White student ‘wasn’t helped’

University of the Witwatersrand vicechancellor Adam Habib denied yesterday that a white medical student had received special treatment in recent exams.

Habib said the student had achieved the second-highest mark in a six-week integrated primary care course but had been given the wrong mark because of an administrative error.

According to a university website, 90 out of the 95 final-year medical students who failed one or more of their seven compulsory modules this year were black African.

The remaining five were two white and three Indian students.

Only 79 of the 234 medical students who will graduate from Wits are black African.

These figures could not be confirmed by Habib, but were obtained from the health sciences faculty and then posted on Sakai, an official Wits website.