Four years in jail for papgeld: High court upholds deadbeat dad’s sentence

A maintenance defaulter has lost his appeal against the four-and-a-half-year prison sentence he was slapped with in 2018, in what’s believed to be the first case of its kind in South Africa to see someone jailed.

In July 2018, the Krugersdorp Magistrates Court found businessman Andrei Potgieter guilty of contravening the Maintenance Act, after he had missed a total of more than R1.2 million worth of payments over a four-year period.

When Potgieter – who owned several RJ’s steakhouse franchises at one stage – and his now ex-wife, Louise Nell, divorced in August 2012, they reached a settlement agreement which provided for maintenance for both her and the couple’s now 25-year-old son, Keegan.

He, however, reneged – leaving Nell and their son destitute and eventually prompting her to lay criminal charges against him.

At trial, his defence was that he could not afford to pay because he had sold his business to his new fiancée. But in the end, the court didn’t buy it and he was convicted and sentenced to an effective four-and-a-half years behind bars.

He served two months but then managed to petition the Johannesburg High Court to hear an appeal bid and was released on bail.

The high court, however, this week dismissed his case.

Judges Edwin Molehehli and Leonie Windell in their ruling said the offence committed was serious and that the sentence imposed by the trial court was fitting.

“[Potgieter’s] conduct drove his child and erstwhile wife into poverty. This, in the context where he had agreed and obtained an order to the effect that he would pay maintenance for [Nell] and his child. [His] case is aggravated by the fact that throughout the proceedings, including after conviction, he showed no remorse,” they said.

He had failed to make out a case that the sentence was inappropriate and shocking and that their intervention was as a result warranted, the judges found.

“There is no evidence on record to suggest that the court a quo committed an irregularity or misdirection in imposing the custodial sentence on the applicant. In the circumstances, the sentence imposed on [Potgieter] was fair and appropriate. Accordingly, [his] appeal stands to fail,” they said.

Nell’s lawyer, Wesley Rogers, has welcomed the ruling as a landmark judgment.

“It’s the first time the high court has confirmed a sentence of direct imprisonment for a maintenance defaulter. And as it is a high court judgment, it is precedent-setting on lower courts,” he said.

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