Businessman in $8k maintenance row
A Harare- based businessman is apparently on a warpath with his in-laws after he allegedly defaulted paying spousal maintenance to his estranged wife for over four years leading to the arrears ballooning to $8 100.
Blessing Munetsi Masedewe, proprietor of Gammatec Inspection Services is entangled in a bruising maintenance dispute with his estranged wife Manyara Masedewe who is accusing him of neglecting her by failing to pay $150 per month towards her upkeep while splashing money on his alleged mistress Celestine Tshuma.
Manyara said Munetsi’s failure to pay maintenance was a deliberate move to ‘fix’ her after she slapped his lover – Tshuma – with an $8 000 adultery suit.
She said in a bid to avoid paying the money, Munetsi quickly filed for divorce claiming their marriage had irretrievably broken down to the extent that there were no prospects for the restoration of a normal marriage relationship because the parties were no longer intimate.
According to court documents in possession of B-Metro, Munetsi is likely to be charged with contempt of court emanating from his failure to settle $8 100 in maintenance arrears.
“I am the applicant in the maintenance case M809 /12 whereas my husband Munetsi Blessing Masedewe is the respondent.
“He was ordered by the court to pay a monthly maintenance of $150. He defaulted paying for 54 months that is from January 2012 up to date.
“He is now in arrears of $8 100. I am seeking assistance from the court since I am now a destitute and owing people a lot of money,” reads Manyara’s affidavit which she submitted at the Bulawayo Maintenance Court on 10 April 2017.
In an interview Manyara told of her ‘anger and frustration’ against the police handling her case.
She said it was almost a month after she took the stamped affidavit from the court to Bulawayo Central Police Station acknowledging Munetsi’s failure to settle $8 100 in maintenance arrears but no action had been taken against him.
She said whenever she approached the police officers dealing with the matter it would be a sad story of “we will phone you once we get hold of him”.
“I don’t know why the police are taking so long to arrest him after I took the stamped affidavit from the court acknowledging that Munetsi failed to settle $8 100 in maintenance arrears. Whenever I inquired from the officers handling the case they always promised to phone me once they got hold of him,” she said while adding that she was in need of $3 994 to undergo an operation.
Explaining how their marital problems started, Manyara said: “Problems started in 2012 when my husband relocated from Bulawayo to Harare where he was now staying with his girlfriend Tshuma following the death of her husband. I discovered their illicit relationship in 2013 when I busted them together in a car here in Bulawayo.
“What pains me is that Tshuma is my former classmate and I am the one who introduced her to my husband.
“My husband in a bid to cover up his adulterous relationship with Tshuma, was buying our two children, whom he was staying with, in Harare’s silence by spoiling them with gifts and money,” said Manyara.
She further said her husband was also threatening to sell their matrimonial house so that she would be a destitute.
Contacted for comment Munetsi, who was initially forthcoming, later hung up his mobile phone when this reporter told him he was from B-Metro. B-Metro
