JUNKIE GRANDPA ASSAULTS WIFE OVER NSHIMA
A SIXTY-one year old man of Lusaka’s Obama Compound has found himself in court after hunger for Zambia’s staple dish, nshima, caused him to unleash fury on his wife with an iron bar and a stone.
Despite Ruth Phiri’s tireless efforts to provide for their family through menial jobs, the 42-year old found herself on the receiving end of a painful and bloody assault after her purse ran dry.
On that fateful August afternoon, James Sichula is said to have returned from a drinking binge and demanded nshima. Ruth, exhausted and resourceless, explained the the home’s empty pantry and lack of funds but the explanation fell on deaf ears.
Enraged and hungry, an innocuous chat over nshima quickly degenerated into vicious argument and when Ruth feared that her husband would turn violent, she took to her heals in fear.
But Sichula picked an iron bar and violently swung it in his wife’s direction, hitting her forehead just above her eyebrows.
“When I was about to walk out of the house, he got an iron bar and hit me above my eyebrow. I shouted for help and ran to my neighbors, who advised me to hide. Whilst running he got a stone and hit me,”Ruth testified before court after her husband was arrested and charged with assault.
Testifying against her violent husband before magistrate Mutinta Mwenya, Ruth said her husband had gone for a drinking spree and like a Lusaka ‘mario’ he demanded for nshima immediately he returned home yet he does not provide money for food.
She said Sichula issued death threats against her saying; she would not leave the house alive.
She told the Court that she reported the matter to the police with the help of her neighbors, as she sustained a swollen eyelid.
“I later went to the clinic, my eye was very swollen I could not see. It is not the first time he was hitting me with an iron bar. He did it in 2012 and I forgave him,”the woman said.
“And to make matters worse, I am the one who provides, he just wants to eat nshima but doesn’t want to provide. When I tell his relatives, they tell me that they are also tired. I have come here so that you help me since he wants to kill me.”
Ruth further disclosed that, not only was her husband violent, he liked exposing his birth suit to the children, as he would always sits in the living room naked, and whenever she asks him to dress up he says his offspring need to know how he was moulded by God.
During cross examination Sichula asked his wife about the crime she committed which led to him battering her and she responded that it was because she did not cook him nshima.
Unsatisfied with the wife’s answer, Sichula clarified that it was over homework.
Asked if she did not pull his family jewels, Phiri asked her husband not make false accusations against her saying; “God is my witness, I did not pull your manhood.”
Trial continues on October 29.
CAPTION: File Photo for illustration!
By Mwaka Ndawa
Kalemba