Man loses bid for protection order against wife's 'verbally abusive, vulgar' texts

• A man who wanted a protection order against his wife has lost his application for an appeal.
• The couple was involved in a bitterly contested divorce, which was finalised in 2020.
• He accused the woman of sending him various texts that were "provocative, verbally abusive and vulgar in nature".

A man who brought an application for a protection order against his estranged wife while they were involved in a bitterly contested divorce has lost his appeal with costs in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).

The man, who has been fighting for a protection order against his wife since 2019, accused her of sending various texts that were "provocative, verbally abusive and vulgar in nature".

In 2019, the man filed his application for a protection order in the Bloemfontein Magistrate's Court but lost.

He was also unsuccessful when he tried to appeal in the Free State High Court in Bloemfontein.

At the time, the two were married but lived separately - the husband lived in Pretoria and the wife in Bloemfontein.

They share a son, who was 2 years old at the time. Their divorce was finalised in October 2020.

According to the SCA judgment, the man claimed that his wife had "verbally and vulgarly abused him when he had called her to speak to their son and had alienated him from the child".

He also said his wife's refusal to allow him reasonable contact with the child constituted contempt of a court order.

The man added that the wife had offended him to "the highest degree". He said she had also "insulted" and "derogated" him.

However, in her opposing affidavit, the wife denied that she had emotionally abused him. Instead, she accused him of abusing the legal process to harass her.

She stated that her husband was aggrieved that she had been granted primary care of their child.

SMSes at the centre of the legal battle were sent between 11 December 2017 and 28 April 2019.

In one SMS, she blamed the husband for the breakdown of their marriage and accused him of not loving her and their child.

In another, the woman was "remonstrating with the appellant for refusing to hand over her chronic medication, which was in his possession. She also accused him of cruelty".

Acting Appeal Court Judge John Eldrid Smith said there were relatively long intervals between the SMSes.

He said it was clear from the contents that the SMSes were written in anger and bitterness.

However, nothing in the SMSes could be construed as insulting to the extent that it amounted to emotional, verbal and psychological abuse, he found.

He said the man relied on "innocuous" SMSes, which he received from his wife months before he launched the application. The judge said the man was "unsurprisingly" unable to prove that he would suffer any hardship due to domestic violence if a protection order was not issued immediately.

"He was also constrained to rely on a contrived construction of the contents of the SMSes, seeking disingenuously to ascribe pejorative meanings to manifestly inoffensive phrases. The [man] has accordingly failed to establish, on a balance of probabilities, that [his wife] has committed an act of domestic violence. The appeal must therefore fail."

Smith said: 

He said the man was apparently "unhappy" that the woman had successfully applied for primary care of their child.

And, according to his wife, this made him "bitter and vindictive".

"This assertion is indeed borne out by the fact that the appellant has not taken kindly to any person, including judicial officers, whom he perceived to have been on the respondent's side. It was thus not surprising that the tone of the language used by the respondent in those SMSes was occasionally harsh and acerbic," the judge said.

"The High Court accordingly correctly found that the SMSes did not constitute repeated insults, ridicule or name-calling."