A man has divorced his wife of 28 years for prioritising kitchen parties and weddings over her matrimonial duties. The distraught man complained in a local court that whenever his wife went for kitchen parties, she always came back around 01:00 hours without caring for him nor the home. Moses Chilufya 46 of new Mushili sued his wife Alice Daka 42, for divorce over marital disputes and the court granted his wish. The case came before Kabushi local court presiding magistrates Agnes Mulenga, Mildred Namwizye and Evelyn Nalwizya. He told the court they got married in 1991 and have five children together while K5 was paid as dowry. Mr Chilufya said he lived well as a family until 2012 when they sold their house in Kitwe and came to live in Ndola. Mr Chilufya said after they sold the house, he gave his wife half the money from the proceeds to start a business. He said in the same year, they started differing as his wife always came back late whenever she went to attend kitchen parties and wedding committee meetings. “Whenever I try to talk to her about her behaviour of coming late home, she gets upset. She removed all her clothes from our bedroom and started spending nights in the guest room,” he said. He said the two were reconciled but she still continued with her behaviour and that since 2012 she completely stopped having sex with him and washing his clothes. Mr Chilufya said he was once involved in a road accident and that his wife said she wished he would have died. Later, he said, she deserted their matrimonial home and started renting a house elsewhere with all the children. In her statement, Ms Daka said she was fed up with the marriage and agreed to divorce the man. Ms Daka said they lived well when they got married but after a year, her husband married another woman and deserted their matrimonial home. She said the two were later reconciled, but the man impregnated her young sister in 1993 and started mistreating her. Ms Daka said when he sold their house in Kitwe, he only gave her a K500 and that it was her young brother who gave her money to start a business because she was suffering in her own house. “When I came back from Mozambique, I found him arguing on phone with another woman and was shouting at her saying he pays rentals and buys her food. When I asked him about it he was upset and threatened to kill me but I got his phone and broke his sim cards,” she said. She said whenever he had money he would abandon his matrimonial home to live with other women and once money finished, he would return home. Ms Daka told the court that on several occasions, she found used condoms in his car and some packets of condoms which were not opened. “I stopped washing his clothes because I felt insulted each time I found condoms in his trousers and from the time I started finding them in 2014, I stopped having sex with him,” she said. She said when he deserted his matrimonial to live with another woman, he told the children that he was going to live a new life. Ms Daka said the husband came back home boasting that it was his house and that there was nothing she could do about it. She said she went to Lusaka for businesses and she was just told that he was involved in an accident and that was when she said she was not going to come back. Ms Daka said she then came back and started renting a house and the children followed her because they did not want to remain with their father. In passing judgment, the court granted the couple divorce on grounds that both the woman and the man did want to live together and that they had not made love for five years.
The court dissolved the marriage and shared the property equally between the two.
