TILL MURDER DO US PART

Cases of married spouses butchering their partners are increasingly becoming common in the country, especially men killing their wives.Killing a human being is traumatic news to all but when the suspect in the heinous crime turns out to be a loved one, it gets more devastating to family and friends. It is also a great shock to the nation.How does love become toxic to a point that a man finds himself slicing open a woman he vowed to love to eternity? And in such cases, what should happen because under normal circumstances, the husband must lead all the burial arrangements?Which begs the question, should a man suspected to have killed his wife be allowed to decide where his wife should be buried and all other details?Counsellor Kopano Olesitse of Kopano Leadership Centre gives it a "hell no!"“If the cause of death was any other thing, then the husband should be given the respect to decide what they want done with the corpse. But if he is implicated in the death of his wife, then he should not be allowed to decide anything,” Olesitse said.He added that it would not be right for the family and friends to be getting instructions from a man accused of murder on what to do with the body of the person they so much despised to a point of ending their life.However, on the other hand, there are also the in-laws to consider, who during the marriage solemnisation were introduced to their daughter in-law and might want to do the honours of handling burial rites despite what one of their own had done.“They will have to understand the pain that the family of the wife is going through, it will not be about hating them but the right thing to do,” Olesitse argued.Given the rate at which men are killing their wives, the counsellor is convinced that some are just marrying for insurance benefits. That is why in some cases, it has surfaced that some partners hired hit men to kill their spouses for them.And this is why Olesitse feels that there is need to amend the Marriage Act, saying it is very silent on many marriage issues."There needs to be a law that is very clear on what should happen if the spouse is implicated in the death of a loved one. They should not benefit anything, not even get a thebe from funeral policies.“Some partners can be impossible and without shame fight the family for the body because at that time, the case would still be fresh and they would have not been proven guilty," he said.According to the latest police records, 105 people were murdered in 2021 and from that number, 100 victims were women. Moreover, 100 suspects in the murder cases of 2021 were all men, while five were women.In the year 2022, some 158 people were killed and from those, 137 were women victims, while a total of 21 men were killed.Still in 2021, some 671 men were suspects in threat to kill cases compared to seven females who were suspects in similar cases.The police say men are mostly the culprits in cases where women are killed and are quick to hurl threats to kill when provoked.

Explore

More

News

TILL MURDER DO US PART