Cheating wife beats up hubby for exposing affair

GETTING cheated on is one of the most devastating and damaging things that can happen in a person's life.

It becomes even worse when that partner who is cheating on you becomes abusive as punishment for exposing his or her unsavoury shenanigans.

Such is the case of a man from Ntabazinduna in Matabeleland North province who claimed he was enduring physical and mental abuse at the hands of his wife and her alleged lover, a senior police officer based at ZRP Ntabazinduna Training Depot (name supplied).

Joachim Mushayavanhu claimed he was living in paranoia because of his cheating wife Apolonia Chabata Mushayavanhu who regularly beat him up as punishment for exposing her 10-year extra-marital affair with the senior cop in question.

Joachim who initially didn't want to share his pain with B-Metro fearing people would laugh at him is also living in constant fear of landing in jail after his wife's lover threatened him with arrest for exposing their affair. With pain inscribed all over his face Joachim shared his frustration saying he was in a situation that none would ever want to experience.

"My wife is cheating on me with a senior police officer and she is always beating me up as punishment for exposing the affair. They are always phoning each other in my presence and sometimes the police officer comes to our house to pick her up.

"As if the cheating is not enough, my wife physically abuses me badly during arguments and keeps hitting hard.

Whenever she hits me, I don't hit her back because she always wants to look like a victim.

"Another reason I don't hit her back is because of her lover who is always threatening me with arrest," said a devastated Joachim.

He said the senior cop had also on several occasions told him that his wife was finally his and that he should forget about her. Joachim said it was difficult to process the thoughts and emotions that come with his wife's cheating and abuse.

"I'm not sure if this was a marriage or a battleground. All these forms of abuse are done as a way of fixing me.

Whenever we have a quarrel, she phones her lover who then sends his juniors to threaten me," he said.

Joachim adds: "I didn't want to share my pain with anyone because I knew no one will believe me and I'd be made fun of. This is how our society is.

"However, what made me to come out of the shell are the events of 6 October 2021. On the day in question and at around midnight my wife wanted to kill me using an axe. This was after she had beaten me all over the body with knobkerries. While assaulting me she was shouting on top of her voice saying she was not even afraid of going to jail in the event that I die as a result of the attack".

He further said at the instigation of her lover, his wife approached the Bulawayo Civil Court and sought a protection order against him barring him from confronting her so that she could carry on with her love affair.

Contacted for comment Apolonia hung up the call soon after this reporter told her he was from B-Metro.

Meanwhile, as the nation marks 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence (GBV), running from

November 25 to December 10,'s Joachim's situation is a testament that although domestic violence befalls mostly women, men are victims too.

There is a need to acknowledge that while GBV has always been characterised by female victimhood and male perpetration men can be docile too and they also can feel suffocated and be abused.

Research has shown that cases of intimate-partner violence (IPV) in which the perpetrator is female and the victim is male are rarely reported, and in some communities the traumatic act is not even recognised as inherently violent.

Male victims of domestic violence who report the cases are perceived as lacking machismo identities and may be perceived as fundamentally damaged.