JUSTICE could have been oh so sweet for a well known South Coast magistrate.
Alas, it wasn’t to be.
His many golfing buddies are already dining out on the story, but we’ll keep the popular legal eagle’s name to ourselves out of circumspection.
He was playing in a competition at the Port Shepstone Country Club recently when he and his three playing partners came across a group of seven, obviously inebriated visitors doing their best to plough up the meticulously maintained fairways with three golf carts.
Somehow, they had also slipped into the middle of the competition ‘field’… a definite no-no, as any self-respecting golfer will tell you.
It is also a universal rule that not more than four players may ever tee up together, regardless of whether there is a competition being played or not.
Drinking and driving a golf cart is a bit of a grey area as it is a popular holiday course, after all.
But bad manners and a total disregard for golf etiquette earns an automatic red card at any club. In this instance it was really, really bad. In fact, it was outright racism.
Following procedure, one of the magistrate’s playing partners phoned the club’s pro shop to report the bad behaviour of the ‘seven ball’ and that they were holding up the whole field with their boozy antics.
The pro shop then dispatched the caddy master to appeal to the not-so-magnificent seven to show some respect and at least allow the following four-ball to play through.
This only served to antagonise them into turning on the magistrate and his friends, shouting at them to: “Go and tell Zuma” and mumbling the dreaded ‘K’ word in Afrikaans, a language that our magistrate happens to be totally fluent in.
Outnumbered by the drunken louts, the magistrate kept his cool and quietly phoned a policeman friend to set up a roadblock outside the club premises. There was no doubt they would be driving away heavily under the influence and crimen injuria charges were also very warranted.
The perfect plan was for the seven to be arrested, charged and then for them to appear in front of the very magistrate they had insulted on Monday morning.
Picture the scene: “Onthou jy my?”
Unfortunately, the seven were a stagger ahead and flew the coop before the wheels of justice clicked into gear.
However, all is not lost. Their vehicle registration numbers showed that they were from the North West – late Eugene Terre’Blanche territory – and the Port Shepstone Country Club is trying to trace them to clubs in that area.
With a little bit of luck, they might still get their day in court in front of “daai b…. k…”
