A SOUTH African woman on Thursday launched a court bid to stop Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's wedding on Saturday.
Tsvangirai's marriage to Elizabeth Macheka was already uncertain after Locardia Karimatsenga, another of his former conquests, filed her own objections on Wednesday.
A magistrate is due to hear the two petitions later Thursday – just two days before Tsvangirai's planned garden wedding ceremony at a Harare lodge.
Nosipho Regina Shilubane claims Tsvangirai proposed to marry her after they were introduced by her pastor - Lazarus Muriritirwa - in Johannesburg in September 2009.
In her affidavit, she claims Tsvangirai took her on holidays to Singapore, Botswana and the Seychelles where they romped WITHOUT condoms.
In January last year, she says Tsvangirai drove to her house in Buccleuch, Johannesburg, where he declared he “wanted to be serious with me and throw me in the kitchen”.
“In February 2011, Morgan proposed and asked me to marry him and he indicated that he wanted to have a wedding ceremony and wed me in Zimbabwe. He told me that he would speak to our pastor for all the wedding arrangements,” she says in her affidavit.
“I accepted his marriage proposal and I told him that he needed to pay lobola as per our Tsonga custom. He promised he would do that and he tasked me to go and speak to my family to arrange a date which I did and was set for early 2012.”
But she says in January 2012, amid media stories about Tsvangirai’s bed-hopping, he had started “acting funny”.
“When we got to January 2012, my family convened and waited for Morgan to come for the lobola negotiations he failed to come for the customary marriage ceremony because he said he had to deal with government business as the Prime Minister so he would reconvene the date when he was free and he indicated that it would be the end of December 2012.”
She said “for all the intents and purposes we have and are still engaged to be married” and was “therefore shocked to discover that Morgan intends to marry another woman Elizabeth Macheka on Saturday, September 15, 2012, without my knowledge and without first of all finishing issues with me – that is his proposal of marriage, engagement and his outstanding lobola negotiations and marriage to me.
“We are still very much in love and as such I object to granting of a marriage licence. I am legally advised, which advice I take as my own, that I can object to the issuance of a marriage licence in terms of Section 19 (1) and 19 (3) of the Marriages Act [5:11].”