No learning for orphans

By the time he was 13, his parents had been stabbed to death by soldiers, his grandmother murdered and his aunt gang-raped.

Now the teen, who fled the Democratic Republic of Congo for South Africa with his aunt in 2011, is fighting to go to school.

The teenager, 16, is one of eight children who have taken the home affairs, basic education and social development ministers, together with other officials, to court in a bid to get an education.

The children - the youngest aged six - are minors and cannot be named. They are all orphans or abandoned children who fled violent conditions in Congo, where armed groups have been terrorising local populations for years.

Yesterday the Pretoria High Court postponed the case indefinitely to give the ministers more time to file their papers.

The children, who are being assisted by Lawyers for Human Rights and the University of Pretoria's Centre for Child Law, claim they are victims of a legal loophole, leaving them "invisible".

They are not in the care of their biological parents, which means they are not issued temporary asylum permits along with their caregivers - often an aunt or uncle.

The lawyers claim the children's relatives cannot get guardianship over them if they have no proof of the death of their parents. With the threat of a fine for admitting undocumented children, several schools refused to enrol them.

After some of them missed more than a year of school, in May last year the court ordered that public schools must allow them to enrol.

The children fear they could be thrown out of school at any stage and at least one has been told she cannot write her matric exams.

Yesterday the ministers argued that automatically recognising them as dependants bypasses a required investigation and puts them at risk of being trafficked or not cared for properly.

Lawyers for the children claim that such an investigation can, and should, happen - after they are issued with a temporary permit so they can go to school and access medical and other services.

By last year, more than 2.75million people had fled Congo , where they face rapes, abductions, torture and death, according to Oxfam.