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Raymond Jaravaza, Showbiz Correspondent

HE still calls her his rose – a symbol of love and passion and coincidentally her real name is, in fact Rose.

This is how the soon to be 96-year-old Phosiwe Mukandla relates to his wife.

Seated next to him on a reed mat is Rose, listening attentively as her husband narrates how they met. She is 10 years younger than Phosiwe.

“I married into royalty, she is the daughter of Chief Matema who ruled the Nyamandlovu area at that time. During those days courtship was very important. A bachelor had to prove to the girl and her family that he was serious about marrying her and everything had to be done according to tradition.

“Dating just for the sake of sexual relations outside of marriage was unheard of,” Phosiwe tells Saturday Leisure.

The couple is seated outside a hut at a homestead in Wabayi Village in rural Gwanda where they are visiting their married daughter.

Born in June, 1924, the old man is turning 96 years old in June. People his age have gone through World War 2 (1939 to 1945), have walked on the same Earth’s surface that bore witness to some of the most horrible disasters such as the Hiroshima — the human engineered catastrophe that befell Japan in 1945. 

For a woman who did not have the opportunity to attain even basic education, Rose’s memory with dates and finer details of events is quite impressive. Her hearing and mental faculties are just as sharp. 

“I was 16 when we got married. It must have been around the year 1950 and soon after, I had our first child, a boy. Blessing my husband with a baby boy was the best gift because in our culture, a man needs a son to continue his legacy when he passes on,” says Rose.

The couple solemnised their marriage in 1954 and Rose still remembers every detail like it was yesterday. 

“We did none of that white wedding stuff that young couples rush into nowadays. Ours was a simple ceremony koMsiteli with family and friends where our marriage was solemnised,” she says.

KoMsiteli is an informal name for the Registrar General’s Office.

“He paid 1 pound (British Pound Sterling) as pride price, which was a substantial amount of money at that time, but my parents were not the sort of people who placed so much value on material things. They just wanted their daughters to be married to descent men and be happy,” she recalls.

The couple did not live together permanently for the first few years of their marriage. Phosiwe worked for a white family in Bulawayo as a gardener while Rose stayed in the Nyamandlovu area where the young family had settled on a small piece of land handed over to Phosiwe by his family.

During those days, men worked in the towns and cities while the wives raised children in the rural areas.

“I cycled to Nyamandlovu every other weekend to be with my wife and kids. The white family that I worked for would give me time off from work on Fridays afternoon to Sunday evening to be with my family.

“Life was much simpler then, men worked hard to take care of the family while their wives stayed in the rural areas taking care of children and livestock,” said Phosiwe.

At some point during the conversation, the Saturday Leisure crew itself had an impromptu lecture from the old man on the virtues of life.

“Young men of today think womanising is something to be proud of. A man must respect his wife and the same goes for the woman, for any marriage to last. I chose to marry my Rose and made a vow before God that death shall do us apart”.

As if sensing what the next question would be, Phosiwe continues: “Divorce was taboo when we got married, but nowadays you hear every day that so and so have divorced. What has happened to keeping the family unit intact for the sake of the children no matter what problems a couple might face during their marriage,” he asks rhetorically.

Their marriage bore seven children and their first-born son, born when Rose had just turned 17, is turning 70-years-old this winter.

All their children, now adults with their own families, are still alive.

“We’re blessed to have lived long enough to see our grandchildren and great grandchildren. They live in different places, some work in Gwanda and others are in South Africa and we always look forward to their visits,” said Rose.

Recently, a Bulawayo High Court judge bemoaned the high rate of divorce cases being recorded in the City of Kings. A total of 673 divorce applications were received between January and December last year in Bulawayo alone.

Although the figure is a sharp decrease compared to the 820 in the previous year, the rate of divorces especially among young couples and newly-weds still remains a cause for concern for the courts. Lawyers who handle divorce cases however said they are witnessing a sharp drop in divorce applications since the introduction of new tariffs as many couples cannot afford the charges.

“Looking at the new tariffs that have been introduced by the Law Society of Zimbabwe where a plaintiff has to part with $18 000 for an uncontested divorce, it automatically becomes a contributory factor when we look at the decline in terms of the number of divorce cases,” said Bruce Masamvu of Mutatu, Masamvu and Da Silva Gustavo Law Chambers.

According to the latest Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) tariffs, fees for an uncontested divorce cases shot up by more than 100 percent from $7 200 to $18 000 for the plaintiff. A defendant in an uncontested divorce case is obliged to part with $12 000. Most couples are instead opting to go for counselling instead of divorcing.