Top officials at Zimbabwe Ezekiel Guti University (ZEGU) in Bindura have been caught up in a serious enrolment scandal after it emerged that some of them have been selling fake admission letters to aspiring students.
Unnamed officials at the university reportedly approved applications from students who did not meet requirements for the Bachelors of Laws degree programme.
Three students have so far been turned away from the institution after this discovery.
Victor Madzivanyika, Cleopatra Gumbo and Norman Tafadzwa Mashayamombe, who all intended to study towards a Bachelors of Laws degree allegedly applied on mature entry but skipped certain requirements, raising questions on their own complicity.
As a requirement, mature entry applications are followed up by a test that each aspiring student has to write and pass, in all the three cases none had written the test.
An application for reinstatement at the High Court was dismissed by Judge Happias Zhou who ruled the three had used "the back door."
They had sought to be allowed back in the programme despite the expose.
"The applicant (Madzivanyika) did not write such a test, which means that his admission was irregular for want of compliance with a mandatory procedure. Madzivanyika states, but leads no evidence to prove, that no written test was given to the other mature entry applicants. This disputed allegation does not sanitise his admission," read the judgement.
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"Whoever gave him the offer letter was therefore conniving with the him, and only added him to the list of students after the selection process had been completed."
The judge expressed reservations on the admission system.
"The first aspect is the very existence of loopholes in the admission system, which can be manipulated in the manner revealed by the two cases.
"The second aspect is the number of admitted students who do not have a Grade B or better in English Language at Ordinary Level.
"According to the produced copy of the regulations, this is a mandatory requirement for normal and special entry students. Only mature entry students seem to be exempted from this requirement," said Justice Zhou.
"Yet out of the 50 applicants who were accepted, 16 of them have a Grade C in Ordinary Level English Language. It would be wrong if such a huge number, representing 32 percent, would be mature entry students. The regulations state that not more than five applicants may be admitted through the mature entry procedure in any intake.
"The last observation pertains to the requirements for admission through the mature entry.
"No basic or minimum qualification is required... school experience is not defined anywhere in the regulations, which exposes the system to abuse as appears to have been the situation in casu (this case).
Zhou said the integrity of the qualification and education system which entitles one to practice Law must be jealously guarded, just like the integrity of the country's system of education in general.
He said the trio's request lacked merit before he slapped them with costs.
