country.
The court papers said another applicant, Nolwazi Mashele, a student at the University of Pretoria, only received three years’ of funding even though she was eligible for six years.
In 2019, Mashele funded her studies through a loan after NSFAS told her that she would not be eligible for funding.
“We’ve had no day of peace since the N+2 rule was implemented incorrectly and on arbitrary grounds.”
In his affidavit, Nzimande argued that a mediation process in respect of the matter should be put in place in the first instance.
He argued that the court was not the forum to argue the matter.