He only stays faithful when he’s broke, Lusaka woman testifies
By Charles Musonda
A LUSAKA woman has told the Matero Local Court that her marriage only knows peace when her husband is broke and jobless because the moment money lands in his pocket, he wastes no time shopping for a new wife.
Febby Phiri, 29, of Lusaka West told the court that her husband Raymond Zulu, 32, had a habit of changing women as casually as he changes clothes.
Phiri testified that Zulu’s habit was driven by his obsession with fathering a child given that the couple had failed to have one together despite her suffering four miscarriages during their six-year marriage.
Phiri told the court that Zulu even had a child with another woman and continued to use the couple’s childlessness as justification for his infidelity.
“He has found another woman, she called him and when he answered she started shouting at him, I was just seated next to him. He talks to other women in my presence. If he is not working that’s when there is peace. It got worse in 2024 when he found another woman. He beat and squeezed me by the neck. When his aunt came to visit, she found me swollen and when she asked him why he was beating me, he didn’t say anything and just drove off,” Phiri said.
She testified that when she resolved to pack her belongings and walk out, Zulu locked her inside the house against her will.
Phiri told the court that Zulu would lie about going away on company trips while he was in fact sneaking off to spend time with other women behind her back.
Phiri told the court that Zulu blocked her number on WhatsApp while simultaneously flooding the platform with pictures of himself posing with another woman and her family, captioning the posts to show that she was the woman he intended to marry.
She told the court that the final and most humiliating blow came when Zulu dispatched his aunt to collect her belongings and dump her at her parents’ home without any financial support, telling her he would come back for her when he returned from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
In his defence, Zulu said Phiri had lacked for nothing under his care.
He testified that he asked his aunt to return Phiri to her parents simply because he could not continue paying rent on a house he had vacated and had no idea when the instability in the DRC would allow him to return.
“I still lover her but if she wants divorce it’s fine,” Zulu said.
When Justice Ngoma urged Phiri to give her husband another chance, she flatly refused, telling the court that he had put her through hell and that she was done.
The court granted the divorce on the grounds that the marriage had irretrievably broken down, ordering Zulu to compensate Phiri with K11, 000, payable in monthly instalments of K2,000.
