‘Toy gun’ kills 19-yr-old marriage
By Charles Musonda
A 19-YEAR-OLD marriage has ended in divorce because of the husband’s failure to perform his bedroom duties for seven years due to lack of erection.
The Matero Local Court did not have a choice but to dissolve the marriage after the wife, Rebecca Mtonga, complained bitterly that Felix Chunga’s erectile dysfunction had persisted for the last seven years.
Mtonga told the court Chunga had been refusing to seek medical treatment.
“Your Honour, my husband has been refusing to go to the hospital for help. Despite all the efforts we have made to cure him, he continues to refuse,” she said.
Mtonga, 41, of Lilanda Compound, lamented she was now tired of washing human waste passed by Chunga in his trousers and on bed linen whenever he was drunk.
She said Chunga forced himself on her without a proper erection, which caused her a lot of emotional torture.
Mtonga said Chunga married her in 2007 and they have two sons and a daughter aged 19, 15, and nine between them.
“I want a divorce because my husband’s manhood has been dead since 2019. We have tried to go to many people to seek help, but nothing has changed, and he refuses to go to the hospital,” she said.
“I am also tired of washing poop of an adult, and it is very embarrassing to the children. If he had been sick, I would have understood. But all this is because of alcohol which he drinks a lot, and I don’t know the type he drinks,” Mtonga said.
In his response, Chunga accused Mtonga of being short-handed.
He said she did not want to share money, while whenever he had he could give her.
“My wife refuses to give me even for a drink. She is short-handed. And when I complain, she says all that she has told the court,” Chunga said.
He said at one time she accused him of mysteriously causing the death of her boyfriend in a road traffic accident.
Chunga said he would not fight for a marriage that died a long time ago.
“Please, allow her wishes,” he said.
Delivering judgment, Justice Harriet Mulenga said courts no longer forced people to continue in marriages which they were not happy with.
She said at the age of 47 years, it was unacceptable for Chunga to mess up his clothes and bed linen.
Justice Mulenga said it was acceptable for Mtonga to seek divorce for lack of proper conjugal rights in the marriage because at 41 she was at her peak, sexually.
“…and that is the prime age when she needed good lovemaking. Her blood is still running,” she said.
It was unfortunate that at his age Chunga was still renting a house yet wasting money on alcohol, which had wrecked his marriage.
Justice Mulenga granted the couple divorce and ordered Chunga to compensate Mtonga with K19,000, beginning with K1,000 and thereafter K500 monthly, and to give her another K1,000 monthly for child maintenance.
