Following on from our op-ed in Daily Maverick highlighting the exclusion of informal workers from maternity protections, Julie Mentor, project lead for Embrace: Movement for Mothers, spoke on Newzroom Afrika. She underscored how millions of independent contractors and informal workers remain ineligible for maternity and parental benefits under South Africa’s labour laws. For women running small enterprises or selling food in townships, pregnancy can mean losing their only source of income, with no safety net to survive during leave. The South African Law Reform Commission has previously recommended introducing legal reforms and a Maternal Support Grant — a measure that would particularly benefit the more than 40% of South Africa’s 1.9 million self-employed people who are women. Watch the interview below.
The MSG Advocacy Coalition is a growing collective of NGOs and researchers with members including Embrace, Children’s Institute, the Equality Collective, DG Murray Trust (DGMT), Grow Great, Ilifa Labantwana, SAMRC/Centre for Health Economics & Decision Science – PRICELESS SA, HEALA, Amandla.mobi and the Health Systems Research Unit at SAMRC.
