Goats at centre of ugly feud
Top Cape Town doctor, farm caretaker rock Karoo dorp with public feud
● A spat over a herd of goats that have been banned from the Klein Karoo town of Calitzdorp has sparked a legal drama involving police, municipal officials and a prominent Cape Town doctor.
Dr Klaus Wiswedel is better known as a fertility specialist, helping women to conceive. But the feud between him and the caretaker of his Karoo farm, Carolyn Eaton, has given birth mainly to legal bills.
He claimed her goats were eating his olive trees and had to go. She claimed he had no problem with the goats for many years but changed his tune when she got a boyfriend.
A court ruling, a labour dispute and several criminal charges have kept officials busy in the picturesque dorp in the foothills of the Swartberg mountains.
The two even applied for protection orders against each other after a series of clashes on his property, where Eaton stayed for nine years up until last month.
The result is Eaton’s herd of goats have been trucked off to Johannesburg, leaving her heartbroken and broke.
In March the Calitzdorp Magistrate’s Court banned Eaton’s goats from the Calitzdorp magisterial district. The court also instructed Wiswedel to pay R30 000 in final settlement in the matter.
Eaton is now fighting to get an Unemployment Insurance Fund payout, which Wiswedel has blocked by refusing to sign the necessary paperwork.
She and her partner, Gary Smith, now live in a run-down wooden bungalow in the bush outside Calitzdorp. “I am a shattered person,” she told the Sunday Times this week. “Those goats were my children — he knew it was my weakness. It is like something huge has been ripped out of my life.”
The feud exploded into a public butting of heads last year when Wiswedel objected to Eaton’s herd of goats, which she kept on his property in order to make cheese. Things got so heated that at one stage he threatened to shoot the herd, according to an affidavit Eaton submitted to court.
In a counteraffidavit, Wiswedel claimed the goats were eating his olive trees, and demanded Eaton remove them or get off his property, where she lived in a guest cottage.
When Eaton refused, he laid charges against her and reported her to the district health authorities. The herd was subsequently impounded, then sold at auction to a farmer in Johannesburg.
Eaton insists Wiswedel had no problem with her goats — and bought much of her cheese — until she fell in love with Smith, now her fiancé. She claims Wiswedel made inappropriate advances to her over the years, and was now victimising her due to her preference for Smith.
“This is really all about Gary. He wanted me to live there all alone.”
Eaton claimed matters became heated last year when Smith confronted Wiswedel to demand he supply Eaton with an employ- ment contract.
Wiswedel did not respond to queries this week, but his affidavits paint a contrasting picture. In one document he claimed he no longer felt safe to visit his farm due to heated exchanges with the couple.
“I have effectively no access to my farm out of fear of being verbally and physically abused,” he said.
E-mail correspondence between him and Eaton details his frustrations. “I was reluc- tant to write you [Eaton] this letter but I have to as our relationship is at an all-time low,” he wrote in June. “I allowed you initially to have one goat to keep behind your house and that has grown to [something] which is completely unacceptable.”
But Eaton said Wiswedel exploited her for years by refusing to sign an employment contract. She lodged a complaint with the Labour Court, which ordered him to pay her compensation. In return, he slapped her with a hefty bill for damage to his olive trees.
Jennika Coetzee, of the Department of Labour in Oudtshoorn, confirmed Wiswedel was blocking Eaton’s UIF payment by refusing to amend a written submission that Eaton had “absconded” from her job. “He [Wiswedel] totally refuses to change the reason for her dismissal,” Coetzee said.
Wiswedel, who lives in Hout Bay, runs the HART fertility clinic from Christiaan Barnard Memorial Hospital in central Cape Town.