13 Oct 2016

President of Raphalane Customary Court in Jwaneng, Mr Nkaelang Lekgoa, has expressed concern about cohabitation conflicts in diamong mining town.

In an interview, Mr Lekgoa said they had recorded several cohabitation related cases in the past few months.

Although he could not divulge the exact numbers, he said cases that were brought before him as a result of cohabitation were on the rise and they were usually too complicated to deal with.

“People choose to live together out of wedlock and sometimes without their parents’ consent and when problems arise it becomes difficult to involve the parents as they would not have been involved in the first place,” he said.

He said women found themselves in the receiving end because in most cases the man would have an upper hand.

He said in some cases, the man would not tell the girlfriend that he was married.

In that case, the girlfriend would agree to live with the man thinking that she would eventually become the man’s wife but such never materialise.

Mr Lekgoa said the man would eventually ask the girlfriend to leave his house when things between his wife who resides elsewhere get back to normal.

“When such happens, that is when the woman will come to report that her time has been wasted and the sad part is that in most cases, she would be asked to leave empty handed,” he said.

Mr Lekgoa said in his experience as a tribal leader, he had observed that in most cases, the man would ask the woman to move in as he would have the financial muscle to provide for the two of them.

He said things would usually have a rosy start driving to a point where the man would ask the woman to leave her job on the account that he would do all the provisions.

He said that would be when the man would have total control as the woman would have no option but to depend on him entirely.

He said such type of arrangement eventually led to strains in the relationship and the man would want to opt out to the disadvantage of the woman.
 

Mr Lekgoa said when dealing with cohabitation cases, they usually tried to reconcile the couple if there was no third party involved.

“Usually when the reconciliation does not work, we encourage the man to at least assist the woman financially to begin a new life,” he said.

He said even though they tried to lead the couple from an ailing breakup to a more amicable one, the man would be agitated for any kind of terms with the woman.

He encouraged women to avoid relationships with men who might  not have their best interests at heart.

He said women should try by all means to empower themselves and make use of poverty eradication programmes made available to them by government.

He said in cases whereby the couple wanted to move in together, they should consult their parents and do things in a proper manner to avoid undesired repercussions.

On other issues, Mr Lekgoa encouraged youth to refrain from excessive use of alcohol and drugs.

He said there had been several cases of young people between 19 and 25 years who were caught smoking marijuana.

“During such cases, young people usually cite lack of entertainment and employment as their reason for indulgence in drugs,” he said.

He, however, said that should not be an excuse for the youth to engage in alcohol and drug abuse because excessive use of those substances only led to more problems such as criminal activities and other offences.

He said people were usually sentenced to jail, fined money or given strokes for such offences. ENDS