Husband Snatchers Beware

It seems that people are getting to grips with their mobile phones and making videos to send via Whatsapp. Recently a video has popped up of a woman stripping another woman who she accused of having an affair with her husband. Apparently, this video shows the woman being stripped in the presence of men who decided to take advantage of the situation too. This inhumane mob justice has been noticed by the police and they are after the culprit. However, even after dangling a K5, 000 reward for any information no one has come up with the details. It is either the people of Luanshya are wealthy or they take the mafia code of Omerta (Code of Silence) too seriously, because had it been me that money would have been in my account already.

 

I must confess from the onset that I have not seen this video and I am not anxious to even see it. Therefore, the knowledge I have is what I have read, heard from people who have seen it and also from what I heard on radio when it was played. From the audio that I heard of the incidence, the wife who was stripping the woman was ironically threatening to take the lady to the police. The poor woman could be heard crying in the background while various men hollered at her. The men are also seen pulling out their phones and attempting to get pictures of the whole fiasco. Yes, this woman may have been sleeping with her husband but did she deserve to be treated in such a manner?

This woman in attempting to deal with the "Husband Snatcher" indirectly made an excuse for her husband. She just indicated that he was not the problem but the woman she was stripping. Therefore, instead of dragging him by his feet into the street and shaming him for his philandering ways, she decided to deal with the symptom and not the root cause of the problem. According to what I have heard the husband is nowhere to be seen in the video and goes unmentioned as the humiliated lady is begging for mercy. Does the wife really think that she will be stripping every woman her husband might go out with as a way of deterring them, then she might be stripping a whole lot more women.

 

It is humiliating enough to be stripped naked but then how does one describe the feeling when the video of the incident is floating around social media. In as much as we may be sympathising with the lady, isn't society perpetrating this abuse by casually distributing the video from one phone to another. On the other hand, it can be argued that it is only through the sharing of the video that brought attention to victimisation of the woman. It is through the same Whatsapp that she may have some form of justice even if it may thrust her into the spotlight. We definitely tread a delicate line with social media with all the good it can do, it is also capable of unleashing its venomous evil.

 

In this case, there may be some people who will applaud the woman for her actions believing that the stripped woman got what she deserved if not less. Then there are others like myself who feel that such inhumane degradation should never be applauded in any form or fashion. The person she should be sorting out her marital issues with is the husband. The wife needs to be answerable for her actions. Luanshya is a small town, it is no New York. Surely someone knows her, they just have to be brave enough to break the Omerta.