EFF welcomes stricter measures to enforce child maintenance payments
12 November 2024
The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) welcomes the recent Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, in collaboration with the Social Justice Foundation and the Consumer Profile Bureau, which empowers credit bureaus to blacklist parents who neglect their child maintenance responsibilities. This is a long-awaited development, addressing a persistent problem where some parents evade their legal duty to support their children, often leaving mothers to shoulder the financial burden alone.
Under this new framework, a parent's failure to make court-ordered maintenance payments will impact their credit profile, becoming part of their financial record for any credit application. This essential measure, aligned with the Maintenance Amendment Act of 2018, strengthens the government's power to enforce child support payments and hold defaulters accountable, ensuring that their disregard has real consequences.
Such an initiative supports the progressive goals of the Maintenance Act, which requires parents to provide for their children's needs proportionate to their means.
According to recent data, 44.1% of South African households are headed by single mothers who bear the financial responsibility alone due to a lack of consistent child support. This failure by some parents denies their children basic rights to food, housing, education, healthcare, and clothing—necessities that all children deserve.
Those who do not comply with maintenance orders face both criminal and civil penalties, including fines, imprisonment, and blacklisting by credit bureaus.
This progress aligns with the EFF's consistent call, as outlined in our manifestos, to establish an efficient, accessible, and responsive child maintenance system within our courts. We have repeatedly emphasised the need for a seamless child maintenance framework that ensures no single parent struggles to secure both financial and emotional support from the other parent of their children. Those who fail to uphold their responsibilities must face legal consequences, including prosecution, to protect the rights and well-being of our children.
While the EFF commends this initiative as a crucial step toward justice for our children, we remain cautious, as South Africa has seen many promising laws for children and women falter due to poor implementation.
The EFF has recently requested the Minister of Justice to provide statistics on the number of maintenance applications filed over the past five years, detailing how many of those applications resulted in successful court orders and how many respondents have actually fulfilled their obligations. This critical data should be guiding the necessary reforms within our maintenance courts. However, despite the importance of this information in shaping responsive and effective policies, the EFF has yet to receive a response.
The EFF, therefore, demands that this latest policy move not become another empty gesture. Instead, we call for the urgent overhaul of maintenance courts, prioritising the dignity and rights of our children and single parents over endless red tape and institutional indifference. We will therefore monitor the implementation of this new framework to ensure it is accompanied by the necessary changes to the existing system in order for children to have the support they need from both of their parents as mandated by law.
Issued by Leigh-Ann Mathys, National Spokesperson, EFF, 12 November 2024
