Grace Mudisy had met Charlton Kozanai Aggripa Sithole,
sometime in 2015, while she was working as a teacher, in Botswana.
The two travelled back home in January 2016 to solemnise
their union, with Sithole promising to pay lobola later.
The plan was for the two to prove they were a couple, in
order to ease Sithole’s stay in Botswana, under Mudisy’s permit.
However, Mudisy claims after going through her husband’s
documents at his home in Mutare, she discovered that Sithole, who had presented
himself as a single man, had a pre-existing marriage with someone else.
This meant that Sithole had two marriages in subsistence.
Mudisy recently approached the High Court seeking to
nullify her marriage to Sithole.
She wants a probe into why her husband was allowed to marry
her in the first place.
“I confronted Sithole about the marriage certificate and he
did not deny that his marriage to his alleged ex-wife still subsists.
“It became apparent to me that Sithole was and is still
married in terms of the Marriages Act (Chapter 5:11) and was not divorced.
“The discovery that he is married to another person caused
unrest in our marriage,” wrote Mudisy in her papers.
She claims she was never introduced to Sithole’s family.
“I concluded to myself that I was never his real wife
because he failed to fulfil his promise to pay a bride price for me, in
accordance with our African culture after our civil marriage.
“He never introduced me to his family members as a wife and
only told his mother that I was his friend.
“More-so, he would avoid my parents and siblings at all
costs such that he would sometimes sleep in the car, whenever my father came to
visit us,” she said.
Mudisy moved back into the country in 2018 before
instituting the divorce proceedings last year.
No child was born out of the union.
Mudisy argued that her marriage to Sithole was a nullity
and she must be freed.
“In this regard, my interest is an existing right to free
myself from a marriage which in actual fact is non-existent.
“The only recourse available for me is for this court to declare
my marriage to Sithole null and void,” she wrote. H Metro
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