MANDATORY DNA TESTING DEBATE: MEN, WOMEN DIVIDED

MBABANE – While men are welcoming the idea of mandatory DNA testing before anyone pays child maintenance, organisations advocating for women’s rights say this is not the solution.

This follows a call by some of the country’s lawmakers for obligatory deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing, which they argued is essential to prevent cases where individuals are unjustly compelled to support children who are not biologically theirs. Such, they said, could also help reduce gender-based violence (GBV) cases linked to disputes over children’s paternity.
Among those who welcomed the move was a judicial officer, who stated that the paternity of his two children was questionable.

Supported

The officer, who has children with different women, stated that he discovered that the child was also being supported by another man, but opted to keep it a secret as he had a wife.  
However, Swatini Action Group Against Abuse (SWAGAA) Communications Officer Sakhile Dlamini said DNA was a reactionary measure, when challenges were encountered.
Dlamini said it is important to deal with the root cause, which include prevention of pregnancy, which eventually lead to disputes.  
According to Dlamini, there is no logic that people could fail to pay E800 for maintenance but afford E5 000 for DNA.
Dlamini said if the issue of maintenance was to be addressed and verification of a child’s biological parents done, there were other ways of doing it.
In regard to ending GBV, Dlamini said DNA is not a preventative measure. She said if the legislators were keen to address GBV, it should be addressed at the root as opposed to the end.
She said there are issues of prevention, which should be promoted before people could find themselves in problems whereby they found they had to pay for expensive DNA tests.
These, she said, could involve safe sex and family planning.  “We are coming from tackling condom misconception, whereby people were engaging in unprotected sex and they would state that condoms compromised sex,” Dlamini said.
The spokesperson said there was another intervention of preventing unwanted pregnancies, which is contraceptives but again, men complained about how women become during sexual intercourse. She said all the mistaken beliefs come from men most of the time. According to Dlamini, what causes the maintenance problems is that the children are not planned for, and paternity issues arise.
She stated that DNA testing could result in challenges whereby people would not be able to pay for it and cases dragged as a result. “Men have been using paternity as means not to pay maintenance for their children.”
On the other hand, One Billion Rising Director Colani Hlatjwako said they welcomed initiatives to assist in child maintenance and GBV associated with the paternity of a child.
DNA testing could be one way of partly solving the issue of child maintenance. She said if the DNA testing would be mandatory, government should bear the costs. Currently, she said the person who has questions regarding paternity pays for the costs. She said the legislators needed to discuss the role to be played by government on the issue of paternity testing, in order for the process not to be halted due to the non-availability of funds.  
Hlatjwako said they had seen cases of some men not maintaining their children, knowing that they were the biological fathers.
She said it is true that maintenance also triggered violence, adding that when someone had raised a child, only to discover that she or he was not theirs, they ended up killing the spouse, the children and themselves. Hlatjwako said they discouraged such things.  Meanwhile, social media was abuzz on the issue. Some members of the public on Facebook recommended that it should be done during the birth of a child, free from costs.
Against
However, others were against the idea, as they felt it would divide families. They added that the DNA testing might assist parents but there would be a lot of children who would be negatively affected by same.
This, they stated, is because the results do not show who the father of the child is, when they come out negative.  They were of the view that to wait until maintenance claims were made would not totally curb the problem. According to some of the Facebook users, men had in many instances supported children who did not belong to them.
They sated that mandatory DNA testing before requiring child support payment is sensible, considering that some women have five men supporting one child.

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