She allegedly threw cat hair at her neighbours, spat on their faces, threw stones on their rooftops, verbally abused them and hurled racial slurs at a domestic worker.
For six years, residents of the Glendower Golf Estate in Edenvale allegedly had to deal with Sandra Isobel Blyth’s antics, including running around naked, hammering nails into their cars, phoning them at unreasonable hours without reason and following their children to school.
Now fed up, Glendower residents have approached the court in a bid to get the woman committed to a mental institution.
In video footage shown in the Johannesburg High Court on Wednesday, a woman’s voice can be heard shouting: “You like to watch me and perv me with your husband and son. You are so clever. Take pictures of your neighbour in the nude.”
The woman then sticks out her hand, showing her neighbours the middle finger.
While Blyth denied through her lawyer that she was the woman in the footage, the court heard of protracted actions against her by 14 residents of the estate, dating back to 2005, and how one of the neighbours has had to go on stress treatment due to her actions.
“This is not the behaviour of a normal person. She has to be locked away for 30 days to be observed. There was a suggestion by our clients that we raise the wall between them, but she refused.
“This is a woman who sits on top of a wall, cuts foliage and throws it into the neighbour’s yard. She drills walls, she makes herself highly visible,” argued counsel for the residents, advocate Alexandra Willcock.
She said 14 affidavits had been signed by the golf estate residents, with 30 charges laid against the woman.
“In February 2009, police refused to open a case, saying it’s the same crazy woman,” said Willcock.
The last court bid was in September last year, and Judge Cornelius Claassen ordered Blyth “to refrain from acting in any way whatsoever that is a nuisance to any and all of the persons residing in and on the Glendower Golf Estate”.
He also ordered her “to refrain from conducting herself in an unacceptable, unreasonable, disorderly and disruptive manner, including but not limited to refraining from the use of vulgar language towards persons, harassing and intimidating persons, shouting and screaming at unreasonable hours of the day, whether at persons or in general, playing loud music at unreasonable hours of the day, clapping, whistling, provoking and, in general, creating a disturbance to persons at unreasonable hours of the day”.
Other acts Blyth was interdicted from doing was climbing on her ladder to watch her neighbours, exposing herself, damaging neighbours’ plants and trees, throwing eggs at people’s properties, and wetting their laundry on their washing lines.
on Wednesday, Judge Margaret Victor said holding the woman in contempt of court might not help, as “she’ll make a mockery of that (order) as well”.
“Maybe I should impose a R250 000 fine,” the judge said.
But Blyth’s advocate, Ian Posthumus, said the amount was “too excessive”.
Concerns were also raised over who would take care of the businesswoman’s cat if she got locked away, with Posthumus saying the woman had never harassed her neighbours.
“She disputes that such incidents ever happened. Her version is that the Ravenscrofts (immediate neighbours) have a vendetta against her,” said Posthumus, adding that the woman was responding only to incidents during which the Ravenscroft family filmed her while she was in her house.
By filming her, the woman said through her lawyer, the family were invading her privacy.
But Willcock responded by saying the Ravenscrofts never held a camera over the wall to record their neighbour, saying they had filmed incidents from their home to illustrate how the woman was going out of her way to trouble them and disregard the court action.
Blyth, according to court documents, also cut down her creeper, giving the Ravenscrofts full visibility of her living room. It is there that she allegedly struts naked.
Also contained in the affidavits filed in courts is how, after drilling into a wall dividing the two properties, she laughed out loudly and shouted: “Dutchman, f***ing Dutchman. Jesus Christ Almighty. Lekker nê poppie (nice hey doll)? Dit lyk nou lekker (it now looks cool)”.
A clip of a woman shouting these words was also played in court on Wednesday.
The case has been postponed to next week. - The Star