2022 matric results appeal still in limbo
These results were withheld following alleged cheating during the final exams that year.
There is a big misunderstanding between the education department and the learners whose 2022 matric results were withheld following alleged cheating during the final exams.
Since hundreds of the learners appointed Adv DJ Sibuyi of Mthunzi Law Chambers and attorney Ephraim Khambako early last year, the legal route became thorny.
Their instructions were to legally force the department to release the results.
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An application was made in the Mbombela High Court for the matter to be heard on an urgent basis.
This application did not materialise, as the court dismissed the matter with costs. It was then referred to the normal court roll, but the attorneys managed to secure a date within a few months thereafter.
After the date was set, the department asked for a postponement that the court reluctantly granted, albeit with costs against the department.
A new date was agreed upon and the matter spilled over to this year, when the applicants had their way. The court ruled in favour of the learners and ordered the department to release the results with immediate effect.
Judge Henk Roelofse found that the department had failed to procedurally deal with the alleged cheating.
However, he did stipulate that he did not say there was no cheating, but that the department had not done things according to its own set of rules. The department then applied for leave to appeal, which the judge granted.
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The department wants the matter to be heard at the end of January, while Sibuyi and Khambako, on the other hand, want the appeal hearing to take place early in December.
“We are definitely going to approach the court to raise our discontent about this step that reverses the gains enshrined in the Constitution. Your clients punished children for two years without following procedure, now you deliberately add another year and expect us to smile, claiming things are normal,” Sibuyi wrote to the department’s attorneys in a letter this publication has seen.
“This response is never directed to an individual, but to a deliberate system that undermines the rule of law.”
Education spokesperson Jasper Zwane did not comment, saying it was responded to by the head of department during the provincial prayer day for the 2024 matric exams.
The head of department, Lucy Moyane, said on October 17 that the matter could not be discussed further, because it is in the hands of the courts.
“There is an ongoing appeal in this regard,” she said at the time.
