Legal row over Rhodes mandatory jab policy

A group of Rhodes University students and employees are challenging in court the university’s mandatory Covid-19 vaccine policy.

The newly formed organisation, Makhanda Against Mandates (MAM), is resorting to the high court on an urgent basis in a bid to interdict the university from implementing the mandatory vaccine policy it announced in October last year and to stop it from placing all unvaccinated employees on unpaid leave.

MAM is asking the high court in Makhanda for an interim interdict pending a high court review it intends bringing to have the policy declared unconstitutional, unreasonable and irrational and to have it set aside.

It says the university is already refusing to register unvaccinated students as well as putting unvaccinated staff on unpaid or annual leave.

Rhodes University’s attorney Owen Huxtable yesterday indicated it intended opposing both the application for the urgent interdict and the review application.

The university indicated in October last year that its council had adopted the policy making it mandatory for staff, students and service providers to be vaccinated against Covid-19 if they wanted access to the university campus.

Unvaccinated students would not be allowed to register for the 2022 academic year.

Rhodes University philosophy professor Francis Williamson believes that the university’s vaccine exemption protocol — premised only on medical or religious grounds — was too narrow and the alternative mitigation measures requiring weekly Covid-19 tests at the cost of the exempted individual was unreasonable.

He says in an affidavit that he believes the exemption process should include those who feel the mandate infringed on their constitutional rights to equality, human dignity, freedom and security of the person and fair labour practices.

MAM also believes the policy is based on “arbitrary and nonsensical grounds” which did not take into account the practical realities and more recent medical evidence, including the reduced efficacy of the vaccines.

The university had in middecember last year sent out a letter warning that those who were not vaccinated and who had not applied for an exemption would be placed on unpaid leave effective from January 4 this year.

It also warned that any unvaccinated staff member who came onto campus without permission would be putting the health and safety of others at risk and could face disciplinary action.

Williamson describes this as unfair discrimination of “perfectly healthy individuals” based on an “unfortunate perception that unvaccinated individuals are somehow a high and perpetual risk” to others.

He said unvaccinated students and staff were being subject to “economic death by denial of equal opportunity in employment and education”.

While Rhodes intends to oppose the application, it had not yet filed its papers by yesterday morning.

However, it is likely to challenge the urgency of the application for the interdict, given that it took MAM too long to challenge a policy it made public some four months ago.

MAM’S attorney Mike van der Veen says in an affidavit the matter was urgent as employees and students were being “severely prejudiced”.

Some employees were not being paid while many students were not able to register for their studies.

Huxtable said the interdict was set down to be argued on March 1.

[This is] unfair discrimination of ‘perfectly healthy individuals’ based on an ‘unfortunate perception’