Johannesburg — THE Constitutional Court yesterday questioned the Eastern Cape government's spending of millions in taxpayers' money to oppose a R5000 claim by a disabled woman whose grant was terminated without notice.

Deliwe Njongi's disability grant payments were stopped in November 1997 and reinstated in July 2000 after she was told to reapply. She was given R1100 back pay when she should have been given R15200.

So she applied to the Port Elizabeth High Court in 2005 to review and set aside the decision to stop her grant, and for an order for her back pay.

A full bench of the high court ruled that the grant was an outstanding debt, and that the debt had prescribed because it arose more than three years before Njongi had brought the case.

Njongi's application to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein for leave to appeal against the judgment of the high court was dismissed in May.

"The attitude of every official involved in this affair has been unjustified from day one.

"No explanation was given as to why the grant was terminated. Millions of rand were spent defending a case that was indefensible. You are spending huge taxpayers' money defending a R5000 claim," Judge Zak Yacoob told Glenn Goosen, the advocate for Eastern Cape social development MEC Sam Kwelita.

Judge Sandile Ngcobo said: "We are left to speculate because no one knows why payments were stopped.

"It seems to me there is something wrong where government says nothing and uses that silence ... as a basis to defend itself. You are using your unlawfulness as a defence."

Goosen told the court that payment of the unlawfully stopped disability grant was claimable immediately when Njongi's grant was stopped in November 1997.

"It's the failure to pay that gives right to a claim. The Prescription Act does apply," Goosen said. He argued it was reasonable for the MEC to rely on the defence of prescription as there were thousands of applications brought by disaffected claimants.

When asked by Judge Johann van der Westhuizen what he would have advised Njongi to do, Goosen said he would have advised her to issue a summons for the payment of a debt.

Ngcobo said the department did not contest the unlawfulness of its conduct and acknowledged the liability to pay.

Goosen told the court that he "understands" the anger of the court at the conduct of the MEC.

Counsel for Njongi, Albert Beyleveld, said the act of terminating payment to Njongi constituted an infringement of her right to social assistance under the constitution.

The Constitutional Court has reserved judgment in the case.