CHOMBA MUSIKA, Lusaka

A TEENAGE girl of Livingstone whose 2020 Grade Nine examination results were withheld by the Examinations Council of Zambia (ECZ) can now proceed with her secondary education after a judge ordered the exams body to release the results.
For about two years, Wongani Mkandawire had been home and could not proceed to Grade 10 because ECZ withheld her results after writing the examination under protest. The former Ndola Girls Technical Secondary School pupil, aged 16, wrote the examination under protest after it was discovered during verification of her particulars that her name bore a wrong gender.
During registration for the exams, the pupil, who was registered as Dorothy Wongani Mkandawire, discovered that her particulars indicated that she was male named Wongani Mkandawire. When she alerted the head teacher about the anomaly, authorities wrote a letter to the David Livingstone Presbytery Pre and Primary School, Southern Province, where the pupil had previously sat her Grade Seven examinations. But when the final Grade Nine examination register was released, Wongani’s name was omitted. However, the child was allowed to write the examination under protest using an examination number which belonged to a male candidate with similar names. And when the results were released, the child’s transcript was omitted.
It was at this point that Wongani’s father, Christopher Mkandawire, embarked on a quest to have his daughter’s results processed and released. Mr Mkandawire engaged authorities at various levels in CLICK TO READ MORE