Sophia de Villiers, a magistrate, asked the Western Cape High Court to send her neighbour, Anthony Kruger, to prison for ignoring the court’s instruction to remove the garden he planted outside his and his neighbour’s properties in Paarl. But a frustrated Judge Nolwazi Boqwana declined to do so, and scolded De Villiers and Kruger for letting their dispute get out of hand.

‘I must first express my displeasure as to the amount of resources spent in litigating this matter,’ Boqwana said in her judgment, according to a Sunday Times report.

‘Whilst it is understood that these are contempt proceedings, which may carry serious consequences, I do think the manner in which this case was handled by the parties was over-elaborate. Apart from the fact that each of the parties had two counsel, volumes of documents and papers – some of which were at times repetitive – were presented before me.’

The report notes De Villiers sued Kruger last year for closing off an unmade public road next to his property with a gate and by planting a garden.

The court ordered Kruger to ‘remove all obstructions and encroachments’ within seven days. But a couple of months later De Villiers was back in court asking it to declare Kruger and the Drakenstein municipality in contempt of court and compelling them to give ‘reasons why they should not be committed to prison’.

De Villiers said she could not enter her property from the road because Kruger had failed to remove ‘some of the contents forming part of the garden’.

Boqwana dismissed De Villiers’ application as well as the municipality’s application to rescind a section of the previous court order instructing it to ‘remove and regularise the encroachments’.

She ordered each party to bear its legal costs.

Full Sunday Times report (subscription needed)