Blind couple fights over house

By Nomusa Mdukuzi

A BLIND Bulawayo woman is locked in a desperate fight to save her house which her husband wants sold following their divorce. 

Rumbidzai Dliwayo (57), who grew up in an orphanage, was divorced by her husband, Oswald Gwena Nguruve, in October last year after 33 years of marriage.

Now Nguruve, who is also visually impaired, is trying to enforce the divorce decree signed by Bulawayo magistrate Mr Crispen James Mberewere ordering them to share their property equally.

“I grew up at an orphanage without parents and if this house is sold I would be homeless because whatever share I will be given would not be enough to buy another house,” she told Chronicle during a visit to our newsroom.

“I don’t have any other place to stay besides this house and once it’s sold I’d be definitely forced to live in the streets.”

She said efforts to talk Nguruve (62) out of selling the house in Bulawayo’s Entumbane suburb had hit a brickwall.

“I’ve failed to convince him that I’m desperately in need of that house so that he can stop selling it. I wasn’t given enough opportunity to express myself in court,” she said. “I’m desperately appealing for help so that he can stop selling this house.”

Nguruve, who now lives with another woman at Burombo Flats in Nguboyenja, said he had already engaged an agent to sell the house, claiming it was in fact his ex-wife’s idea.

“We always had an argument regarding the ownership of that house since it’s registered under my name. Rumbidzai then suggested that we sell it and share the money equally,” he told Chronicle.

“We went to court where the magistrate ruled that the house be sold and we share the money equally.”

He admitted that they bought the house using money sourced by his ex-wife through the help of the church.

“We used to share rooms but she ended up chasing me away from the house,” he said.

In the divorce order, Dliwayo was awarded a fridge, lounge suite, a table, a two-plate stove, a television set, home theatre, satellite dish decoder and a kitchen cupboard while her ex-husband got a wardrobe, bed, coffee table and a bench. Kitchen utensils were to be shared equally. The Chronicle