A BROKEN-HEARTED man of Lusaka’s Chilenje township has narrated to the Boma Local Court how his wife returned home with her private region as hairless as the head of a Zambia National Service recruit, four days after she left home to attend her sister’s funeral.
This was during a hearing in which businessman Dimas Chapwasha aged 48 had sued Ruth Bweupe, 36 for divorce.
Chapwasha told the court that despite having been married for 13 years with three children, his wife was a crafty and unfaithful woman who still accommodated other men under her skirt.
He recounted one occasion when her elder sister died.
“Upon receiving the call that sister had died, she even lost appetite and failed to eat lunch saying she cant be enjoying nshima while her elder sister’s body is lying in the mortuary. So I allowed her to go to the funeral. I couldn’t follow because the kids are too young to remain alone,” Chapwasha testified.
Chapwasha said his wife was out for four days and when she returned home, he was surprised that the blossoming thicked that was emerging under her noval before she left for the funeral had completely vanished without trace.
“I asked who shaved her because it was my responsibility to do that and she was not shaved before she went to the funeral. Her response was; that after receiving the news of her sister’s death, she went in the bedroom and shaved before leaving. I couldn’t believe her because this is someone who was too devastated to eat so where could she have gotten the strength to shave herself,” he said.
Chapwasha told the court that the suspicion of his wife’s infidelity came out in the open when one evening she left her phone and a strange man called.
After being queried about the strange man, his wife said he had just called a wrong number but after being pressed, she said the man was just a laboratory technician from the University Teaching Hospital with whom she was friends.
However, after an investigation, Chapwasha discovered that the man in question was in fact a single teacher at Woodlands A Basic School and was a neighbour of his wife’s elder sister.
Chapwasha told the court that a further investigation revealed that when his wife left home to attend her sister’s funeral, she never stepped her foot at the house of mourning but instead was moaning in her boyfriend’s bed the whole time.
“I asked her about it and she had nothing to say, instead she started sleeping in the kitchen. She then began sneaking out to meet the same man each time I was at work and her elder sister was the one supporting her. Her family is in support of her acts that one day after I shouted at her for her behavior, her entire family came to insult me. I tried to make this marriage work for the sake of our children but she never wanted it to work,” he said.
However, in her defense, Bweupe said she still loved her husband and wanted the marriage to work for the sake of their children.
“My husband is very insecure. He would never allow me to spend too much time at the market. If I do, he could call me a prostitute and that I was practicing prostitution just so I could share the money with my elder sister, just because we would drink together. If we divorce today, I cant even keep my children because am just being kept by my parents too,” said Bweupe.
And in passing Judgement, Magistrate Bertha Zulu upheld the claim for divorce with no compensation awarded to either party. Households goods and properties acquired during the course of their marriage to be shared equally, while the children’s custody was given to their father who they have stayed with during the separation, with the mother being granted reasonable access during holiday.
By Buumba Mwitumwa
Kalemba March 18, 2024
