Lusaka woman faces divorce over suicide threats

A THIRTY-THREE-YEAR-OLD man of Lusaka’s Ng’ombe Township has asked the Matero Local Court to grant him divorce from his 25-year-old wife who has allegedly been threatening to commit suicide.
Boniface Camulambe told the court that his wife, Mary Manda, had on several occasions threatened to take her life and kill the couple’s two children after accusing him of having extra-marital affairs.
This is in a case where Camulambe sued Manda of the same area for divorce after the two failed to resolve their marital disputes.
“I don’t have money to bury my wife together with my two children if she commits suicide, it is better that you separate us so that she can do that when she is at her parents’ house,” he said.
Camulambe said Manda had failed to understand that he was working at night some times as she locked him out when he came back home late from work.
He said his wife once told him that the couple’s first born child was not his, hence she would make him drink poison before killing herself.
But in her defence, Manda told the court that his husband was a womaniser who would leave her family without food for days.
“I love my husband and I don’t want the court to grant us divorce. May be as time goes, we would learn to tolerate each other and stay in harmony,” she said.
But when passing judgment, magistrate Petronella Kalyelye, sitting with Lewis Mumba, granted the two divorce saying that they would not force the man to stay in a marriage where he claimed he was not happy.
Camulambe was, however, ordered to compensate his wife with K3,000 as well as K200 per month as child maintenance.