A school in Eastern Cape at which more than 100 disabled children are cared for is without therapists for the children despite the provincial education department being ordered by the courts to hire staff.
Vukuhambe School, in a township near East London, has been without adequate staff for 10 years.
Its pupils are physically disabled but intellectually normal.
Annegret Mostert, a volunteer occupational therapist at the school, has been fighting for the children for four-and-a-half years.
"It is really shocking," she said of the conditions at the school.
"The basic human rights of the children are being neglected."
She said disabled children with impaired mobility need therapists to help them move, to prevent them from getting pressure sores caused by being in one position for too long, and to help them improve in overall function.
Physiotherapists can also teach the children to use toilets and control muscles so that they will not have to wear nappies as they enter their teens.
Therapists can help the children become more independent, Mostert said.
But the school has no therapists.
The Legal Resources Centre won a court order in June that entitled the school governing body to advertise its eight vacant positions, screen applicants and make recommendations for employment, said lawyer Cameron McConnachie.
But yesterday, the school was told therapists would not be employed because the department had not selected and appointed candidates.
But the court order explicitly gives the school the right to recruit staff.
Eastern Cape education department spokesman Loyiso Pulumani said the department would be hiring the staff needed for this year within "a few weeks" and denied that the department would defy the court and not make the appointments.
He said an assessment of the needs of special schools was to be made in preparation for an "intervention".
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