Cape Town - The DA has raised the ire of the Western Cape justice department after trying to lay claim to the successes of the department’s maintenance defaulters programme.
In a statement dubbed “Justice Department follows the DA’s lead on maintenance defaulters”, DA MP Denise Robinson welcomed the adoption by the justice department of the DA’s strategy to find and arrest maintenance defaulters.
Quoting statistics dating back to 2010 from the department’s Isondlo campaign, Robinson said the project was such a success that the department had decided to implement it at national level.
“We welcome it now finally becoming national policy,” Robinson said.
She added that the DA had fought long and hard for harsher punishment of maintenance defaulters by working closely with government agencies, departments and the credit bureaus to initiate ways of increasing the pressure on parents to fulfil their financial responsibilities to their children.
A surprised Hishaam Mohamed, Western Cape Justice head, said:
“In 2010 it was Justice which invited the Western Cape government to join in our national responsibility of the Maintenance Act. Cheap politicking on the back of innocent and vulnerable minor children by the DA is not only sad but disappointing.”
Rejecting the DA’s claims, the provincial ANC said the national Department of Justice and Constitutional Development’s programme Operation Isondlo was launched in December 2005 by then minister Bridgette Mbandla in Limpopo, and has been applied nationwide since December 2006.
Western Cape ANC leader Marius Fransman accused the DA of plagiarism, adding:
“It even today went as far as to claim it is a DA strategy by DA women ‘network’ (Dawn) leader Denise Robinson.”
He said Zille had also cited the collection of maintenance money as a DA project.
“The ANC rejects with contempt these baseless claims,” Fransman added.
The maintenance defaulter programme also topped discussion in the provincial legislature, with Zille saying every time the DA launched a campaign the national department closed it down and then tried to run it themselves.
The ANC was now doing this with the publication of the names of maintenance defaulters, she said, adding:
“It’s good that they are doing it, I don’t care who does it as long as it is done.”
Zille said they proposed at the national cabinet lekgotla that maintenance defaulters be blacklisted.
Cape Argus