In one of his songs, local dancehall crooner Winky D sings in the vernacular Shona:

“Usapindire Church kufadza vavakidzani. Kana kupindira Church kutsvaga mudikani. Mumba maBaba chimboita zvimwe zviri nani”.

The above lyrics which can be roughly translated to mean that ‘it is not advisable for one to go to Church to seek earthly love’ ring true to a Bulawayo man who escaped jail by a whisker after he was sued by a woman he so loved and pestered for the 2 years he has been a congregant for Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Christopher Jackson (34) will forever rue his insatiable obsession for Recine MacCurry (30), which saw him joining the latter’s chapel and later being arrested for pestering her with a bouquet of flowers and love cards while putting her on his WhatsApp statuses.

Instead of attracting her with his confidence, Jackson hoped to be liked for being a Christian guy but he was disappointed when MacCurry told him she was even not interested in him despite having joined her church for about two years.

But, after realising that MacCurry had no passionate feelings towards him, Jackson is said to have started stalking and bombarding her with tens of thousands of disturbing and offensive text messages for over a year.

This was despite the fact that MacCurry had clearly and repeatedly told him that she no longer wanted to talk to him.

And, fed up by Jackson’s doings, MacCurry reported him to the police and he was subsequently arrested for contravening Section 88 (a) of the Post and Telecommunications Act Chapter 12:05.

Appearing before Bulawayo magistrate Marygold Ndlovu, Jackson was fined $1 000 or alternatively spending 10 days behind the bars.

Without any shame, Jackson told the magistrate that he joined Jehovah’s Witnesses in the hope of winning MacCurry’s heart.

“I attended Jehovah’s Witnesses with the complainant for about two years and I had an interest in her. That is why I joined Jehovah’s Witnesses but she rejected me and I ended up insulting her. I also got emotional after I heard stories that she went to bars with other people,” Jackson told the court.

MacCurry, in a bid to stop Jackson’s “disturbing obsession”, again approached the Bulawayo Civil Court and sought a restraining order against him.

In her papers she stated that besides repeatedly texting her, Jackson was also assassinating her character by lying to her church mates that she was sleeping with various men.

state media
additional reporting: Zwnews