IN recent times, I have been reading with keen interest the Sunday Times of Zambia where there are stories from the local courts concerning cases which take place around the country and these articles make good reading.
The stories, especially those covered by reporters in the names of Munambeza Mwanei and Chatula Kangali in Ndola and Sarah Mwanza and Mwangala Liseli in Lusaka are quite interesting as most of them deal with infidelities committed either by wives or husbands.
This has  lead to divorces after either the wives or the husbands ask the local courts to grant them divorce claiming that their marriages had reached irreconcilable state and they could no longer stay in marriage.
Most of these cases are covered from local courts in sprawling townships such as Lusaka’s Chilenje and Bauleni and Ndola’s Chipulukusu and Kabushi.
For some time, I had been wondering why these cases were so rife in such townships.
Was it that such places were covered more than other areas?
Because of such prevalent happenings in these areas, I decided to pay visits to some of these townships.
The last place I visited was Chipulukusu and it was on a Saturday when I went there.
I have quite a number of people I know in this township.
A few years back, just hearing of Chipulukusu Township sent shivers to many people as the place was associated with a number of crime waves which had reached alarming proportions.
Criminal activities including robberies, murders and rape were so pronounced here that those who came from other townships found it difficult to walk freely in the streets of Chipulukusu.
Mud ram shackles were the common structures for houses.
But with the construction of good houses going on countrywide, Chipulukusu has improved tremendously with those who could afford putting up houses with roofs they describe as Nigeria style doing so.
Even the streets have been improved with the main roads being tarred and this has made life in the once feared township easy.
Market places, shops and drinking premises have also been improved.
Because of this, I found it easy to visit this place.
But because of the friendly atmosphere that I found in Chipulukusu, I was wondering why there were so many court cases concerning infidelity and divorces here.
While I was pondering this, I remembered a man I was called Bapongoshi (in-law) who resided here. I got my cellphone and called him and luckily, he was home and I asked him to join me at a place I had settled, to keep me company.
It took about 15 minutes for the man to come to the venue. Soon, we were having our drinks – me, my favorite Windhoek lager and him, some Mosi lager.
As we were drinking and chatting, there came three men who greeted Bapongoshi. Realising that I was left out in the greetings, the in-law quickly introduced me to the three men and one of them bought a round of lagers including a Windhoek for me, before they settled on the stools behind the counter.
Then one of them cleared his throat before he commented: “It is too much. Last time she picked up a fight in a bar and accused someone I did not even know that she was my girlfriend and there was a terrible fight that she together with the woman she accused of being my girlfriend ended up in police cells.
“Now she sleeps out and claims that she was at a funeral. This is too much embarrassment and I cannot take it anymore. I have to divorce her,” the man was apparently addressing the colleagues he had come with.
As the eavesdropper, I knew there was something here for my ears.
What could have happened? What woman accused the other woman of being this man’s girlfriend to end up in a fight and police cells? I wanted to know.
But Bapongoshi was the one who asked the man what had happened this time around. Apparently he knew the background of the story.
The man picked his beer and had a long swig before he put the bottle on the table and again cleared his throat before he said to Bapongoshi whether he remembered the last time he had reported how his wife was locked up in police cells after fighting in the bar and Bapongoshi agreed and explained to me in detail what had happened on that fateful day long after we had parted company with those three men.
For the sake of you, I will also explain what had happened.
It was about three years ago and what happened was that, this man who was working night shift at a company in Ndola, had knocked off from work around midnight and found that his wife who had a nine-months old baby girl had been arrested by the police after she left the baby with her seven-year old son to go and drink at a bar in Chifubu Township in Ndola.
When he entered the house, the man found the baby wailing uncontrollably despite being comforted by her seven-year-old brother, who was the oldest child at this home.
The man asked why the baby was crying like that and where the mother was. The boy who was apparently tired of trying to stop the baby from crying told the man that the mother had left home a long time ago and a neighbour had come to inform him that his mother had been arrested by the police for fighting and assaulting someone at the bar.
After the child explained this, the man went at the neighbour’s house to get the correct information.
After knocking at the door, his neighbour, who was seemingly expecting him, asked whether he had been to the police station, but the man told his neighbour that he had just knocked off from work and he did not know what was happening.
It was then that his neighbour explained to him what had happened.
When leaving the house, the woman told her son that she would be coming back in no time and he should look after the baby in case she woke up and started crying.
At the bar, the woman came across a good looking woman who was drinking beer in company of two other women and a man.
The woman approached this good looking woman and accused her that she was going out with her husband.
Surprised, the woman explained that she was a mistaken identity because she had just come from Solwezi in North Western Province and this was her second day in Ndola.
But the woman insisted that she was the one who was her husband’s girlfriend.
The woman from Solwezi pleaded with the suspicious woman that she did not know her husband or any other man around and the man she was drinking with at that time she had been approached was her brother in law while the other two women were her cousins.
It was from this that a fight ensued and the man’s wife hit the other woman with a bottle in the head.
Fortunately, the bottle did not break otherwise it was going to do a lot of damage. It was quick action by the neighbourhood watch which saved the situation by arresting the two women and taking them to the police station.
After his neighbour explained this, the man, with the crying baby clutched in his arms, rushed to the police station.
At the station, he explained to the officer on duty why he had come. The officer asked him to identify his wife and he saw his wife who was reeking of beer.
The officer showed him the other woman who was accused to be his girlfriend, but the man was seeing this woman for the first time in his life and he pleaded with the officer to release his wife so that she could breast feed the baby but the officer refused to release only his wife but both women and this would only be in the morning at 10:00 hours after he paid admission fees for both of them.
At 10:00 hours in the morning, the man went back to the police station and paid the admission fees for the two women.
The other woman vowed that she was going to sue the woman for implicating her but the man pleaded with her and paid her a lot of money for her to withdraw the case.
Meanwhile, when the man was handing over the baby to the mother, the baby refused to be taken by her mother. When the mother produced the breast to feed her, she refused and cried for her father. That is how that baby stopped to breast feed.
Three years after that incident, the woman was at it again – this time she went out drinking and never came back home until the following morning.
It was because of this that the man had come to Chipulukusu to see the parents of the woman who were staying in this township to inform them that he was divorcing their daughter.
He told Bapongoshi, who I later came to know to be the uncle to the man, that he had gone to his home but was told by his aunt that he was here and that was why he had come here to pick him so that they could go together to his in-law’s residence to discuss this problem.
“Uncle, this is too much and I can’t hold it anymore. When I knocked off from work at night on Friday last week, I did not find my wife home. When I asked the children where their mother was, they told me she left home around 18.00 hours,” explained the man.
He said he decided to go to the police station to go and check may be she could be in police cells again, but she was not there.
The man explained that his wife came back the following morning with her eyes red from too much beer drinking.
“When I asked her where she had been, she told me she was at a funeral but this was not true because she was seen jumping on someone’s car from the bar on that night,” lamented the man.
He said there was no reason why he could not file for divorce because there was no doubt his wife was not honest with him.
After finishing their beer, the four men, including Bapongoshi, left to see the man’s in-laws.
I remained alone wondering why such things were happening. I finished my beer and also left.
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