A desi girl from South Africa was rejected by a med school, but her desi friend with lower grades was accepted. Keeping up with the Junejas, the family filed a lawsuit. In court, the med school admitted it had mistaken the friend to be black:

A doctor of Indian origin in South Africa has filed an appeal in Cape Town High Court after his daughter was refused admission to a medical school… He pointed out that [the University of Cape Town med school] had accepted Sunira’s friend, also of Indian origin, although her result was not as good. The friend was accepted because the university believed she was African… [Telegraph]

Due to South Africa’s discriminatory history, the UCT med school has explicit racial quotas for admissions. It even mandates that 2/3rds of its students be female, which must be a major bonus for male applicants:

… UCT’s “target equity mixes” for first-time-entering medicine undergraduates were set at 42 percent black, 28 percent white, 16 percent coloured and 14 percent Indian. Gender targets required 65 percent of these students to be female and 35 percent male. [Pretoria News]

The parents objected to assuming a disadvantaged background even of wealthy blacks:

They pointed to documents that showed that all African and coloured students who applied to study medicine at UCT were considered to be “educationally disadvantaged” even if they attended private schools. [Cape Argus]

Desis’ share of the South African population is around 2.5%, so, as in the U.S., they’re highly overrepresented in med schools there:

  • African/Black—79.0 percent
  • White—9.6 percent
  • Coloured—8.9 percent
  • Indian/Asian—2.5 percent [Wikipedia]

    • In the end, the parents lost the lawsuit, and it’s clear there are lots of desis in their daughter’s boat:

    “The reason for admitting black school leavers with inferior academic performance scores and weaker health sciences placement test results is that it is necessary to do so to achieve population group targets.” … there were a “large number” of unsuccessful Indian medicine applicants whose applications were stronger than Sunira’s. [Cape Argus]