Man of Wusakile township in Kitwe caused laughter in the Garneton Local Court last week when he openly wondered why his ‘girlfriend’ had sued him for divorce when he had never married her.

Testifying in a case where Sally Muzemba sued him for divorce, Elasto Mambunda, a Tanzanian national, said he had never married the woman.
He told the court that he had a wife where he came from and that Sally was his girlfriend at one point but he now wanted to leave her because of her bad behaviour.

Mambunda testified that Muzemba had been luring him with gifts and offers of money for capital despite being well aware that he was a married man.
He said he told Muzemba that he could not manage to run a polygamous marriage but she had been imposing herself on him in the name of love.
Mambunda said he had never introduced Muzemba to any of his relatives or paid bride price to her relatives and wondered how she could sue him for divorce when she was not his wife.

“I have never married Sally. I just knew her from the containers where she used to buy me beer and invite me to her home,” he said. But Muzemba insisted that Mambunda was her husband and that he had even paid bride price through her uncle. She said she had been dating Mambunda since 2011 and that she had helped him in so many ways.

Muzemba complained that Mambunda had wasted her time because everyone in her township and at her workplace knew that she was married.
She said initially, her stay with him had not been formalised but that last year, he paid K100 to her uncle when he visited them.
Garneton senior presiding magistrate Mutono Banda