The bumper-bashing that changed three women’s lives

On a slick stretch of road one rainy February morning last year, a fender bender detonated into violence that upended three lives.

This week, days before the first anniversary of the incident, the legal saga ended.

In the Randburg magistrate’s court on Wednesday, Candice Adams pleaded guilty to assaulting Zandile Mbazima. She was fined R6,000 or three months imprisonment, both of which have been suspended for three years, and the court also declared her unfit to own a firearm.

The crash happened when Mbazima, driving a six-year-old boy to school, skidded on Beyers Naude Drive in Honeydew and bumped Adams’s car as she stopped at a red robot. Adams’s then-13-year-old daughter was in the passenger seat.

After an altercation, Adams got out of her car and repeatedly punched Mbazima in the torso and face, causing a serious eye injury.

The brutal assault was captured by a motorist, Jo Watson, on her cellphone. This footage led to Adams’ arrest weeks later and played a key role in her conviction.

The trial turned controversial when out-of-court settlement discussions got under way, prompting an investigation by the Sunday Times into how hundreds of thousands of people charged with crimes are paying their way out of criminal records in deals brokered by prosecutors in court hallways.

Out-of-court settlements in criminal cases have become commonplace in an attempt to clear court backlogs and save the state the cost of a trial. Some 150,000 were settled in a year, an overview by Africa Criminal Justice Reform showed.

Some legal experts believe the “perverse incentive” of money opens the door for the rich to buy their way out of a trial and a criminal conviction.

In the end, senior prosecutor Yusuf Baba ordered that there would be no mediation, the assault was serious and the matter was to go to trial.

In court this week Adams testified that the incident had triggered her.

“There was this hard knock … the window at the back shattered and there was glass flying everywhere. My child screamed,” she said.

I was hurt and traumatised … I was angry. There were a lot of ‘f*** yous’ and I am deeply sorry for what was shown on the video. I regret the way I handled it

She said she later learnt she was suffering from PTSD triggered by a similar crash in the same area a year earlier, when a man she described as “high or drunk” forced her off the road and an angry crowd gathered with “pangas and bricks”.

“I was hurt and traumatised … I was angry. There were a lot of ‘f*** yous’ and I am deeply sorry for what was shown on the video,” she said, adding: “I regret the way I handled it.”

When Watson posted her thoughts on the incident on social media, Adams took out a protection order against her, barring Watson from posting anything about the incident. Watson went to court and succeeded in having the order scrapped. Adams was ordered to pay punitive costs.

But Mbazima bore the most immediate fallout. The single mother, who worked as a scholar transporter and delivery driver, was unable to work for four months because of her eye injury.

In her victim impact statement, Mbazima described lasting harm. “I was publicly humiliated and assaulted. My dignity was impaired. I have nightmares still … It was an accident and she punched me in the face in a public space.

“[Adams] shouted ‘I’m going to kill you’. I froze. I was in shock … then she hit me repeatedly in the right eye,” Mbazima told the court.

Watson remained a steady presence as the case crawled through court. When magistrate Ngomani delivered judgment, Mbazima blinked back tears and gripped Watson’s hand.

After court, Adams expressed relief and regret, saying she was sorry Mbazima received no compensation but remained angry with Watson, whom she accused of being on a “witch hunt”.

Watson, a novelist, said the outcome felt hollow because Adams had avoided jail.

“This was always about Zandi getting justice. Candice wants someone to blame and that person is me.”

Mbazima, who recently secured an administrative job that does not require driving, said she was initially upset by the sentence but is satisfied that Adams now has a criminal record — and that the long fight is finally over.