An unrelated photo was used to claim a woman had been getting child support from eight men for the same child for 12 years. But it’s just false clickbait.

Mary Alexander • 1 August 2025

“A 35 year old woman was arrested for collecting child support money from eight different men for one child,” reads a message that’s gone viral in South Africa since July 2025.

As evidence, it shows a photo of a woman, her back to the camera, being held by two police officers. A police van is behind them.

It says 35-year-old Nancy Mudau of Limpopo province has received child maintenance from the eight men, who all thought they were the child’s father, for 12 years.

She “used the money to build herself a beautiful house. At the time of her arrest she was busy building a tavern with child support money.”

The claim has spread across Facebook (here, here and here), X (here, here and here), Instagram (here and here) and TikTok (here, here and here), and onto blogs as far afield as Zimbabwe, Ghana and Nigeria.

It has provoked strong reactions. One Facebook user commented: “Vuka Mtomnyama ! Cause of GBV ?” (“Wake up! Cause of gender-based violence?”)

In South Africa both parents – married or not – are responsible for the financial support of their children, according to the Maintenance Act of 1998 and the Children’s Act of 2005. This duty is determined by how much each parent can afford.

But women often struggle to get child support from their children’s fathers, even though failure to pay maintenance could land a person in prison.

Does the photo really show a woman who was arrested for successfully collecting child support from eight different men over 12 years?

Drug bust in Northern Cape

A Google image search of the photo returned a different story.

The photo is more than a year old, and appears in a South African Police Service report on a drug bust in the Northern Cape province on 5 April 2024. Three men were arrested in the town of Pampierstad for possession of crystal meth, and the woman arrested in Hartswater for possession of tablets suspected to be mandrax.

A day later, the Kimberley-based Diamond Fields Advertiser reported the arrests in an article that includes the photo of the woman.

There have been no credible reports of a “Nancy Mudau” from Limpopo being arrested for maintenance fraud. And online searches for the name simply return the claim. It is false.

It first appeared on the Facebook page “Koos de Klerk” on 12 July 2025. The page has almost a quarter of a million followers and is full of sensationalist clickbait posts.

Almost every post includes links to the dodgy job scam websites search67.com and jobsfinder.co.za. The sites have no useful information and are full of ads.

The claim is entirely made up, as part of a scheme to make money from online ads.