Pretoria - A husband was so adamant to have his now former wife interdicted from name-calling him that he went all the way to the Supreme Court of Appeal to get his way.
However, he lost his case while being slapped with the legal bill.
The wife had over months sent her husband some strongly-worded text messages.
These, the husband argued, constituted harassment, and he applied for a protection order against her in the lower court under the Domestic Violence Act.
When he lost his legal bid, he appealed the ruling against him and lost. Still not satisfied, he turned to the Supreme Court, where his appeal was once again turned down.
The husband alleged the wife had sent him text messages that were provocative, verbally abusive and vulgar.
The court found that even though some of the SMSes contained insults which may well be unlawful, there was not a pattern of repeated conduct and it was thus not domestic violence.
Acting Judge JE Smith explained that the primary objective of the Domestic Violence Act was to provide victims of domestic violence with an effective, uncomplicated and swift legal remedy.
It achieved this by providing for a simplified procedure for protection order applications, endowing the courts with a wide discretion.
The judge said while the act was gender-neutral, the undisputed reality remained that domestic violence was “systemic, pervasive and overwhelmingly gender-specific” and “reflects and reinforces patriarchal domination”.
“It is therefore still the most vulnerable members of society, namely women and children, who are invariably the victims of domestic violence and thus the beneficiaries of the protection accorded by the act.
“However, as the facts of this case so vividly demonstrate, the provisions of the very legal instrument which are designed to protect those vulnerable sectors of society from domestic violence, are often abused as a tool of harassment and to reinforce patriarchal domination,” the judge said.
The husband claimed that shortly before they were divorced and after they lived in separate cities, his wife uttered vulgar words to him when he tried to speak to their young son.
He also stated that she had “offended him to the highest degree”.
The wife denied harassing her husband and said he was the aggressor who did not tolerate anyone who went against him. According to her, he was so unreasonable that he had even lodged a complaint with the Judicial Services Commission against the judge who granted the order against him.
The wife said he even reported her father to his church council, accusing him of arranging for the baptism of their minor child without his approval.
The wife blamed the husband for the breakdown of the marriage and accused him of not loving her and their child.
“It is clear from the contents that they were written in anger and bitterness. However, there is nothing in those SMSes that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be construed as insulting the appellant to the extent that it amounted to emotional, verbal or psychological abuse,” Judge Smith said.
In the next batch of text messages the wife cited biblical verses and implored divine justice. She expressed the wish that he had found in his new partner someone who would make him happy, albeit in a sarcastic tone.
Once again the court concluded that these SMSes could not be construed as abusive in any manner.
“It is clear the parties were, at that stage, involved in a bitterly contested divorce, and it was to be expected the communication between them would be antagonistic and acerbic,” the judge said.
In the final text message, which the husband said was hurtful, the wife described men in general as “the enemies”, and saidt the last thing she wanted was to have the husband’s name next to hers.
“Although the language used in the SMSes might have been hostile, antagonistic or rancorous, it can by no stretch of the imagination amount to emotional, verbal or psychological abuse,” Judge Smith said.
The judge added that the facts of this case had shown that, in applying for the protection order, the husband was merely abusing his superior economic position to harass the wife.
“Apart from the patently unreasonable and self-serving construction that he has ascribed to the contents of the SMSes, he has also not shirked from confrontation with any person whom he regarded as being on the respondent’s side.”
The judge said the husband’s conduct called for him to foot his wife’s legal bill in defending the appeal.
Pretoria News