I Will Not Divorce Him, Cries Abused Lusaka Wife

A LUSAKA woman says even if she faces so much abuse at the hands of her husband, she would not want to divorce him.
This was heard before Justice George Kaoma in a case in which,Humphrey Chileshe, 33, of Chongwe sued Melody Zulu, 27, also of Chongwe for divorce.
The court grudgingly granted divorce and slapped Chileshe with a compensation fee of K7 000
Chileshe told the court that the two have been married since 2006 but problems intheir marriage started in 2011when he received a text message from a woman around 19:00 hours, making Zulu suspicious.
He said Zulu is so jealous that she began to insult some of his female workmates suspecting them of having affairs with him.
“I was forced to take her back to her family for counseling but after she came back home, nothing changed,” he said.
If anything he said, she stopped washing for him and appeared to be getting into a depression, a situation which scared Chileshe.
He said one day, he was washing his car with Zulu when a female friend of his approached him and they started chatting.
But she got incensed and said, ‘don’t you know what you were just doing makes me jealous’?
With that, Chileshe decided they divorce for fear of the worst happening to either of them.
And in her statement, Zulu said in 2011 Chileshe had a trip toChina, but before he travelled he received a call from a woman.
When she asked him who it was, he told her to check the name which was a man’syet the person who had been speaking with him was a woman.
Zulu said Chileshe’s action made her suspicious as she wondered why he could be talking with a woman yet save her number under a man’s name.
She said after Chileshe came back from China in 2012, one day on her way to the market she saw him talking with a certain woman whoupon seeing her ran away.
At home, Chileshe told her he was sure that after what she saw, she would conclude that was his lover, Zulu said.
“You are so jealous that you’ll remain just bones,” he said.
Zulu said on another occasion, she found in his phone the number of the very woman who had run away after she saw her chatting with her husband.
To make matters worse she said, she found another text message from her.
She said her husband’sbehaviourhas tortured herand when she asked him why he keeps communicating with the woman, his response could have sent her to her grave when he said, “that lady is not my girlfriend;if you saw my girlfriend, you would collapse”.
Zulu said this year in February, he had taken her back to her family for marital counseling after which he took her back to their home but they only had sex once in March and April she complained.
She said sometime in June when the two were chatting at their home, she noticed he wore some nice looking Addidas.
“I asked him where he bought them, but he beat me so badly and threw away my clothes. He also told me to go back to my parents but I refused,” she said.
Zulu said she has been finding text messages on his phone from different women but he would tell her she had no right to question him as she is not his mother.
She said he told her if she was not ready to be in polygamy, she should le