Who Gets to Stay Home? | Ebrahiem Abrahams on parental leave, caregiving, and the law that changed everything
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For most of South Africa's labour history, the answer was simple: the mother. She got four months. The father got three days. And the law called that equal.
On this episode of SiyakhulaLive on Lunch, host Dr Katlego Letlonkane sits down with Ebrahiem Abrahams, Director of Employment Relations at Stellenbosch University, to unpack the Constitutional Court's landmark Van Wyk judgment of October 2025 – a ruling that declared the old parental leave regime unconstitutional and, with immediate effect, rewrote the rules.
Ebrahiem traces the full arc: from the fragmented, gender-based leave system that preceded 2018, through the incremental shifts that followed, to the earthquake of a court that refused to suspend its own order and gave parents new rights on the spot.
He explains how a shared pool of four months and ten days now belongs to both parents – to divide as they choose – and why Stellenbosch University moved quickly to turn that legal minimum into something more generous: paid leave, for all parents, across birth, adoption, and surrogacy, extended now to employees on fixed-term contracts.
But Ebrahiem is equally honest about what remains hard. Verifying another employer's leave arrangements. Planning for two staff members who may be absent at the same time. Building policy for scenarios the legislation hasn't caught up with yet.
At its heart, this is a conversation about who society has decided caregiving belongs to – and whether that is finally beginning to change.
In this episode:
- The history of parental leave in South Africa and how we got here
What the Van Wyk judgment declared unconstitutional – and what it replaced it with
- How leave-sharing arrangements work when parents are employed by different organisations
- Stellenbosch University's new parental leave policy and what sets it apart
The operational and cultural challenges employers now face
- Why destigmatising men as caregivers matters as much as the legal text
SiyakhulaLive is a social justice and diversity conversation series on MFM 92.6's Lunch Club, powered by Stellenbosch University's Centre for the Advancement of Social Impact and Transformation and the HR Division.
On this episode of SiyakhulaLive on Lunch, host Dr Katlego Letlonkane sits down with Ebrahiem Abrahams, Director of Employment Relations at Stellenbosch University, to unpack the Constitutional Court's landmark Van Wyk judgment of October 2025 – a ruling that declared the old parental leave regime unconstitutional and, with immediate effect, rewrote the rules.
Ebrahiem traces the full arc: from the fragmented, gender-based leave system that preceded 2018, through the incremental shifts that followed, to the earthquake of a court that refused to suspend its own order and gave parents new rights on the spot.
He explains how a shared pool of four months and ten days now belongs to both parents – to divide as they choose – and why Stellenbosch University moved quickly to turn that legal minimum into something more generous: paid leave, for all parents, across birth, adoption, and surrogacy, extended now to employees on fixed-term contracts.
But Ebrahiem is equally honest about what remains hard. Verifying another employer's leave arrangements. Planning for two staff members who may be absent at the same time. Building policy for scenarios the legislation hasn't caught up with yet.
At its heart, this is a conversation about who society has decided caregiving belongs to – and whether that is finally beginning to change.
In this episode:
- The history of parental leave in South Africa and how we got here
What the Van Wyk judgment declared unconstitutional – and what it replaced it with
- How leave-sharing arrangements work when parents are employed by different organisations
- Stellenbosch University's new parental leave policy and what sets it apart
The operational and cultural challenges employers now face
- Why destigmatising men as caregivers matters as much as the legal text
SiyakhulaLive is a social justice and diversity conversation series on MFM 92.6's Lunch Club, powered by Stellenbosch University's Centre for the Advancement of Social Impact and Transformation and the HR Division.
