Victims of domestic violence are overwhelmingly women because they tend to experience more severe forms of violence than men globally.

And domestic violence is among the most underreported crimes worldwide for both men and women due to social stigmas, especially in developing countries. However, the vice has led to devastating consequences in Zambia, to the extent of death in some cases.

Zambian politician and pastor, Nevers Mumba, took time to share some of the reasons why Zambia has in the recent past recorded a lot of passion killings, especially involving young couples.

“I think that we can identify two reasons that can be the causes for couples to kill each other. Mind you, every honest couple at some time when they are offended do think to say, if I had my way, I would shoot my partner and that’s emotional. But really, money and extra marital relationships are usually at the forefront of these intended emotions. First of all, money has its ways whether you are the one making it or not. Those who have a lot of money become greedy and think that they should get more from their husbands to do whatever they want. But then they find that their husband has got another lady who is also getting benefits from that money so that is when women move in to say ‘it’s either I have it all or no one is going to have it’ and that’s when those things happen,” Pastor Mumba explained.

The MMD leader who actually featured with his wife Florence on Diamond Television’s Art of Marriage programme also noted that extra marital relations were very emotional because “sometimes couples really do invest so much in each other and then you discover that someone is drinking water from the tap they never created, so those things are all reasons why those emotions exist where couples now start to kill each other.”

“So even when things happen such as unfaithfulness, money mismanagement, you have to sit back and say “alright life has hit me so how do I move forward?” And you will be shocked that if you can resolve, some of the marriages that have now become strong are those that have gone through all these negatives to the extent that they should have closed up a long time ago but they chose to hang on,” said Pastor Mumba.

Meanwhile, Mumba’s wife, Florence observed that most of the young couples were failing to succeed in marriage because of lack of being content with their possessions.

“I feel that we don’t have enough mitigation in our relationships and particularly in Lusaka. I say Lusaka because having grown up on the Copperlbelt, it (Lusaka) has extreme pressure where people feel they have to keep up the high rentals and we have to keep up with appearances. So because of that, it creates pressure even in my own husband and I have to be supportive when I realise that my husband is struggling to make ends meet instead of adding to the pressure, I must be the helper who is giving help to say how do I solve this? So that he doesn’t feel so pressured,” said Florence.

“Well, even I would blow up if I have sacrificed so much to keep the family together. So we’ve got to understand that those kinds of unfaithful acts can create a very bad tension in a couple and that could lead to them killing one another. So I think that we should look out for our young couples, we see a lot of pressure even with my own children that we didn’t experience while living in Kitwe with not so many demands on our lives. I see them trying to keep up and trying to look for the solution of wealth and its not even real because money in Lusaka has an illusion of being real and it’s not real. So these children are chasing a dream that is actually not even attainable. We have to say ‘okay you need to mitigate your dreams,you need to bring your expectations to a believable place and then it will take the two of you to create this life that you want’.”