Late paperwork costs Kimberley man his fight to reverse liquidation

A Kimberley man has lost his fight to overturn his liquidation after the High Court found he had only himself to blame for missing deadline after deadline – and then trying to blame everyone else for the mess.

Being liquidated wipes out your financial freedom -  you lose control of your assets, can’t touch credit, and live in cash-only mode until the court says you’re rehabilitated.

In this case, Barend Jacobus Liebenberg remained liquidated because he simply didn’t get his papers in on time.

The court said his delays, excuses, and last-minute tactics showed a pattern of avoidance rather than any genuine attempt to fix the situation.

Liebenberg was finally sequestrated on 11 October 2024. He waited two months before filing for rescission. Then he stalled.

When someone is liquidated, their entire financial life is effectively put under lockdown.

A court-appointed trustee takes over their estate, and they’re barred from taking on any form of credit: no loans, no overdraft, no store accounts, nothing.

Banks treat them as a high-risk debtor who can bank only in cash.

They also can’t act as a director or manage financial affairs, and every credit bureau in the country marks them as insolvent.

It doesn’t end there.

Insolvency lives on public records, making it harder to rent a home, sign a cellphone contract, or get work in roles that require financial trust.

Those limits stay in place until the person is rehabilitated, which can happen after a year with the trustee’s support or later – by as long as a decade.

Only then do they regain full financial and legal capacity.

In this case. Standard Bank had liquidated him because he owed the bank money.

Because of the delays, the bank eventually had to finalise the whole issues as to whether Liebenberg was, or wasn’t, liquidated by heading to court because he wasn’t lodging papers on time.

On the day of the hearing, August 22, he tried to postpone the case without even filing a proper postponement application.

The judge didn’t hold back.

“It is inexplicable how the applicant can renege to seek to postpone the rescission application for which he had earlier requested the office of the Master to allow to be prioritised,” Mamosebo J wrote.

The court said Liebenberg’s explanations were thin.

Liebenberg said he had “new evidence”. Liebenberg said he needed a lawyer. Liebenberg said he would be ready “in a few weeks”.

Standard Bank argued he had no intention of complying with procedural rules, and the judge agreed.

“The application made from the bar was not timeous,” the court ruled. “The reasons meant to justify the postponement sought fall short of doing that.”

The court called the postponement bid a “tactical manoeuvre”.

In the end, the court dismissed both his rescission and his request for condonation.

“The applicant has not shown this court any good cause why it should condone the lateness,” the judge said.

With that, Liebenberg remains liquidated – undone not by fraud or bank misconduct, but by his own failure to meet deadlines.

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