Durban - Durban adventurer and motivational speaker Sean Wisedale has apologised to his former Glenwood neighbours for his “outbursts of anger”.
Wisedale, the first South African to have climbed the Seven Summits, the highest peaks on each continent, said he had climbed on to his rooftop and yelled at a neighbour and the “illegal tenants” living on his property.
He said he had since moved into a new house elsewhere in Durban with his wife and daughter and was now living a “normal” life.
Charges were provisionally withdrawn against Wisedale, 47, in the Durban Magistrate’s Court last week for drunk driving and malicious injury to property after an incident in August.
The State alleged that he verbally abused his neighbours and drove his Toyota Landcruiser SUV into a neighbour’s gate in Haraldene Road, Glenwood, many times after being angered by noise and disruptions from a nearby property.
The charges were withdrawn as the State had not yet received the blood analysis report on his alcohol level but Wisedale was told that it would be reinstated once it became available.
Wisedale said on Monday that he had since repaired the damaged gate. He said the incident was as a result of a long-standing feud between him and his neighbour, Sean Simons.
He said he and another neighbour had made objections to the eThekwini Municipality about the ongoing noise from Simons’s property allegedly caused by tenants living in a cottage there.
He also accused Simons of running an illegal self-catering establishment from the property. Wisedale said that when Simons ignored their complaints and continued to operate the business it “drove him to higher levels of desperation”.
Said Wisedale, “I climbed on to my rooftop and I yelled at him and his illegal tenants – as loud as I could, to make them feel exactly what it is like to have the peace in your home destroyed and to be woken up and not be able to get back to sleep again.”
Unfortunately, some of the surrounding neighbours have had to hear his protests, “designed to bring attention to the seemingly insurmountable problem”, he said. “I have apologised to all of them for my outbursts of anger and also for them being ‘caught in the crossfire’.”
He further explained that in August, the seriousness of the problem drove him to put his Landcruiser through his neighbour’s gate, owned by another neighbour and not Simons.
The gate leads to a communal road that runs alongside the units.
When we attempted to contact Simons on Sunday for comment, his wife, Janet, who answered, declined and referred the Daily News to other neighbours who had also laid a charge against Wisedale. They, too, declined to comment.
Simons had previously told reporters that he was running a legal business on his property and had let his cottage to a couple.
He also said he did not have any problems with other neighbours.
Meanwhile, Wisedale, his wife Katherine and their daughter Sarah Jane moved into their new home, in another part of Durban, two weeks ago and have since sold their Glenwood home.
“Since we moved, our lives have been as they should be – normal. With neighbours who make normal urban noise,” he said.
Daily News