Online Reporter
Fidelis Munyoro
Chief Court Reporter
A YOUNG medical doctor, who was impregnated by a lover she claims promised to marry her before their relationship collapsed, will receive a US$6,300 compensation for damages and financial strain.
The High Court rejected Nancy Fungai Tsuro’s claims that Tinashe Francis Mupindu had committed himself to marrying her but ordered him to contribute towards pregnancy-related expenses for their child.
It emerged that Mupindu even had two children, with other women, during the course of their four-year relationship and he has three other children with other women.
A relationship which was supposed to end at the altar ended in the solemn halls of the High Court, where love, betrayal and broken expectations were dissected under the cold light of the law.
In a judgment that reads like the unravelling of a modern romance, the High Court in Harare dismissed Tsuro’s claims that Mupindu broke a promise to marry her.
The court heard how Tsuro believed she had found a life partner in Mupindu after a four-year relationship that blossomed from an online dating platform into what she described as a committed union.
According to her testimony, Mupindu not only proposed marriage but encouraged her to conceive a child as proof of their future together.
She told the court that in October 2021, the couple visited her aunt and uncle carrying groceries, a gesture steeped in Zimbabwean cultural symbolism, where Mupindu allegedly declared his intention to marry her in December.
For a brief moment, the future appeared painted in warm colours: wedding plans, family introductions and the anticipation of a child.
Then came the heartbreak.
Tsuro said she later discovered that Mupindu was involved with other women and had fathered children during the course of their relationship.
The promise of marriage, she claimed, vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.
She spoke of humiliation, lonely hospital visits, emotional anguish and abandoned dreams.
She told the court she spent savings meant to establish her own medical practice caring for the pregnancy and even turned down a job opportunity in Namibia because she trusted the promise of marriage.
But inside the courtroom, romance collided with evidence. WhatsApp messages became the silent witnesses in the case.
Line after line of digital conversations was poured over by the court in an attempt to determine whether there had truly been a binding promise to marry or merely emotional conversations between lovers navigating an unstable relationship.
Justice Fatima Maxwell found the evidence lacking. “The totality of the above evidence and the WhatsApp chats produced in evidence lead to the conclusion that, on a balance of probabilities, defendant (Mupindu) did not promise to marry the plaintiff (Tsuro),” ruled the judge.
The court noted inconsistencies in Tsuro’s version of events and questioned why certain WhatsApp exchanges appeared incomplete or selectively presented.
One particular message suggested the visit to the aunt and uncle had been intended to announce the pregnancy rather than formalise marriage discussions. Justice Maxwell observed that while cultural gestures such as visiting relatives with groceries may traditionally signal marriage intentions, the surrounding circumstances in this case painted a different picture.
“The law requires more than just love or dating,” the judge said. “There must be a serious, mutual intention to enter into a legal marriage.”
Mupindu, meanwhile, painted a portrait of a turbulent relationship marked by repeated break-ups and reconciliations.
He admitted to discussing marriage but insisted he never genuinely intended to marry Tsuro and felt pressured by the conversations.
In one striking detail, which hung heavily over the proceedings, the court heard that Mupindu had five children with different women, two of whom were born during his relationship with the plaintiff.
Yet even as the breach-of-promise claim collapsed, the court acknowledged the undeniable reality at the centre of the dispute — a child had been born, and the burden of pregnancy had largely fallen on Tsuro alone.
Justice Maxwell ruled that Mupindu should share responsibility for the lying-in and pregnancy expenses, ordering him to pay US$1,300 towards those costs, as well as US$5,000 in damages linked to the financial strain suffered by Tsuro during the pregnancy.
Outside the legal jargon and courtroom arguments lies a story painfully familiar in the age of digital romance — where promises are typed in seconds, feelings are captured in screenshots, and relationships increasingly leave trails of electronic evidence that can later become exhibits in court.
What began as affection exchanged behind phone screens ended not with wedding bells, but with a judicial reminder that in matters of the heart, proving a promise can sometimes be harder than surviving its collapse.
