THE Gauteng education department has suspended Meadowlands Secondary School principal and Sadtu leader Moss Senye for two months and slapped him with a R50,000 fine for assaulting a pupil last year.

An internal disciplinary hearing by the department found Senye and his co-accused, teacher Fancy Phehle, guilty of assaulting a 17-year-old pupil in February last year.

The boy was allegedly slapped and kicked for being disruptive in class.

The pair have been on suspension with full pay since March last year, making them the teachers who have been on suspension the longest.

They are due back in class in August after serving their new two-months suspension without pay.

The disciplinary hearing against Senye and Phehle has dragged on for months. The department even threatened to give Senye a medical boarding after he claimed he was too sick to attend hearings.

Senye is chairman of Sadtu in Soweto.

Gauteng education spokesman Charles Phahlane confirmed the case against the pair had been concluded.

The criminal case, which has been postponed on several occasions, will be back in court later this month.

Senye yesterday said the hearing was unfair and that MEC Barbara Creecy was out to get him.

"Me and Barbara have our problems. We have personal grudges and she is using the law to fight me. This is a terrible thing. She is anti-black and undermines us," he said.

Senye and Creecy have always had a shaky relationship. Last March, Senye labelled Creecy a Satanist during a mass meeting in Soweto: "Whether Barbara likes it or not, we will have our meetings. Despite Barbara, we will vote for the ANC during the elections and they will remove her. Let us not embrace Satanic people. Down with Satanism. You cannot be friends with white people, they will Satanise you".

But now, his greatest worry is how he will survive two months without an income.

"I am thinking of raising funds so I can survive," he said.