Ernest Mabuza
31 March 2008
Johannesburg — THE Constitutional Court last week ordered the Eastern Cape welfare MEC to pay a disabled woman whose disability grant was terminated without notice for a period of three years.
The court also ordered the department to pay the costs of Deliwe Njongi in the high court, the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court, on the scale as between attorney and client.
This means the department will pay all costs that Njongi incurred in the trial, including the costs of senior counsel who argued her case.
When the court heard the case in November, it questioned why government had to spend millions of rand of taxpayers' money opposing a claim of R5800 which one judge said was indefensible.
Njongi applied for and was granted a disability grant in 1989 and received payments for the next eight years. However, the payments stopped in 1997 without notice or any explanation. When she enquired about her grant, she was informed she should reapply.
Her grant was reinstated in July 2000. She also received R1100 which she was told was "back pay". Her attorneys calculated that the amount she should have received was a further R15200. The department also paid out R9400 in March 2005 after Njongi instituted proceedings in the Port Elizabeth High Court. The amount still owing was R5800.
The high court ordered the department to pay her R5800. The department successfully appealed to the full bench of the Grahamstown High Court which said her monetary claim had prescribed and become unenforceable. The Supreme Court of Appeal refused her application for leave to appeal.
In a unanimous judgment, constitutional Judge Zac Yacoob also ordered the MEC to pay Njongi R5800 and to pay her interest calculated at the rate of 15,5% a year on the amount of each separate monthly unpaid grant for the months of November 1997 to July 2000, the amount of R15200 from July 1 2000 to March 10 2005 and the amount of R5800 from March 10 2005 to the date of payment.
Yacoob said there were a number of judgments in relation to the provincial government's conduct on the reinstatement of grants and said these judgments were not meant simply to be filed away without being read.
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