VICTORIA KASANGA writes A Ndola housewife has told a local court that her husband’s relatives chased her out of her matrimonial home and threw her belongings outside the house. She said her mother-in-law and other relatives visited them to establish the kind of problems they were encountering in their marriage and ordered her to leave. Alice Thabo 25, of Twapia Township had sued her husband Bimbo Simwando, a 35 year old business man of the same township for divorce which was granted. She told the court that they got married in 2015 and had one child. She painfully narrated before a packed courtroom that from the time they got married, they have never lived well with the husband because his relatives used to mistreat her. Thabo said when she was pregnant, her brother-in-law disrespected her to the extent of telling her and other people that the pregnancy was not from her husband. She narrated that when she delivered, her brother-in-law started telling people that the child did not look like any of the family members and accused her of having a child with another man. She said when her husband found a new house, she shifted into her own house but even there her husband still could not provide for her. The case was before Kabushi Local Court senior presiding magistrate Agnes Mulenga sitting with Mildred Namwizye and Evelyn Nalwizya. Thabo said when her mother in law came to visit with her relatives they settled elsewhere and did not want to stay in their house. She said her mother-in-law told her husband that they were not living like a normal couple. Thabo told the court that her mother-in-law insisted that they should divorce even before she and other relatives who came to visit could leave. Thabo said when her husband returned and heard about what his relatives had told her, he sided with them and gave her K300 kwacha for transport. He insisted that she should leave there and then. She said she refused to leave, but her husband’s relatives came in number, packed her belongings and threw them outside. In his statement, Mr Simwando said when they got married they lived well for a short period and started having problems. He said whenever he did not have money they used to argue and fight a lot.
“In 2017 my wife hit me with a stick when I asked why she spends most of her time at her neighbours. She does not respect me or any of my relatives,” he said.
He said she refuses to make love with him and that he just forced himself on her all the time and when he asked her why she behaved like that, she told him to marry another woman. In passing judgement, the court granted divorce on grounds that the husband’s relatives had involved themselves in the marriage.
The court ordered the man to pay K300 per month as child maintenance and to share properties equally.
