A brilliant Indian student was refused entry to medical school — an apparent victim of affirmative action. When she took legal action, she was admitted. Farouk Chothia reports from Durban
A young Pinetown matriculant, refused entry to medical school despite getting six distinctions, has started a flood of court challenges to affirmative action.
Karin Singh (18) was among the top 25 students last year in the former “Indian” education department, obtaining five As and one B. After remarking, her B in Afrikaans was converted to an A.
But the University of Natal refused to admit her to its medical school, saying she would be placed on a waiting list of applicants.
Singh decided to launch legal action, arguing she was being discriminated against in violation of her constitutional rights. In papers filed in the Durban Supreme Court, Singh cited section 8 (2) of the constitution which states that “no person shall be unfairly discriminated against, directly or indirectly” as a result of race and gender.
Soon after filing papers, the university informed her that she had been admitted as a first-year medical
Now a second Indian student who received an A-aggregate in matric is threatening to file court papers challenging her exclusion.
University legal adviser Sipho Mkhize denied that legal proceedings forced them to back down in Singh’s case. “It needs to be made very clear that she has been admitted strictly on the basis of the university’s admission procedures and requirements and not because of her application to court.”
The assistant dean of the medical school, Professor Walter Loening, said Singh had been “near the top” of the admission waiting list and once a vacancy opened, she was immediately admitted.
“We had over 1 700 applications. We can admit only 120. The rest will say we discriminated against them. You can’t imagine the pressure we have been exposed to,” Loening added.
Thuli Madonsella, a research officer at the University of Witwatersrand’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies, believes there is an “insular” clause in the constitution which sanctions affirmative action.
She said section 8(3)(a) allows for measures to be taken “to eleminate and reduce disparities” created by apartheid and such measures would not be in contravention of the equality clause.
According to Loening, the medical school’s previous student population was about 50 percent black with the remaining 50 percent comprising Indians and a “few”
The medical school decided this year to take, for the first time, “a small number” of whites, and increase black and coloured intake while reducing Indian intake, Loening said.
He added that Indians would remain the second-largest racial group at the medical school. “Is that not affirmative action?” he asked.
He added that the medical school has not set down any racial quota, though Chatsworth community leader Peter Pillay, in an affidavit supporting Singh, said university authorities informed him that only 40 Indian students will be admitted this year.
Loening said that with “no law saying that the best matriculant must get in”, matric results were no longer the sole criteria for admission: a “certain percentage” of students were enrolled based on their overall school performance and an assessment of their leadership qualities and extra-curricula activities.
He said this system was adopted to try to ensure that “some of the best scholars of all races” were enrolled in the faculty.
Loening said the medical school will continue applying affirmative action. “There is nothing new about it in this faculty. We have preceded most other institutions with affirmative action. Now it is also government policy,” Loening added.
But Minority Front leader Amichand Rajbansi said on Wednesday that he was taking up the cudgels on behalf of another Indian student, Thevaloshni Naidoo, who had been informed before she even wrote her matric examinations that she would not gain admission.
Naidoo obtained an A-aggregate in her exams with A symbols in biology and physical science and a B in
“Before the elections we were black and now we do not appear to be black,” said Rajbansi.
Warning that legal action was being “seriously considered”, he added: “Many Indians believe they have now become victims of affirmative action programmes.
“The university must give us proof that this is not so. The community is entitled to know whether students who have an academic record worse than Naidoo’s were rejected at the initial stage.”
Loening declined to comment on Naidoo’s case “as the matter could be regarded as sub judice”.