Foreign money judgments are not always as easy to enforce in South Africa as foreign creditors would like. Among the reasons for this is legislation that was designed for a long-gone siege-mentality era and the limited recognition allowed in South African courts of the international competence of foreign jurisdictions.
However, a ray of hope for foreign creditors has appeared. The recent case of Richman v Ben-Tovim in the Supreme Court of Appeal has ended some of the confusion over the existence of a further ground on which local courts will recognise a foreign judgment. The clarity gained through this could make it easier for foreign creditors to hold an errant South African defendant to account.
