SA National Tutor Services wants the KwaZulu-Natal education department to stop telling its students to enrol elsewhere for their studies or lose their bursary.
Private higher education institution Sants said in court papers lodged at the Pietermaritzburg High Court yesterday that the department's communication of "misinformation" to its students was part of a vendetta driven by malice.
Sants recently won a court order attaching the department's fleet of 708 vehicles after it failed to pay almost R33-million in fees covered by bursaries.
The fleet will be auctioned if the department fails to pay Sants - and former school pupil Simphiwe Shange - by February 10.
In a separate case, Shange, now 26, is owed almost R4-million in damages. He was partially blinded in his right eye when his school's deputy principal hit him with a belt in 2003.
In court papers filed yesterday, Sants managing director, Jacobus Bernard, said 1107 unemployed matriculants were accepted to study for education degrees when the department approved Sants' tuition programme in 2012.
All the students completed their first year of study last year.
Bernard was told that two weeks ago students had received a cellphone text message telling them of a meeting with officials of the department of education in Ulundi. It warned the students that if they did not attend, their bursaries would be cancelled.
Two days later, tutor Mduduzi Nxumalo, who was present at the meeting, told Bernard that officials said bursary payments would not be made if students enrolled with Sants.
Nxumalo said students were told that the department was "divorced" from Sants but if they enrolled with Durban University of Technology, the University of KwaZulu-Natal or Unisa, bursary monies would be paid.
"The department's refusal to honour the bursary agreements . is a direct contravention of the court order and is contemptuous," Bernard said.
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