"i married a lesbian" a couple reveals sad details of marriage made in hell

By Chedza Simon (The Voice)

June, 2005: Gaborone - Juliet Maboshe, a 30 -year- old hotel manager, and her estranged husband, Lesego Maboshe, 48, related details of their troubled life together in a bizarre public display of emotion that played out like a scene from the Jerry Springer Show.

The couple met in January 2004 at the Grand Palm Hotel in Gaborone. They married at the end of June and separated soon after he brutally attacked her in August. Early this year she filed for divorce. Maboshe admitted that he flogged his wife hard with a sjambok when he found out that her so called nights out in clubs were nothing but an excuse to cheat on him with her lesbian lovers.

"The magistrate's court fined me P5 000 for attacking her, but now I feel I should have really beaten her more to teach her a lesson." The embittered husband also alleged that while he was at the police station answering questions concerning the assault charges, Juliet, who still keeps a set of keys to the marital home although she has moved out, let herself in and stole P12, 000 that he was meant to pay as lobola to her parents." I do not have proof to incriminate her, but I know it's her who did it because she is the only one who has keys to my house," Maboshe claimed.

Asked why he only reported Juliet's alleged theft three weeks ago and not as soon as the money went missing around October last year, the bitter man said: "I wanted my assault case to come to an end first. Now I have reported her and police are investigating.

"I married a lesbian and a thief. I never knew she was lesbian until after six weeks when she started sleeping out. My marriage to her was a terrible mistake, and had I listened to the warnings that friends and family gave me, I would have avoided this mess."

He claimed that two days after the marriage ceremony she slept out, and when he confided in a friend, the friend asked him why he had married a lesbian. A couple of days after that, the man that sold him his wedding rings apparently also asked him why he had decided to marry a lesbian.

"I thought that maybe she practiced lesbianism a long time ago before she met me, so I turned a deaf ear to the warnings, but things began to be clear to me when she started hanging out with lesbians and sleeping out often. "I now know why her favourite topic of conversation was lesbians and gays. She even knew them by name."

Maboshe says theirs was not love at first sight. "We met at the Grand Palm where a friend introduced me to her. She got my contact numbers and before long she proposed love to me. She did the chasing and finally she convinced me to marry her. Now I wish I never met her because our marriage was a sham. "Had I known what she was all about I would not have poured my money down the drain by sponsoring a glittering double wedding for her and her twin sister who got married on the same day as us.

Both Juliet and Maboshe said they were anxiously waiting for the case to come to court, but for different reasons. "I just want the High Court to set a date to hear this matter so that I can carry on with my life," Juliet said. She has denied being a lesbian. "If I was a lesbian I wouldn't have married him. Fact is I have lesbian friends. Some of them are women that I have known since I was a child and I don't see why I should suddenly discriminate against them simply because of their sexual orientation?

"But it really doesn't matter anymore because I am divorcing him. He is a bitter and abusive man and I don't take abuse lying down. "He is a liar too. He tells you and everybody that would care to listen to his sob story that I am from the 'headquarters of hunger and poverty', but how can that be when I am a hotel manager earning a decent salary? I don't even know what I saw in him because he is broke and abusive. I paid rent for his rented place, bought electronics and curtains for the house and now he is holding tight and won't let go of them. Now tell me how does one steal from such a cheapskate?

"The truth is that he is bitter because I am divorcing him and he knows pretty well that he would never find any woman as beautiful as I am again. Ironically Maboshe is contesting the divorce because he says he wants to torture her some more. "It is not because I want her back, but simply to make life difficult for her. I want to teach her that it does not pay to live life as a scheming lesbian."