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Parent Alert!! All forms of corporal punishment are banned

Parent Alert!! All forms of corporal punishment are banned

Author: By Fawzia Khan
Date: 2025-03-27

As a parent you are not allowed to use any form of corporal punishment as a disciplinary tool on your children. Even "reasonable and moderate chastisement" is considered unconstitutional and therefore illegal.

A parent who defies this law, can be criminally charged with assault. The rationale for this lies in our Constitution which talks of the best interests of the child being paramount. Corporal punishment is seen as a violation of a child's right to dignity and the right to be free from all forms of violence.

The issue of a parent meting out physical chastisement to his minor child took centre stage in a High Court application in Gauteng recently. The mother of a 5-year-old child brought an urgent application against the father, saying that the father's conduct on 30 January 2025, when he allegedly struck the 5-year child "forcefully on the buttocks" as a form of chastisement, constituted abuse.

The couple are presently going through a divorce and in terms of an interim court order, the father was awarded primary residency of their two minor children, a 5-year-old boy and a 10-year-old girl. The mother also instituted criminal charges of assault against the father.

She said that as the child feared returning back to the father's care, she wanted an independent psychologist to conduct a forensic assessment of the child and recommend whether the child should remain in the father's care or not.

The father's defence was that the mother's claim of assault and abuse was an "absurdity and a fabrication" and that it was simply a means for his ex to wrest primary residency of the children away from him.

However this defence was seen by the court simply a bare denial of the incident. He failed to provide more details about what actually transpired. Because of this, the court said it was left with the version of the mother.

The child's nanny who was present on the day said that the two children were arguing, and the father went to the room picked up the boy and took him to his room and she (the nanny) went into her room.

Thus she was unable to say what happened thereafter. The court said because of the lack of proper clarity of what actually happened, the overarching legal basis under which it was required to consider the case was set out in the Constitution, i.e. rule regarding the best interests being paramount in every matter concerning the child.

This meant that the court was bound to do what was in the child's best interests and ruled that pending a recommendation by a forensic psychologist, the mother be granted primary residency of both children, and the father be given reasonable rights of supervised contact.

Know your rights! The Law Desk of Fawzia Khan & Associates. Giving YOU the Power of Attorney. Call 031-5025670 or email fawzia@thelawdesk.co.za for legal assistance at competitive rates.