Judge said the husband had to leave the wife and their three daughters at his parental home while he went to work on the mines at Orkney. In 1995 he left the mines to return to Sterkspruit, where they lived.
In around 1998 the wife made her way to Bloemfontein to find employment, leaving her children and husband behind in Sterkspruit with her mother-in-law. Not long after the husband also moved to Bloemfontein, where he eventually found employment.
The marriage was not destined to survive such adverse circumstances, and for the next 22 years both lived in Bloemfontein, but not under the same roof. They lived completely separated.
As the children grew up, they one by one also came to Bloemfontein, where they lived with their father.
The husband testified that he and his wife married in 1980 in a traditional marriage ceremony. When he came back from the mines in 1995, he bought a vehicle to transport people. The wife was unemployed.
When he came home one day in 1998, he found she had left. He did not know where she had gone, but she had
left the children behind with his mother. The next year he moved to Bloemfontein, where he found employment with the municipality as a driver. He did not know the wife’s whereabouts and he said he was responsible for the children’s upbringing.
He said the wife never came to visit them; he saw her for the first time after more than two decades at court during their divorce proceedings.
The husband meanwhile retired from the municipality and received his pension benefits about two years ago.
The wife testified that she never deserted the husband, nor their children. She said she came to Bloemfontein to find employment because her husband failed to provide adequately for her and the children.
In Bloemfontein she worked as a domestic worker. She said she had contributed money and clothes for the children through the years.
When her husband had built a house in later years, she said she contributed to the building by cooking food for the builders and providing them with water.
Two of their children – now in their 40s – also denied that their mother had disappeared from their lives in 1998. They said she often came to visit them over the years and provided them with money and clothes. She was always present in their lives, and never abandoned them, they told the court.
Judge Loubser said the husband was tight-lipped about his assets, thus the court was in the dark as far as the specifics of the benefits in the marriage in community of property were concerned.
“It follows that the court is not in a position to establish whether the plaintiff (wife) will unduly benefit if an order of forfeiture is not granted against her. The counter-claim for forfeiture therefore cannot succeed,” he said. In granting the divorce, the judge said the husband had to share whatever assets he had with the wife, which included his pension money.
