Shumsheer Singh Ghumman offered to pay a gangster 850 pounds to kill Philip Rhind, a wealthy oil company executive, whom Ghumman saw as an obstacle to his desire.
But the "hitman" pulled out of the deal, prompting Ghumman to try to complete the job himself by throwing Molotov cocktails at the Rhind family's imposing sea-front villa in Cape Town.
Ghumman, who has appealed against the sentence imposed yesterday, was convicted earlier this year on charges of fraud, incitement to commit murder, attempted murder and malicious damage, media reports here said.
UK media described him as a high-flyer former London City Fund manager.
The South African court heard how 33-year-old Ghumman developed an obsession with Hannah Rhind, 30, when she was working as a PR executive for a pharmaceutical company in London, the Daily Mail reported.
After they were introduced at a dinner party in 2009, Ghumman, who was then working for a Japanese firm, bombarded Rhind with emails, telephone calls and text messages.
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He became so obsessed that in October 2010 he was convicted of harassment at Westminster magistrates' court.
Four days after his conviction he sent an email to Hannah's father Rhind, whom he blamed for coming between himself and the object of his obsession, threatening that "whatever is done to me...Will be repaid with interest," the Daily Mail reported.
Three months later, in January 2011, Ghumman travelled to Cape Town where Rhind lives with his wife Deborah and he posed as a freelance photo-journalist called Michael Kirkham and claimed to be researching an article on gangsters.
He trawled the city's underworld to find someone prepared to kill Rhind, using the "honeymoon hijacking" murder of Anni Dewani to illustrate the type of cold-blooded killer he was looking for, the report said.
Hannah was not in court, but outside her father described his ordeal as a "nightmare". He said: "I absolutely believe that Ghumman is a real threat, even now".