LUCY PHIRI writes
A 20-YEAR-OLD woman of Lusaka lost a case in which she was seeking compensation for insults after the court ruled that she shared the blame with the person who had insulted her.
Chelstone local court presiding magistrate Kennedy Mwansa Mutale sitting with senior local court magistrate Charity Milambo threw out the claim after establishing that Melody Chishiba of Ng’ombe Township had invited the insults Michel Lwando showered on her.
Chishiba had sued Lwando in the Chelstone Local Court claiming compensation for insults and threatening words.
She told court that Lwando started insulting her in 2016 when he started a love affair with her husband.
Chishiba said her husband had proposed love to Lwando and that she had accepted the proposal when she knew that he was a married man.
“My boyfriend came to propose love to me saying he was single and that he had divorced his wife a long time ago,” she said.
“I was just shocked when a woman who claimed to be his wife came to me insulting saying I should stop going out with her husband, and openly told her that he wasn’t her husband because he had divorced her,” Chishiba said.
She said Lwando had been threatening to kill her if she continued going out with her husband. I became pregnant for him and the insults worsened. I remember at one point she came to curse my pregnancy, that I would not deliver a baby who was alive. Shockingly, my baby died in the womb after I stayed for three days in the labour ward,” Chishiba said.
“My boyfriend told me he wanted to marry me and paid dowry (nsalamu) to my parents saying he didn’t have any other woman,” Chishiba told the court.
In defence, Lwando said she came to know about all this in 2017.
She said in 2015 she went on separation with her husband but she used to go to his house to get some money for the maintenance of their children.
But Chishiba always taunted and insulted her.
“We are on separation with my husband, not divorced, but the thing is whenever I go to his house to get some stuff for my kids her so-called girlfriend insults me with her friends, and I always tell her to go ahead if she wants him so that she tastes what I tasted as well,” Lwando said.
And the key witness, who is Lwando’s husband, denied his alleged girlfriend, Chishiba, in front of the court saying he didn’t know her.
He said she only knew his wife.
Chishiba’s witness, who is her sister, told the court that the man had paid nsalamu and that even the family knew him.
In her submission, Chishiba told the court that she wanted Lwando to be given some discipline so that she stopped insulting her.
But the court found out that both women had contributed to the quarrels because they had both been insulting each other and using bad language.
“Claim dismissed. Both exchanged words, and both should stop threatening and insulting each other. After all the man in question is not the husband of any of you because he did not pay dowry to either party,” magistrate Mutale said.
He advised Chishiba and Lwando to live in harmony.
