Cape Town businessman gets suspended 30-day sentence for sending men to take wife's Mercedes

A Cape Town businessman has been sentenced to 30 days in prison, wholly suspended for two years, after the Western Cape High Court found him in contempt of a Rule 43 order for sending men to take back a Mercedes-Benz that his estranged wife and their two minor children use.

Judge M Francis handed down the sentence after finding that the businessman, who is the sole member of CA Cellular Holdings CC, breached an order that had been in force since May 2021 and had never been varied or set aside.

The order that was ignored

The businessman and his wife are married and are in the middle of a protracted divorce in the Western Cape High Court. The Mercedes-Benz is registered to CA Cellular Holdings CC. In May 2021 the court granted a Rule 43 order covering, among other things, maintenance, and requiring him to keep the vehicle available to his wife and the two children while the divorce ran its course. No final decree has been granted, so the order still stood when the latest application was heard.

The dispute escalated in February 2026, after the businessman crashed the vehicle he had been using while in Cape Town for contact with the children. The next day his attorneys wrote to her attorneys saying she had since bought her own car, so there was no longer a reason for her to use the Mercedes, and that a towing company would collect it and its keys. The car was not collected at that point.

The men at the driveway

On February 20, a man identified in the judgment as Yusuf Williams stopped the wife as she was leaving to fetch her children from school and told her he had been sent for the Mercedes-Benz. He later contacted her attorney, describing himself as an independent tracer acting on instructions from the businessman’s attorney. That same day, at Kensington police station, he was said to have told her that she was only entitled to use the car to transport the children, and that it was being used by her boyfriend.

Four days later Williams returned to her home with two other men. They parked across her driveway so she could not leave to fetch her children, and demanded the Mercedes-Benz. She told the court the men swore at her and threatened her, saying they would get a locksmith and take the car. Her attorneys sent a candidate attorney, Ms Wiehman, to collect the children from school and take them to their aunt next door. When Wiehman confronted Williams he produced the vehicle’s registration documents. She told the men about the Rule 43 order. They eventually left, returned the next morning, and repeated the demand.

The businessman denied involvement. Judge Francis found the evidence established beyond reasonable doubt that the men had been sent on his instructions. He had not filed an affidavit answering the merits of the contempt application, though he was given two opportunities to do so. His attorney confirmed in court that he had instructed a towing company to collect the car. Williams had the registration documents of CA Cellular Holdings CC in his possession, and the court found he could not have obtained them without the involvement of the close corporation or the businessman who controlled it. His attorneys later confirmed in writing that he had authorised someone to collect the vehicle for the corporation. When his son asked him on WhatsApp why he was trying to take the car, he did not deny it, and said the vehicle was his.

Self-help, not a remedy

The businessman argued that circumstances had changed because his own car had been damaged and his wife had bought another. The court accepted those circumstances existed but rejected them as a defence. Judge Francis said he understood what the order required. His argument was not that he had misunderstood it, but that he believed it should no longer apply.

“He formed his own view of what paragraph 1.4 was for, decided that it no longer served that purpose, and gave effect to that view by engaging Williams,” the judge said.

That, the court found, raised no reasonable doubt about whether his conduct was wilful and in bad faith. The judge also weighed the fact that the men came back the morning after being shown the order.

“If a litigant honestly believes an order has ceased to bind him, he applies to be released from it. He does not send men to take the thing by self-help,” Judge Francis said.

The court rejected the argument that there could be no contempt because the car was never actually taken. Judge Francis found the businessman was under a positive and ongoing obligation to keep the vehicle available, and that sending people to retrieve it without first seeking a variation breached that obligation. Whether the men left empty-handed went to the consequences of the contempt, not to whether it had happened. The court did not have to decide whether an attempted breach alone could be contempt, because on the facts the breach was complete.

Interdict, sentence and costs

The court granted a final interdict against the businessman and CA Cellular Holdings CC. They may not take steps to dispossess the wife of the Mercedes-Benz unless a court authorises it, and may not contact her except through her attorneys, apart from communications reasonably necessary about the minor children. They are also barred from harassing, threatening or intimidating her, or instructing third parties to do so. The judge found she had a right to possess the vehicle and could not lawfully be dispossessed outside due process, and that the threat of further interference was reasonably apprehended. An earlier undertaking from his attorneys covered only the car, and did not address her concerns about contact, harassment or third parties.

On sanction, the court said imprisonment on the papers should only follow in a clear case, but found a fine would not reflect how serious the conduct was. It described a deliberate resort to self-help against a court order, pursued at her home over two days and renewed after the men had been told about the order. The 30-day sentence is wholly suspended for two years and can only be activated if he breaches the conditions and she returns to court and proves the breach beyond reasonable doubt.

The businessman and the close corporation were ordered to pay the costs of the application jointly and severally on the attorney-and-client scale. Judge Francis found she had been forced to court by conduct he never properly justified on oath. The court also criticised her for initially not disclosing the February 2 letter in which he gave notice that he intended to retrieve the car, but found the omission did not change the outcome, because the letter strengthened rather than weakened her case.

Source: IOL, Businessman sentenced after sending people to retrieve estranged wife’s Mercedes