The Sunday News
Sandra Tekere, Sunday News Reporter
ONE man, two wives and one matrimonial bed. This is exactly the scenario a family in Mwenezi in Masvingo Province has been living under where a man who is married to two wives has been sleeping with both women on the same bed, forcing the other to witness every time he is intimate with the other.
As if that is not enough, some of his children also sleep on the floor in the same room.
This came to light when the 36-year-old man appeared in court for bashing his second wife whom he was accusing of deliberately nudging him, disturbing his sex session with the first wife when she had woken up from the bed to attend to her child who was crying.
Hillary Oliver Mapepa told Mwenezi magistrate Mr Honest Musiiwa last week that he assaulted his second wife because it was the first wife’s duty to have sex with him, so she became jealous and deliberately decided to disturb them.
Mapepa was convicted and sentenced to pay $25 or 10 days in prison while two months were wholly suspended for five years on condition that he is not within that period convicted of an offence of a similar nature.
The State’s case as presented by the prosecutor, Mr Willard Chasi was that on 3 January this year at around 8pm, Mapepa who shares the same bed with his two wives was having sexual intercourse with the first wife while the other wife was sleeping next to them.
It was the State’s case that it was when the second wife’s baby who was sleeping on the floor cried, that she woke up and in the process accidentally nudged her husband, who was in the act, with her elbow.
This did not go down well with Mapepa. It was the State’s case that Mapepa got furious and withdrew from the sexual act and started assaulting the second wife.
He slapped her on the face while shouting obscenities, accusing her of being jealous and disturbing his intimate moment with his first wife, something he said the first wife never did when the complainant “was on duty”.
Mr Chasi told the court that the second wife took her baby and ran to report the incident to the police, leading to the arrest of Mapepa.
Mapepa pleaded guilty and asked the magistrate to be lenient on his sentence as he was a family man.
