MARRIAGE FROM ‘HELL’ ENDS
Written by Millennium on May 8, 2019
VICTORIA KASANGA writes
A Ndola housewife has told a local court that she cannot stop taking alcohol and patronising drinking places because her husband met and married her from a bar.
She said that in their relationship, her husband was the one taking her out to drink in bars.
Betsheba Hangoma 28, said this in her statement when her 39-year-old husband, Steven Kabushe, sued her for divorce.
The case was before Kabushi Local Court presiding magistrate Mildred Namwizye sitting with Evelyn Nalwizya.
He told the court that he married his wife in 2017 and had one child together while dowry was not paid.
Kabushe said when his first wife died, he met Hangoma in a bar who jokingly asked him to marry her so that she could look after his children.
He said when he married her he knew she was drinking but after they married, he asked her to stop taking alcohol.
“I told her to stop going in bars to drink alcohol with other prostitutes and that I would be buying for her to drink at home but she does not listen,” he said.
He said from the time he married her, she did not behave like a married woman and that her dress code was immoral.
In her statement, Hangoma said they lived well when they got married until in 2018 when her husband started to flirt with other women.
She said what hurt her the most was that her husband did not tell her that he was on ARVs when he married her and just kept it a secret until she was in the same condition as him.
“I don’t see how he expects me to stop taking alcohol because before he married me, he found me in a bar and he even made arrangements of marrying me from a bar,” she said.
She said it was difficult for her to reason with her husband because his twin sister was always involving herself in their marriage.
Hangoma said there was no way her husband could condemn her drinking habits because he was worse than her as he drunk carelessly to the extent that she would carry him on a wheelbarrow.
She said the only reason he wanted to divorce her was because he had another woman he wanted to marry and that was the reason he did not take dowry to her family.
But her husband argued that whenever he tries to control her, she beats him and she had broken his leg twice.
“She has refused to stop interacting with her old friends and now it has become worse as she has even started sniffing insunko with her friends and I don’t like women who sniff,” he said.
He said he had tried to talk to her family members but no one was of help because they did not recognise their marriage.
Mr Kabushe said he wanted to take dowry after his wife was transformed into a good woman but now that she was not changing, he decided to divorce her.
In passing judgment, the court could not grant divorce as the two were not married but were just cohabiting and the case was dismissed.
