Asked by the Customer on 29-03-2023 12:48:49
Question posted in the General Law category relating to KwaZulu-Natal

To whom it may concern. I am currently in a situation where I am being stalked by a work colleagues ex wife, and she is now threatening my job, saying she is going to contact my employer. They are in a process of a divorce, him and I have been seeing each other for about +- 3 months now, but very on the down low due to her being a bit unreasonable. We do not hang out at each others premises and go to places which are very private as to just keep the peace. However, over this weekend she has somehow found out about us, and she keeps stalking me on social media (Facebook) She somehow managed to get my number from another work connection (which I gave no permission for) and she continued to try and contact me on Saturday evening. I have nothing to do with her and I was not the cause of the divorce. They have been fighting a divorce for the past year and have been separated since last year February.I would just like to know if there is anything I can do to get her to stop stalking me, as I feel now my life is a bit restricted because I can’t do anything without fear that she may see me, and jeopardise my job, as well as make my life very uncomfortable. Please do let me know. 

Kind regards,

Kelly Webb

Posted by Att. Patrick on 29-03-2023 13:09:46

Hi there and thank you for your question,

I am a practicing attorney based in South Africa and I will assist you with your question. Please feel free to ask as many follow up questions in order to clarify your question. If you have a new question, you must please open a new thread.

Please keep in mind that our discussions is for general information purposes only. Our engagement on this website does not create an attorney-client relationship. 

I'm sorry to hear about this that you are going through. It happens more often than you think.

The first thing that you need to do is to block her on Facebook and any other social media accounts that you use. Then, you should stop posting on any social media accounts for 2 or 3 weeks to let this all die down.

The second thing that I think that you should do is to contact your employer and explain that you are in a relationship with your work colleague, and that his soon-to-be ex-wife is harassing you and is threatening you. Explain that you are dealing with the threats yourself, but you want your employer to know that this is going on just in case the soon-to-be ex-wife contacts your employer with bogus allegations. You must be clear that this is not affecting your work at all. You just want to let your employer know of the situation now, before anything happens. 

Legally, you are entitled to apply for a protection from harassment order at your local magistrates court. This is what you should do in order to protect yourself. In the protection order you can actually request that she not be allowed to contact you, any of your friends, any of your family, any of your work colleagues, and even your place of work directly! So that should then also act as a "stick" against her to say "Stop what you're doing!" This is a very easy application to get right and you can do it yourself. What you will need is an affidavit setting out the background of the matter, and explaining ALL of the ways that she has harassed you. You will need to be specific in how many times, and dates & times, and stuff like that for the magistrate. You will need to show that he action is more than just 1 or 2 SMSs ... that it constitutes harassment! 

You can't let her actions get you down. You need to take a stand against her. The protection order is a VERY GOOD way to do this, because if she breaches it, she goes to jail.

Thank you for your prompt response. I think this is the best step in the right direction. Unfortunately she has several Facebook profiles, so it is absolutely impossible to try and block her. I have made all of my social media accounts private, however, she is going as far as stalking family members profiles and taking screenshots.

The only thing which may not stand in my favor, is that she is not contacting me directly, however she is sending all these threats, slanders and accusations of myself and my family to the ex-husband via WhatsApp. Would this have any recourse? Or should I just simply try and ignore it?

Thank you again!
Best regards

Posted by Att. Patrick on 30-03-2023 09:19:41

The contact can be direct or indirect, as in sending messages via friends or family members. The Act is wide enough that such messages also constitutes harassment!