The Chienge law-maker is not only in love with Forum for Democracy and Development (FDD), but she is also in love with the man of her life, Lawrence Mwelwa, vice-chancellor of Chreso University.
As South African songbird Yvonne Chaka Chaka says in her song “Every woman needs a man”, Given also needs someone to share her heart with.
However, to have Lawrence as her husband did not happen like abracadabra, neither did Lawrence start by writing countless love letters to prove his sincere feelings for Given. Of course, if writing a love letter like many did in school in the olden days was the only way to catch the attention of the woman he admired, he could have found the right big words to impress her, even if it meant risking his letter being set ablaze if she did not love him.
But thanks to the cellular phone revolution, a simple international business call by Given to Lawrence set the ball rolling. She was then based in South Africa running Shimweo Investment as chief executive officer. “It started with me,” Lawrence recalls, rather nostalgically. “I was looking for someone to develop our university students’ hostels. One of the church members at Gospel Outreach Fellowship gave me her email so that I could talk business with her,” he says. Given’s company was about to develop Zambia Open University students’ hostels in 2011 when Lawrence seized the opportunity to push in his business plan for Chreso University.
“When she received my email she called me that same evening. It was at that moment when I said to myself that at the end of business this woman would be my wife,” Lawrence says. As CEO of a construction company, Given did not have any idea that a business call to cut a deal for the development of students’ hostels at Chreso University would end up building her marriage to Lawrence. Having stayed for 15 years as a single mother after her divorce from her first husband, she did not consider marriage as a priority and coming back to Zambia was not in her mind.
“I had a bad divorce with my first husband. Marriage was not in my mind. I got married when I was 24 and at 29 I got divorced after five years in marriage. Because of that background, I did not think of getting married again. I wanted to concentrate on my business and possibly relocate to Europe,” Given says.
After her divorce, she focused on raising her two daughters, who are now permanent residents of South Africa. The older one is 23 and the younger 20. But as the saying goes, ‘No condition is permanent’. Given was later to find true love in Lawrence. “We arranged to meet in November that same year. She came from South Africa with some of her business partners from the US, and we had a business discussion at one of the hotels in Lusaka,” Lawrence says.
“When we met, it was just business,” Given says. “We started communicating on business matters only until 2012, when we became friends.” But for Lawrence, winning Given’s love was not easy. He recalled that at one time she got upset when he first asked her if she had a boyfriend. Of course, his idea was to find out if she was available.
“Despite her getting upset over my question, I kept communicating with her. I was very persistent. I kept asking her to marry me, but she kept saying no. She said I was younger than her,” he says. Asked why she got upset when Lawrence wanted to find out if she had a boyfriend, Given said her background of living in male-dominated environments had an influence on how she reacted to certain comments.
“I told him that it was none of his business. I know that to him it might have sounded rude, but it is just that I have always been found in male-dominated environments where as a woman you have to show that you are not weak,” Given says. Call it playing hard to get, she agreed to marry Lawrence in 2014 after her sister convinced her to look at Lawrence’s proposal beyond business.
“He was very persistent. He used to send me text messages around 05:00 hours. Initially, I thought he was younger than me, but I later discovered that at that time he was 50 years old and I was 44 years old,” she says. Given could have settled for another man, a medical doctor as her husband, but her daughters felt Lawrence would make a good step-father.
A divorcee himself, with five children from his first marriage, Lawrence did not mind marrying someone with children already. “Even today my daughters tell me that I could have missed a good husband and step-father. I knew that he was a divorcee, and I used to defend his former wife. I told him that I know how men are, sometimes they blame it on us women.
“But eventually I gathered information about him and concluded that he was genuine,” she says. Like most mothers do, Given became fond of Lawrence’s son from his previous marriage and, like her daughters, he played an important role in making his father blend with the woman who was later to become his step-mother.
“ When I visited his [Lawrence’s] home one day, his son asked me if I was going to come back. He insisted that I promised him when I was going to come back,” she says of her 10-year-old step-son.
If it was not a prediction of Given’s return to Lawrence’s home, her step-son made sure his father’s dream of marrying the businesswoman became true. “I visited her family in September 2014 to pay dowry. I was very excited when she agreed to marry me. I wanted the best wedding. We arranged to have the wedding at Taj Pamodzi Hotel. Although it was costly, God made a way. We had a colourful wedding,” Lawrence says.
Ordinarily, one would have expected Given to insist on having a white wedding but, to the contrary, she did not want to have a white wedding because she thought they were too old for that.
“I did not want a white wedding at first. But he insisted that we should have a white wedding. At one point, my family wondered why he was in a hurry to have a wedding. Maybe he thought that I was going to change my mind,” Given says.
Asked why he was in a hurry to marry Given, Lawrence said: “I was in a hurry because I had stayed too long without a wife after my divorce with the first one.” However, the couple admitted that it was difficult to understand each other in the first few months of their marriage. But their dedication to prayer helped them mend their differences. They are both members of Gospel Outreach Fellowship under Pastor and Mrs Reuter, who are their role models.
“We came from being independent and I needed to catch up with being a husband. My wife felt I did not have time for her because I was always busy with work from the office. This upset her. But I realised I needed to change because I wanted to marry her and that she was a good woman,” Lawrence says. A lot of blending for the couple happened when they both decided to get involved in politics in the run-up to the 2016 general elections.
They both belonged to the ruling Patriotic Front (PF) but changed camp to FDD when Given’s bid to stand for the seat in Chienge on PF’s ticket failed during adoption stage.
“I was not adopted by PF. At that point, FDD called me to stand on their ticket because I was already on the ground campaigning. I accepted the offer four days before nominations. My husband encouraged me to take the offer.
“He said what was important was having my name on the ballot paper,” Given says. Although it was her first attempt to stand as MP in Chienge, Given developed interest in politics during the formative years of Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) in the 90s. “I was 19 years old when I developed interest in politics. I was moved by the suffering of most people in my home village in Chienge. At that time I was working for Zambia Consumer Buying Corporation (ZCBC) in Ndola,” she recalls. Lawrence funded his wife’s campaign and single-handedly trained polling agents. In short, he was her strategist.
“My husband did everything for me. I did not know anything about elections. He had to sell his car, a Jaguar, to fund my campaign. He bought an X-trail 4×4 to help me move around on the rough terrain during my campaign in Chienge,” she says. “I think that, as a couple, we felt that we needed to contribute to national development and, by Thursday night on polling day, we knew that my wife had won the seat in Chienge,” Lawrence says. Given says she owes her success in the 2016 elections to her husband, who gave his all for the sake of his love for her.
Now that the political campaign pressure is over, she intends to work together with her husband to revive her business. “Working together during campaign period helped us know each other better. We are working together to uplift the lives of vulnerable people in society,” she says. Although the project to develop Chreso University students’ hostels is still under-way after securing funding, Lawrence is happy to have killed two birds with one stone through the business deal he reached with Shimweo Investments.
Given says every good thing her husband has done for her reminds her of her daughters’ words that she would have missed a chance to marry a good man if she had refused Lawrence’s proposal.
But like they say, every woman needs a man, and it is no secret that every politician falls in love.
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