ZIMBABWEAN schoolteacher Zwelani Ncube yesterday gained another victory in the Eastern Cape High Court in Grahamstown, when the court refused the Department of Home Affairs leave to appeal against a judgment granting Ncube a work permit to teach in SA.

Ncube had been involved in a protracted legal battle for most of last year in order to teach English at Molteno High School in the Eastern Cape.

While fighting with the department, Ncube was unable to teach - resulting in him being without an income and the pupils, including matriculants, being without an English teacher for most of the year.

In December, Judge Lusindiso Pakade ordered that Ncube be granted a work permit because former home affairs minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula had unreasonably delayed making a decision. Yesterday, Pakade refused the minister and the department leave to appeal, saying there were no prospects of success.

But while Pakade`s judgment was a victory for Ncube, it was not for the Legal Resources Centre (LRC), which has represented him.

The LRC was also refused leave to appeal against Pakade`s previous judgment in relation to an order that the public interest firm pay costs `de bonis propriis`.The punitive costs order, normally used to express a court`s irritation at the way a case has been litigated, is rare.

This would be even more so following the Constitutional Court`s recent judgment in the Biowatch case, which confirmed the principle that those seeking to enforce their constitutional rights against the state should in general not have to bear the costs, Pakade said the LRC had abused court process because it had launched a second review application of the home affairs director-general Mavuso Msimang`s decision to refuse Ncube a work permit before the court`s judgment had been given.

When the LRC had first gone to court, the director-general`s delegate in the Eastern Cape had refused Ncube a permit. This decision was then appealed to the minister, but decided by Msimang.

LRC attorney Sarah Sephton said yesterday that costs in the Ncube matter came to about R100 000 so far. She said the LRC would now petition a full bench of the court for leave to appeal.

Home affairs could not be reached for comment.

Franny Rabkin