Sakhile Mokoena

Sakhile Mokoena

The child maintenance case against a Mpumalanga executive mayor was postponed in the Bushbuckridge maintenance court yesterday to next month.

Mayor Milton Morema of Bushbuckridge Local Municipality was not in court and the magistrate postponed the case to August 17.

The case was also moved to the magistrates' court.

Morema's former wife, Rachel Mashego, is accusing him of failing to support his four children since the couple's divorce in February this year.

Mashego said last month that Morema had offered to pay R800 for each of the four children, aged between 11 and 19 years but she turned down the offer because it was too little.

"It was too little. The children have to eat, travel to school, and R800 would not cover that," she said,

Mashego was also concerned that her children had no house of their own. "They stay with my elderly mother and there is not enough room to accommodate them ."

The children also depended on their grandmother's government grant for food.

Mashego said she dropped out of school in Standard 7 after Morema impregnated her.

"I was sixteen years when I fell pregnant with his first child and I've never returned to school since then," she said.

Morema could not be reached for comment yesterday.