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We feel pity for Harare businessman, Genius Kadungure, a victim of an 11-year scam orchestrated by a woman who made him pay maintenance for a child he didn’t father.
It is most regrettable that Dorreen Mutukwa had the sympathy of a justice delivery system which arguably looks at men with inherent suspicion.
Kadungure is one of the more than 70 percent of men who are paying maintenance for children that are not theirs. As we reported yesterday DNA tests carried out on men who challenged paternity at the Harare Magistrates’ Civil Court last year revealed that 70 percent of them were raising other men’s children. The tests proved that nearly three-quarters of men who challenged paternity of the children they were maintaining won their cases.
The statistics showed that 11 men proved that women had conned them and forced them to pay maintenance for children they had not fathered. Only five tests confirmed the men as the real fathers of the children.
“My friend it is not easy to support a child belonging to another man for 11 years,” said Kadungure, one of the lucky few. “At first I decided to support the child after a lot of pressure from the woman. Being a public figure, I had to avoid trouble by paying the demanded money but my sixth sense would tell me that I was not responsible.”
We have something of a pattern showing dishonesty among the sampled cases with 67 percent of men who challenged paternity through DNA tests at the Harare Magistrates’ Civil Court in 2011 winning their cases. Six out of nine men were discharged from paying monthly maintenance with three confirmed to be the fathers of the children. No figures were issued for 2012, but we don’t think the pattern was broken.
What we have are the figures for Harare where at least 50 maintenance cases are heard daily. As for Bulawayo we reported recently that the courts hear around 30 cases daily.
These are the confirmed cases; there definitely must be more men out there who are victims of a few (read a few) dishonourable and dishonest women.
The figures are quite high and are of concern as they indicate not only the challenges that the family unit is facing but also that of children who might never know their fathers.
What concerns us more is the apparent treachery that more than 70 percent of women who had cases at the Harare court showed. We think this is not coincidental, but a deliberate way by some women to go after men of means, not exactly those they know to have fathered their children, yet lack the means to pay maintenance.
At this time when HIV is taking its toll, we can deduce from the Harare figures that many people are part of sexual networks, in which unprotected sex is the norm. This militates against official efforts to fight against multiple, concurrent sexual relationships and to promote faithfulness.
On another score, that 70 percent of men were made to fend for wrong children challenges our justice delivery system that consistently puts the burden of proof on men. It says a man must prove that they did not father a child. If he can’t, then the court declares him the father, therefore must maintain the child. Even if the man decides to subject himself and the child for a DNA paternity test, he must, in the interim, be paying maintenance.
That is how the courts do it. We feel it is a negative attitude that takes men as natural suspects, which the Harare tests have shown is not always correct. The woman and the man should share the burden equally. Society is fighting stereotypes against women; the same society, of which the courts are an integral part, must fight stereotypes against men. The results in point must tell the court to always view maintenance claims even-handedly.
Using the Harare statistics, we cannot be accused of exaggerating if we say that more than 70 percent of men out there are fending for other men’s off-spring. It must urge them to prove, whatever it takes, whether they indeed fathered the kids they are parenting. Ninety six applied to undergo the test in Harare but 50 abandoned them, possibly reckoning that it made sense for them to pay maintenance, which is rarely less than $100 monthly, not the $450 or so needed to pay for the examination and possibly absolve themselves. The $450 is nothing seen against the silent humiliation Kadungure went through looking after someone else’s child.
As alluded to earlier, having borne the burden of proof to undergo the DNA test, a man is required to apply for discharge and if he chooses turn to the same courts to have the lying woman compensate him. This can be time-consuming and unnecessarily burdening the man so would suggest that the law provides that a negative result must, automatically be followed by a discharge and compensation. In Kadungure’s case, as in others like it, Mutukwa has to immediately bear the burden of pay back.
Online Reporter