Marvelous Moyo Gwanda Correspondent
A GWANDA woman who was caught trying to smuggle mbanje into Gwanda Prison where her husband is incarcerated has been ordered to perform 140 hours of community service.Chiedza Ndlovu, 21, of number 361 Marriage Quarters in Gwanda Town pleaded guilty when she appeared before magistrate Sheila Nazombe yesterday.

“Your Worship, I am so embarrassed by my actions and I am appealing for your leniency because I have a one-year-old baby that is still breastfeeding.

“Iam appealing to the court to fine me or sentence me to do community service,” said Ndlovu.

Asked whether her husband, Bian Mlilo ate sadza laced with mbanje, she said someone who was coming from prison where her husband is incarcerated for stealing gold ore at Jilongwe Mine told her that her husband had asked her to bring him some mbanje.

The magistrate sentenced Ndlovu to four months imprisonment which were wholly suspended on condition that she performs community service at the Gwanda Magistrates Court starting next Monday.

“Do you want to follow your husband  to prison?” asked Nazombe before passing the sentence.

In passing sentence Nazombe said it was fortunate that alert prison officers managed to discover that there was mbanje stuffed in the lunch that Ndlovu had brought to prison.

The magistrate said instead of encouraging her husband to take dagga, Ndlovu should be urging him to depart from bad ways and reform.

“In prison he is supposed to be rehabilitated, reformed but you are working against that by taking the drugs to him.  You should be helping to change your husband’s way of life so that by the time he comes out of prison he would be a changed person,” she said.

Ndlovu went to the prison at around 10am carrying a lunch tin containing sadza with beef mixed with vegetables meant for her husband.

Alert prison officers on checking the parcel found five twists of mbanje wrapped in a plastic stuffed in the food. The matter was reported to the police leading to Ndlovu’s arrest.

Getrude Zvidzai for the State  said the five twists weighed 10 grammes.

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