Litigation: Students oppose university’s mandatory vaccinations policy

A group of Rhodes University students and employees are challenging the university’s mandatory Covid-19 vaccine policy. A Daily Dispatch report says 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 has asked the Eastern Cape High Court (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 said 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 this week indicated it intended opposing both the application for the urgent interdict and the review application.