By GRACE CHAILE LESOETSA
OUR father never paid dowry for Ms Edith Nawakwi and he always refused to do so while he was still alive, one of his children, Mulundu Hambulo has said.
Malundu adds that a day before their father, Geoffrey Hambulo, was buried, Ms Nawakai’s family insisted that he would not be put to rest until dowry was paid to signify the existence of marriage.
He alleges that Mr Hambulo started living with the step-mother from 2006 when he divorced the mother, Ms Georgina Daka, but he never re-married after that.
In this matter, Forum for Democracy and Development president Ms Nawakwi has sued in the Lusaka High Court her step-children, Mulundu and Mweemba Hambulo, seeking an injunction restraining them from acting as administrators of the estate.
She stated that her husband who died on December 5, 2021, due to complications from prostate cancer left a will.
She seeks an order to revoke the letters of administration of the estate of her late husband granted to the step-children.
The applicant is seeking an order to deem the document dated April 20, 2018 and its subsequent amendment made in November 2020 as the will left by her late husband. In the alternative, the court orders that Mr Hambulo died intestate and the provisions of the Intestate Succession Act Chapter 59 of the laws of Zambia should apply and Ms Nawakwi should be the administrator.
However, in a document opposing Ms Nawakwi’s application for an interim injunction, Mulundu disputed claims by the applicant that a Will was found on their father’s laptop.
He instead stated that it was the husband of their step-mother’s friend, a Mr Mugala, who mentioned at the burial church service that their father had left an unfinished Will. They have also objected to the proposal of a family elder to represent the interest of the six children saying they are not minors and hold different professional qualifications.
The respondent alleged that Ms Nawakwi has been sidelining them from the time they obtained letters of administration.
Mulundu stated that she has been preventing them from accessing their father’s over K20 million estate to enable them carry out their duties as administrators.
He stated that the document Ms Nawakwi had submitted to court as the purported Will is incomplete as it is three paragraphs shorter than the documents shown to them on the material day.
Mulundu claimed that all the children had a good relationship with their father thus it was shocking that the purported draft Will contained insults directed at them.
