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Standing firm in the face of tyranny

 08 June 2022  |  Admin

Dear Universities Alliance Supporters,

We thank you for your continued support and are aware of the growing unease following legal outcomes in recent months that have been cast as unfavourable for the fight against vaccine mandates. We are also mindful of the fact that students, staff and parents are anxious about action.

We hereby wish to inform you that we have every intention of continuing with our legal campaign to overthrow university vaccine mandates. However, recent developments have necessitated a change in strategy, the reasons for which shall be outlined below in the name of transparency.

DIRECT ACCESS

Direct Access to the Constitutional Court amounts to a throw of the dice. Our counsel advised us that this option needed to be seriously considered on the basis that too many universities were trying to mandate at once and that approaching high courts individually would not be ideal (especially considering our limited resources and personnel).

In the interim, two key developments led counsel to

advise us to change course in this regard:

EXTERNAL PRECEDENTS

At the time the strategy was decided upon, there had only been one legal attempt to overthrow a university’s vaccine mandate, which was then declared a matter of national interest and slated for an early hearing.

However, in the process of preparing our direct access application, an additional three unsuccessful attempts – along with one withdrawal – were observed.

We were advised by counsel that the presence of four unsuccessful interdict attempts would cast doubt on the Constitutional Court’s willingness to grant us direct access in view of the fact that three different high courts had deemed the matters not worth hearing on an urgent basis.

BEHAVIOUR OF UNIVERSITIES

For direct access, one would have to demonstrate that the same problem is being experienced nationwide and that all other avenues of relief have been exhausted. However, following our ultimatum, two universities suspended their attempts to mandate, one softened their policy, and another indicated that they were willing to review it.

While this is advantageous in the sense that we now have fewer targets, it would also have counted against us in terms of seeking urgent relief directly at the Constitutional Court.

On the balance of circumstances, coupled with the fact that we are now the only remaining group planning to challenge vaccine mandates and the science associated therewith, we cannot afford to take any risks that could potentially work against us and dictate an unfavourable narrative once and for all. It is for this reason that our counsel has opted against continuing with direct access to the Constitutional Court.

URGENCY

As our counsel has repeatedly warned, the bar for urgency has proven extremely difficult to meet, with four different attempts against universities by three other groups having failed in the various high courts, and other labour-related matters suffering the same fate. We are thus going to proceed with our applications in the normal course and proceed urgently only if we are guaranteed to meet the requirements since the courts are atmospherically already heavily soured against hearing matters on an urgent basis when it comes to mandates.

However, we do have plans for retroactive relief down the line, albeit this will become very complicated and is contingent upon the policies being overthrown first. We also have strategies in mind that could potentially allow at least one of our matters to be heard sooner than others, if not urgently, so as to set a precedent.

We would also like to emphasize that we are in no way attempting to criticize those who pursued a more aggressive approach. Hindsight is 20-20 and they should be strongly commended for their attempts to fight vaccine mandates regardless of the outcome.

SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE

The final (but, perhaps, the most important) bottleneck in our legal preparations has been collating appropriate medical evidence to win the matter and refuting the universities’ claims surrounding the purported public health benefits of mandatory vaccination.

While we collected a variety of medical affidavits from South African medical personnel from February to April, our team grew concerned that certain medical evidence used in the reports we had obtained would not stand up to legal scrutiny – specifically, certain vaccine safety arguments, upon which several seemed to depend, were not backed by sufficiently strong evidence to withstand cross-examination at the highest levels.

To this end, we opted to bolster our medical evidence by searching for specialists – epidemiologists and immunologists – to review our scientific strategy and supply evidence of their own if needed. This culminated in a meeting with three internationally-renowned experts in mid-May who agreed to assist our cause.

CURRENT PLANS

Our plan is to launch several applications against the various universities more-or-less simultaneously. We expect that matters in some regions will be heard earlier than others, and are taking that into account strategically. It is our hope that one critical victory will cast serious doubt on mandates nationwide, though in all likelihood it would take multiple matters to put a stop to all mandates once and for all. Our cases’ extensive discussions of labour and workplace regulations should also be of benefit to employees whose employers are attempting to subject them to mandates.

It is critical that the merits of our arguments get heard in court, but our position as the only remaining group contesting all elements of the mandates also means that we have no margin for error whatsoever.

We thank you for your patience and ask that you hold on tight as developments unfold.

Best Regards,

The Directors

Universities Alliance