Court warning to vindictive mothers

There are so many deadbeat and absent fathers in South Africa that the perceived wisdom is that men run away from their responsibilities when it comes to children… and particularly in the wake of a divorce.

But as been graphically shown this month, it is not always fathers who are the bad guys when it comes to custody fights.

The High Court in Pretoria ordered a mother jailed for 12 months for not only depriving her ex-partner of access to his child, but doing so for three years and in contempt of two court orders setting out visitation rights.

There can be no reason for defying legitimate court orders, other than a vicious vindictiveness and it would have had to be an egregious offence for Judge Portia Phahlane to have handed down such a stern sentence.

It is sad, but commonplace, that when couples split up, they try to use the children as bargaining chips or psychological weapons. But depriving a child of its right to grow up interacting with his or her father could also prejudice the normal development of that child.

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And the danger for any mother acting in such a way would be that, once the child becomes an adult and seeks out that “missing” parent, she, as the mother, could forever lose what she tried to keep to herself.

Gary da Silva of The Official Fathers 4 Justice South Africa says it can take five years or more and cost upwards of R1.5 million for a father to gain access to a child where a mother was interfering with such access.

His group wants to make submissions to the South African Law Reform Commission to make mediation mandatory in custody cases and any findings binding.

We think that is a sensible step that could save the innocent child from being battered as an emotional football.