It's taken 25 years for a Joza woman to discover that she has passed her matric. Forty-five-year-old mother of four Nomhle Meintjies, from Extension 6, wrote her senior certificate in November 1988.
It's taken 25 years for a Joza woman to discover that she has passed her matric. Forty-five-year-old mother of four Nomhle Meintjies, from Extension 6, wrote her senior certificate in November 1988.
She was a pupil at Ilanga High school in Healdtown, near Fort Beaufort . But when she went to collect her certificate at the end of the year from the education department in Nxukhwebe, she was shocked to be told that her results had been withheld. They told her this was due to irregularities found in the Science Higher Grade paper.
She sought legal advice at the Legal Resources Centre in Grahamstown. "The case dragged on into 1989," Meintjies said. "I was now doing nothing with my life, waiting impatiently for the results. It was March 1989 when centre dropped the bombshell that the results had been disqualified and the case was closed."
Meintjies became suicidal. She said the stress rapidly led to heart problems and for more than two decades, she lived with the shattered dream of studying for a professional nursing qualification.
Now living in Port Elizabeth, she depends on the disability grant of R1 200 she receives on account of her heart condition. Then in March this year she heard a radio announcement urging people who had failed the old Senior Certificate to register to rewrite it.
She went to the Department of Education to register – only to hear the news that she had in fact passed her Senior Certificate in 1988 and that her results were available. "I just broke down and cried in front of everyone inside the building. Even strangers came and tried to console me as I thought of all those years the department wasted for me."
Meintjies's former Biology teacher at Ilanga, Thandeka Veliti, who now teaches at Good Shepherd Primary School, said she remembered the saga of 1988. "I was an assistant chief invigilator when they were writing exams and we got a tip-off from someone that there were some students in possession of a Science Higher Grade question paper. "We never picked up any funny business, as we were very vigilant. When the Education Department heard the rumour, they decided to withhold all the results of Science Higher Grade pupils of Ilanga while they investigated."
Veliti said they'd been a very hard-working team of teachers and pupils, led by a good principal, and the results that year spoke for themselves. Veliti said, "Out of 120 pupils who wrote the senior certificate, we got 48 exemptions. Those are good results and I was certain that Meintjies was among the exemptions."
Eastern Cape Education Department' spokesperson Malibongwe Mtima said the Department was trying its best to "level the grounds" of the past regime. He urged Meintjies to visit their Zwelitsha offices to seek a way forward. "These are the blunders of the past regime and we will run an internal investigation into this matter and try to discover how the problem happened".
Legal Resources Centre spokesperson Cameron McConnachie said the centre had never opened a file for Meintjies. He said even something from 1988 should be available in their archives.
"It might happen that the case was never filed, but was dealt with over the phone. It is [like this]with many cases and some get resolved just by a phone call. But we can't be sure that this is the case here," McConnachie said.
Meintjies passed her Senior Certificate with an aggregate of 1 077. Only five subjects are reflected on her certificate, however: English HG 3rd Language (B), Xhosa 1st Language (C), Afrikaans 3rd Language HG (E), Mathematics SG (D) and Biology HG (C). Meintjies has already applied for a BA in Social Work or, as a second choice, a BA in Public Administration, at Nelson Mandela Metro University. She said she is looking for any good Samaritan who might be interested in helping her fund her studies.
