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A father and his daughter have lost two urgent High Court applications to force Wits University to allow her to graduate with a teaching degree – despite owing the institution about R100 000 in fees. On 13 July, Gauteng High Court (Johannesburg) Acting Judge Steven Budlender dismissed an application by Nathaniel Makhubele and his daughter, Tsakani, to compel Wits to allow her to register for the Bachelor of Education (Honours) programme. Nathaniel reportedly told the Sunday Times his daughter has not found a teaching post as ‘she cannot register with the SA Council for Educators without her degree certificate. Wits allowed Tsakani to register for her final year of study last year after an agreement between it and her father in which he signed an acknowledgment of debt in September for R102 139 for outstanding fees. The arrangement was that R35 000 would be paid towards the settlement of the outstanding fees and an acknowledgment of debt would be signed for the balance. But, according to the judgment in the first application, handed down on 31 May by Acting Judge G Meyer, Nathaniel, who acknowledged he is liable as surety and co-principal debtor for payment, did not comply with the terms of the acknowledgment of debt.
Budlender, who heard Nathaniel’s second application on 16 June, dismissed it with costs, says the Sunday Times report. Nathaniel wanted the court to set aside the orders handed down by Meyer. According to a notice of motion Nathaniel penned on 11 July, he asked the court for an order declaring the debt allegedly incurred by his daughter in August 2018 to be prescribed on or by 31 December last year. Nathaniel said both Meyer’s and Budlender’s judgments ‘are the subject of pending applications for leave to appeal and hearing dates have not been allocated by the learned judges as they must hear these matters’. ‘I have had to request the intervention of the Deputy Judge President on 24 July to get a hearing date from Budlender.’ Wits spokesperson Shirona Patel said ‘two judges found in the university’s favour, yet the father persists in dragging us to court on the same matter’. She said that if universities do not manage historical debt adequately, ‘this threatens the financial sustainability and existence of higher education institutions for future generations’.