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with a 37-year-old Cameroonian man after he failed to produce an original certificate of clearance from his home country.
The 47-year-old legislator appeared before Masvingo provincial magistrate, Mr Jabulani Mzinyathi, requesting him to solemnise her marriage to Prorais Pentecote Ayina, a Cameroonian who was visiting the country for the first time.
Noting that the couple resided at Number 46 North Hampton Crescent, Eastlea in Harare, Mzinyathi questioned the reason for travelling all the way to Masvingo to solemnise the marriage.
Masaiti explained that she hailed from Bikita district and the people who she wanted to witness the marriage were in Masvingo city and surrounding areas.
She further explained that her husband-to-be had relatives in Masvingo who were part of the group of people supposed to witness the marriage.
On scrutinising the clearance certificate that Ayina produced, Mzinyathi noted that it was a scanned document when the Marriages Act stipulated that foreigners should produce original documents.
Mzinyathi then declined to solemnise the marriage.
Sources close to Masaiti said the legislator was embarrassed to wed a foreigner publicly who was 10 years her junior hence the bid to secretly marry him in Masvingo where few people knew her.
Contacted for comment, Masaiti dismissed the assertions saying she was not embarrassed about anything because she was marrying an adult who could consent to marriage to anyone of his choice.
She said she also did not feel bad that the magistrate had refused to solemnise her marriage to Ayina.
“This is our country which has its own laws. These laws are supposed to be followed by everybody and all he (magistrate) wanted was to ensure that we had fully complied with the laws of the country before solemnising our marriage,” she said.
Masaiti said people should not politicise the issue because it was purely a legal matter.
“People must not politicise this issue because I have a political life and a social one. The two are not related,” she said.
Amendments to the Marriages Act were made to curb the prevalence of marriages of convenience and the infiltration of the country by criminals, especially those dealing in precious minerals.
Last month, the Job Sikhala-led MDC-99 secretary for information and publicity, Aaron Muzungu, was fined $200 (or four months imprisonment) for facilitating a South African woman, Sharon Theresa Bester, to enter the country.
Bester was arrested when she accompanied Muzungu, who was dealing in diamonds, to meet his clients in Harare. — New Ziana.
Online Reporter