Tangled up in divorce law

Ah, the contortions the press must go through to remain on the right side of the law. In South Africa, the media is legally not allowed to name separating parties. Presumably, this is to shield the children.

Admirable though the intentions, it also presents us with the occasional absurdity where the lives of high-profile public figures are put on lurid display through affidavits and court testimony, but everyone has to pretend publicly they don’t know exactly who the dramatis personae are.

More occasionally, it means stunning sworn testimony containing allegations of scandalous or criminal behaviour against a famous spouse is never properly interrogated because the claims don’t become public. That this does not serve broader national interest is evidenced by a recent incident.

Last weekend, in a delicate ballet through the legal minefield journalist Tania Broughton revealed in the Sunday Times that a certain person’s soon-to-be ex-wife had made a high court application for interim financial relief from her “exceptionally wealthy” husband. This “person” was, in fact, partially identified – an “ex-president”. And the applicant as “a former first lady”.

In the papers, the unnamed former First Lady makes startling claims about her husband’s financial affairs which should be of great interest to the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture and the Hawks. Among the allegations:

• That this ex-president received financial support from influential people in neighbouring countries. She claims personal knowledge of this “and if called upon by the court I will be in a position to back this”.
• That this ex-president is “exceptionally wealthy in his own right. Most of his assets… are not registered in his own name”.

Her application includes the usual heart-tugging stuff. “I have devoted the past 28 years of my life to him and feel betrayed by his behaviour.”

Like the rest of the country, I was agog. Who could this heartless but anonymous monster be? Since all our national flaws have their origin in apartheid, I thought of FW de Klerk. But his wife is independently wealthy. So, he’s out. Nelson Mandela is dead. That left Thabo Mbeki, Kgalema Motlanthe, and Jacob Zuma.

Google showed that Mbeki had been married for too long, 46 years, so it couldn’t be him. In contrast, Motlanthe and his present wife have been together for not long enough, so it couldn’t be him. That left Jacob Zuma.

But Zuma, an enthusiastic polygamist, at any one time had between four and six first ladies while president. So this sentence in the application didn’t really chime: “I fulfilled the role of first lady [singular] with diplomacy, decorum and fortitude and sacrificed my own ambitions for his.”

There was marital strife that seemed to make him a possibility. Five years ago, Zuma accused one of his first ladies, MaNtuli, of trying to poison him and ousted her from the harem. But, again, the timeline didn’t fit. Nor did it seem likely, having supposedly almost been murdered by one wife, that he would risk another’s vengeance by being miserly over the divorce settlement.

Nobody could be that stupid? Could they? What a conundrum! But I guess until the law stops being an ass, we’ll just never know.

William Saunderson-Meyer.

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