The Questions
SD Husselman and Khalid
The Divorce Amendment Act of 2024 is no longer a hypothetical statute; it is the legal sledgehammer that shatters the foundation of your secret transactions. It re-frames your past actions not as shrewd business, but as what they are: patrimonial predation enabled by an unconstitutional system. You now stand before the unblinking eye of a law designed to redress the very injustice you perpetrated. Answer these questions if you can.
1. The Question of Constitutional Complicity
The Constitutional Court condemned the state's inaction as a "continuous violation of rights." By exploiting that very violation to dispossess Zainab, to what degree do you acknowledge that you were not just beneficiaries of a flawed system, but active participants in enforcing its most brutal, gendered consequences?
"The Act is not merely a legislative amendment but a transformative, retrospective constitutional remedy."
2. The Question of Theft by Legal Loophole
The sale of Haywood House was a transaction between two men who knew of Zainab's contributions. Under the new legal standard, which recognizes her indirect and direct input, how do you legally characterize taking R400,000 for an asset in which she held a beneficial interest, if not as theft by conversion, now actionable under a constitutional mandate?
"The R400,000 proceeds become a clear benchmark for quantifying her claim."
3. The Question of the Phantom Gift
Khalid, you allowed your mother to believe the Lansdowne flat was hers, a "psychological salve" for the original theft. As this was a deliberate deception to secure "moral acquittal" and prevent legal action, does this not transform your gesture from one of filial duty into the core of a new claim for damages based on estoppel and fraudulent misrepresentation?
"The belief that she had been 'made whole' would deter Zainab from pursuing legal claims against him or SD Husselman."
4. The Question of the Conspiracy of Silence
Your secrecy, specifically excluding the eldest and third eldest brothers, was a critical component of the scheme. How do you explain this deliberate isolation of other family members if your intentions were lawful and just, rather than a necessary tactic to execute an "anatomy of exploitation"?
"The exclusion of other family members... was a critical component of the scheme."
5. The Question of the Valued Zero
The new law assigns legal and economic value to a lifetime of Zainab's "unpaid domestic labour, child-rearing, and moral support." You assigned it a value of zero. By what ethical calculus did you determine that her decades of contribution were worthless, and how will you defend that calculus against a court's "just and equitable" assessment?
"This legally validates the economic worth of traditionally unpaid female labour."
6. The Question of Retroactive Liability
The Act's "retrospective application is a constitutional necessity." It reaches back to cure the defect of your 2006 actions. What is your defense against a law that exists precisely to undo what you did, declaring that your past conduct, though technically possible then, is constitutionally voidable now?
"To only apply the new law prospectively would be to condone the historical discrimination."
7. The Ultimate Question of Dignity
The entire constitutional project is founded on the inviolable right to human dignity. Can you articulate a single way in which reducing a wife and mother to a "legal stranger," stripping her of assets and security, and replacing them with a deceptive illusion of care, does not constitute a total and complete annihilation of that dignity?
"For the woman divorced decades ago with nothing, the Act is a lifeline—a delayed but decisive affirmation that her dignity and her labour have legal worth."
The law has finally caught up with your secret. The Constitution now sees Zainab as the wife she always was, and it sees your transactions in the stark light of restorative justice. There are no answers you can give that will absolve you of the constitutional reckoning that is now at hand.