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Wesley Neumann’s planned return to the school on Monday, February 2, has been delayed as the Western Cape Education Department has filed a notice of intention to apply for leave to appeal.
By MARECIA DAMONS
Former Heathfield High principal Wesley Neumann, dismissed in 2020 for refusing to reopen the school during the Covid pandemic, will not return to school for now.
The Western Cape Education Department (WCED) has filed a notice of intention to appeal against a Labour Court ruling that reinstated him.
Judge Molatelo Robert Makhura postponed the matter to Thursday, February 13.
After a five-year legal battle, former Heathfield High principal Wesley Neumann will still not return to school for now.
Neumann was dismissed in 2020 for refusing to reopen the school in line with the Western Cape Education Department’s directive during the Covid pandemic.
In June 2020, Neumann and other school principals wrote an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa and the Cabinet, requesting that schools remain closed.
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Despite this, the WCED instructed teachers and Grade 12 learners at Heathfield High to return on June 1, 2020. When Neumann refused, the department scheduled a disciplinary hearing for October 2020. He was later dismissed.
Neumann took the matter to the Education Labour Relations Council, which upheld his dismissal in a June 2023 arbitration award. Neumann challenged this in the Labour Court.
In January 2026, acting judge Coen de Kock overturned the arbitration award, ruling that dismissal was not an appropriate sanction. The Labour Court ordered Neumann’s reinstatement with back pay and cleared him of most misconduct charges. He was to be reinstated on February 2.
On January 23, the WCED filed a notice of intention to appeal, arguing the Labour Court had erred in its assessment of fairness and the handling of evidence in arbitration. In a statement, education MEC David Maynier said the leave to appeal application would suspend the order for Neumann to be reinstated.
Neumann’s legal team then launched a separate urgent application to enforce the reinstatement while the appeal is pending.
At Friday’s hearing, Neumann’s attorney, Vernon Seymour, said enforcement papers were served on the department via email on January 26, with hard copies delivered the following day.
Advocate Colin Kahanovitz SC, for the WCED, argued that the application should be struck from the roll for ‘procedural non-compliance’. He said the department’s legal team had not been granted access to the court files through Court Online, questioned the urgency of the matter, and warned of a ‘growing abuse of the urgent court’.
Seymour responded that the department had been in possession of the papers, physically and digitally, and was not prejudiced. He argued that any procedural non-compliance should be overlooked in the interests of justice.
Judge Molatelo Robert Makhura noted the respondents’ concerns that they had not been invited to access the court file and that the application was filed under a different case number.
Makhura ruled it was ‘in the interest of justice’ to overlook the non-compliance with the practice directives for urgent applications.
He ordered Neumann’s legal team to grant the respondents access through Court Online.
The matter was postponed to February 13 for the WCED to file answering papers and heads of argument. Costs were reserved.
Until the matter returns to court, Neumann will not return to Heathfield High.
This story was first published by GroundUp.
Action Committee’s response
The Special Action Committee – Education (SAC-E) notes today’s decisive ruling by the Labour Court, handed down by Justice Molatelo Robert Makhura, as yet another damning indictment of the Western Cape Education Department’s conduct in the matter of Principal Wesley Neumann.
In a packed courtroom so full that additional chairs had to be brought in, Justice Makhura dismissed the WCED’s application to strike out Mr Neumann’s enforcement application, which the department had brought on the spurious basis of alleged non-compliance with Practice Directive 1. The court found no merit in the WCED’s argument and rejected it outright.
Once again, the WCED deliberately avoided the legal merits of the case, choosing instead to hide behind technical objections in a desperate attempt to delay justice.
Justice Makhura emphatically dismissed the WCED’s application, finding that the department could show no prejudice whatsoever, particularly given that it had received the documents by hand and well within the court’s prescribed timeframes.
This was nothing more than a deliberate abuse of court processes, aimed at delaying enforcement of a lawful court order and inflicting further harm on the Heathfield High School community.
It confirms a pattern of conduct in which the WCED uses procedural gamesmanship, rather than lawful compliance, as a strategy of attrition.
SAC-E condemns this conduct as wasteful and fruitless expenditure of the highest order.
While the education budget is under severe strain, while classrooms remain overcrowded, while thousands of children remain unplaced, while schools lack basic resources, the WCED continues to squander millions of rands of public money to relitigate matters already decided by the courts.
This is not governance. It is an anti-education agenda driven by arrogance and political stubbornness.
Today’s ruling further exposes the DA-led WCED’s priorities: not learners, not teachers, not communities, but institutional ego and political point-scoring.
Every rand spent on this disingenuous litigation is a rand stolen from a child’s education and from a teacher’s support.
The WCED’s repeated courtroom defeats should serve as a clear warning: courts are not a playground for bureaucratic delay tactics, nor will they tolerate contempt.
The department’s continued defiance of court rulings places it on the wrong side of the law, the Constitution, and the public interest.
This matter will now finally come to a head on Friday, February 13, 2026, at the Labour Court. SAC-E reiterates that Mr Wesley Neumann’s struggle is not his alone; it represents the fight of thousands of educators who suffer silently under a system that punishes integrity and rewards submission (Ja-baas).
SAC-E calls on the WCED to abandon its reckless litigation strategy, comply with court rulings, and redirect public resources to where they belong: in classrooms, not courtrooms; on learners, not legal matters; and on education, not ego.
Enough is enough. The WCED is surely delaying the inevitable.
ISSUED BY SAC-EDUCATION
Terrence Smith, Chairperson
Friday, January 30, 2026
