No joy for moms as justice system falls short in distributing payments for child maintenance

East London maintenance beneficiaries who receive monthly deposits from fathers of children via the magistrate’s court payment system are no closer to knowing when outstanding money will be paid over by the department of justice.

Two East London mothers still have not received payments made into the justice system by the father of a child since March, with April and May deposits disappearing into an account which officials now say has been closed.

One mother, Anathi* started communicating with justice officials shortly after the April 15 maintenance payment by the employer of her child’s father was electronically transferred into the court account.

Initially she was told by finance clerks at the court that there was no money left in the court account.  Later court manager Zibele Sisusa told her about “a whole lot of system failures”.

Regional justice official Sonwabile Ndzonda via email on May 11 told her the EL magistrate’s court bank account “is now closed”, a development which had never been communicated to Anathi, the father of her child or his employer, with the May maintenance money about to be deposited into the same closed account.

The official said money paid into this account would be processed in that week and paid to beneficiaries, but officials had “processes they need to finalise first on each maintenance file before they can effect payments”.

Anathi notes that “all beneficiaries will tell you a different story as we have been told different stories by DOJ finance officials.

“The telephone lines are always either not working or nobody answers the phone.

“I know what channels to go through to get help and answers. What about the hundreds of people queuing outside the court every day for the same problem?”

She said Sisusa then told her to fill out a form and attach three months of bank statements. However, when she returned to the court with the documents, Sisusa refused to receive the form and it was eventually taken in by a security guard of a private company.

“To assign a security guard from another company to take forms with sensitive information like an ID copy and bank statement is something I cannot comprehend. My experience with the EL magistrate's court is that information one submits either goes missing or is never put in the file. What if the security loses some of the forms? Who will take responsibility?

“How does an organisation's system not work for two weeks? Are there no standby IT people employed to attend to such?”

The Dispatch waited a week before receiving a response from justice minister Ronald Lamola’s spokesperson Chrispin Phiri, and the statement which was issued raised more questions than it answered.

Phiri said the MojaPay system’s database crashed across all provinces on May 4 and “electronic payment and administration functionality” have been restored. From May 12 to 20, 31,281 “properly referenced” maintenance beneficiaries were paid. In a later response, he said payments to 12,300 beneficiaries were “cleared and finalised on 15 May”. A total of 31 181 beneficiaries were paid from MojaPay between May 12 and 20.

MojaPay is the system the justice department started using in 2016 for “third party” payments such as court-ordered maintenance payments by divorced or unmarried fathers of children.

But beneficiaries in East London say payments stopped in March already.

Phiri said East London beneficiaries who remain unpaid since March “have not been migrated” to the MojaPay system, “a procedural matter involving the municipalities”, but did not explain why this was the case. He said that at the end of March 2020, some R1.8m in deposits with “incorrect reference numbers” remained uncleared in the system, which would be repaid to the depositor if the beneficiary could not be linked.

The Dispatch has also seen fresh communication between justice officials confirming “a major incident” on May 4 which led to an “outage of MojaPay”. The email exchanges provide a lot of detail on the technical effect of the outage, technical steps being taken and änomalies” that will continue and lead to “data contamination”.

* A fictional name used to protect her child’s identity.