Court case forces u-turn in UFS vaccination policy

18 July 2022

Solidarity today welcomed the decision taken by the University of the Free State (UFS) to finally scrap its vaccination policy This comes after Solidarity threatened the university with a cost order in its ongoing court litigation with this institution. 

Solidarity already brought a court application against the UFS’s mandatory vaccination policy on 12 January, and in June it threatened with a cost order should the university not amend its policy.

“It remains a pity that the university insisted on offering resistance to the way back to normality. The implementation of a mandatory vaccination policy was questionable in the first place. When the Covid-19 regulations were lifted at national level, but the UFS carried on with restrictions on its campus, it was clear that the university was committed to restricting the constitutional rights of students and staff without any clear rationale,” Morné Malan, Solidarity’s head of communications said.

Solidarity previously argued that of all places the country’s universities should show South Africans what the pursuit towards a world that is reasonable and normal should look like. That point of view remains unchanged and this abuse of power by the university does give cause for concern.

“The university’s policy has indeed managed to restrict constitutional rights. Although it is a good thing that this draconian policy has now been lifted, the fact that it was only brought about because the university was threatened with a cost order in litigation, and not because it acted as a proponent for the rights of students and staff, will remain an embarrassing blemish on UFS’s name,” Malan concluded. 

Issued by Morne Malan, Head: Communications, Solidarity, 18 July 2022