Western Cape High Court jails Cape Town businessman for sending men to take back a Mercedes

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

Judge M Francis found the businessman deliberately and in bad faith breached a Rule 43 order granted in May 2021, which dealt with his maintenance obligations during the divorce and required him to continue making the vehicle available to his wife and children while the proceedings run. The divorce is still before the court and no final decree has been granted, so the order remained in force when the contempt application was heard.

As IOL reported on 19 September, the businessman was found in contempt and sentenced to 30 days’ imprisonment, wholly suspended on condition that he keeps the Mercedes available and does not breach the interdict the court granted.

What the order required, and what happened

The Mercedes is registered in the name of CA Cellular Holdings CC, a close corporation of which the businessman is the sole member.

The dispute escalated in February 2026 after he crashed the vehicle he was 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 vehicle, so the reason for letting her use the Mercedes no longer existed. They said a towing company would collect the car and its keys. It was not collected at that stage.

On 20 February a man identified in the judgment as Yusuf Williams stopped her as she left to fetch her children from school and told her he had been sent to collect the Mercedes. He contacted her attorney and described himself as an independent tracer acting on instructions from the businessman’s attorney. Later that day at Kensington police station, Williams told her she was only entitled to use the vehicle to transport the children and alleged it was being used by her boyfriend.

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

The court’s finding

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 answering affidavit on the merits of the contempt application, despite being given two opportunities to do so. His attorney confirmed in court that he had instructed a towing company to collect the vehicle. Williams also had the registration documents of CA Cellular Holdings CC in his possession, which the court found he could not have obtained 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 on behalf of the close corporation. When his son asked him on WhatsApp why he was trying to take it, he did not deny it and said the vehicle was his.

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

“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.”

The court rejected the argument that there could be no contempt because the Mercedes was never actually taken. It found the breach was already complete, because the businessman was under a positive and ongoing obligation to make the vehicle available, and sending people to retrieve it before obtaining a variation of the order broke that obligation. The men leaving without the car went to the consequences of the contempt, not to whether it had occurred.

The interdict, the sentence and the costs

The court granted a final interdict against the businessman and CA Cellular Holdings CC. They may not take steps to dispossess her of the Mercedes unless a court authorises it. They may not contact her except through her attorneys, with an exception for communications he reasonably needs to make about the minor children. They are also restrained from harassing, threatening or intimidating her, or instructing third parties to do so.

On sanction, the court held that imprisonment on the papers should only follow in a clear case, and found a fine would not reflect how serious this 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 of the order. The 30-day sentence is 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.

He and the close corporation must pay the costs of the application jointly and severally on the attorney-and-client scale, which is a heavier scale than ordinary party-and-party costs. The court found she had been forced to approach the court because of conduct he never properly justified on oath. It also criticised her for initially not disclosing the 2 February letter in which he notified her that he intended to retrieve the Mercedes, but found the omission did not change the outcome because the letter strengthened rather than weakened her case.

The order binds until it is varied or set aside, and Rule 43(6) is the route a litigant takes when circumstances genuinely change.

Source: IOL, Cape Town businessman sentenced after trying to take Mercedes-Benz from estranged wife.