Legal experts said the jail sentence issued to a businessman for failing to pay spousal and child maintenance, was one of the toughest awarded for criminal contravention of the Maintenance Act. The Durban businessman this week began serving an effective four and half years' prison sentence after being criminally convicted of failing to pay spousal and child maintenance, says TimesLIVE.

Krugersdorp Magistrate Abdul Khan also attached his assets, the sale of which would enable his ex-wife to recover the more than R1m she was owed.

The ex-wife's attorney, Wesley Rogers, said: 'It is more than likely the first time in SA's legal history that a long term of imprisonment has been handed down to a maintenance defaulter. The court has handed down a just sentence in the circumstances, and has provided our client with a writ of execution in order that she may now, after so many years, obtain what is legally hers.'

But the man's legal team, Advocate Peter Rowan and attorney Graham Parker, say they believe both the conviction and the sentence are wrong, and they will appeal urgently.

Evidence before the magistrate was that the man, a director of a restaurant franchise chain, was living the high life and hiding his assets while his ex-wife and their two children, now adults, were living in abject poverty. The businessman was sentenced to six years' imprisonment, with 18 months suspended.

Khan refused to grant the man leave to appeal the conviction and sentence and refused to hear an application for bail pending a petition to the Chief Justice for permission to appeal.

Full TimesLIVE report