- Oct 26
- 2 min read
By Felicity Guest, Financial Abuse Specialist and Founder of Child Maintenance Difficulties South Africa (CMDSA)
When I attended the launch of the Equality Now report Unequal Equalities: The State of Family Law in Africa last year, one statement stayed with me:
“At the current pace, it could take 260 years, six generations, to achieve equality in Africa’s family courts.”
Two hundred and sixty years. Six generations of women, mothers, and children still waiting for justice systems that see and hear them.
The promise of equality, and its quiet betrayal.
South Africa’s Constitution enshrines equality. Our Children’s Act was designed to reflect that, ensuring every child’s best interests are paramount, and that both parents share responsibility.
But in practice, the scales still tip heavily against women.
Every day, we see:
Protective mothers disbelieved or labelled as “vindictive.”
Abuse allegations dismissed as “relationship conflict.”
Mothers forced into psychological evaluations based on accusations, while fathers accused of violence face none.
Children removed from primary caregivers and placed with fathers who display coercive or abusive behaviour and a frightening trend of child placed into foster care.
These are not anomalies. They are symptoms of a systemic bias that betrays the promise of equality our Constitution upholds.
A continental crisis of inequality
The Equality Now report confirmed that no African country has achieved full equality in family law.
Discriminatory laws, outdated traditions, and gendered bias remain deeply entrenched.
Even when legislation improves, courtroom culture often doesn’t.
Legal pluralism, where statutory, customary, and religious laws coexist, leaves women navigating multiple, often contradictory, systems.
And across Africa, judges still view mothers as emotional and fathers as rational, a mindset that sustains discrimination under the guise of neutrality.
South Africa’s paradox: progressive laws, regressive outcomes
South Africa is hailed for having one of the world’s most progressive Constitutions. Yet in our family courts, women’s experiences tell another story.
Amendments to the Children’s Act, heavily influenced by fathers’-rights lobbying, were presented as promoting equality. But they often prioritise shared parenting even in cases of documented abuse or coercive control.
What we now see is equality without accountability and equality without safety is not justice.
The cost of delayed justice
If it will truly take 260 years to achieve equality in family courts, then generations of women and children will continue to be failed.
Equality on paper means nothing when:
Protective mothers are punished.
Abuse is reframed as “conflict.”
The system values paternal access over child safety.
Equality without safety is not justice.
Real equality begins with safety.
When mothers can be believed.
When coercive control is recognised as abuse, not parenting conflict.
When children’s voices carry weight.
Until then, equality remains an illusion and every year that passes, another generation pays the price.
Because justice delayed, especially for women and children, is justice denied.