Anonymous caller wrecks ZAFman’s marriage
By Charles Musonda
ZAMBIA Air Force (ZAF) officer Joseph Phiri has refused to reconcile with his wife Priscilla Tembo because he no longer loves and trust her.
Phiri told a court another man had claimed to be the father of their first born son.
Phiri told Boma Local Court magistrate Bertha Zulu all had been well after they married in 2008.
They lived in peace despite their minor misunderstandings over food, laundry and their relatives.
He said the major problem started on February 15, 2026, which was Tembo’s birthday.
Phiri said he received a call from another man who claimed that he was the father of their first born son son and that Tembo was aware.
The caller asked Phiri if Tembo had told him about it.
He said the unknown male caller narrated events in their marriage exactly as they unfolded and that he got Phiri’s phone number from Tembo, 37, and that he had kept it for 10 years before he called him.
Phiri said the unidentified caller was even aware that the boy had been expelled from school when he and his friends were caught smoking cannabis and that Phiri had managed to enroll him at another school.
He said the caller was also aware that Tembo had travelled to Lusaka back from Chipata where she had joined Phiri when he relocated to be near his ailing mother.
The caller told Phiri that Tembo and him even met while she was in Lusaka.
Phiri said when he raised what the caller had told him with Tembo demanded to know who the boy’s father was, she said it was him (Phiri).
Tembo told him she did not know the other man who had called him.
He said the caller had called him on several occasions to meet him and his wife but whenever Phiri travelled to Lusaka from Kitwe where he is doing tertiary bible studies, the man never showed up at agreed venues.
Phiri said later he was summoned by his superiors at ZAF Headquarters where he played the recordings of the phone conversations he had been having with the stranger in the presence of Tembo and her twin sister.
He said he later sent Tembo to her parents pending a meeting with the stranger to resolve the matter.
Phiri refused to reconcile with Tembo saying he does not want her and cannot trust her again because of the disturbing phone conversations he had had with the caller.
Giving her side of the story, Tembo said Phiri was still her husband and the real father of her children.
That was the reason for which she had sued him for marriage reconciliation.
She said Phiri had chased her from their matrimonial home for no reason at all.
Magistrate Zulu advised Phiri to do a DNA test with the boy.
She said it was a pity he had chosen to trust the stranger he had never met more than Tembo his wife, the person he has lived with for 18 years.
She advised either of the two to sue the other for divorce since reconciliation had failed.
