THE LEGEND OF ROSEMARY KAPENTA
amorous advances to women they didn’t know, more so if such women were young and strikingly attractive! A ravishing beauty would be standing there and a man would go nowhere near her – not because he feared to be spurned by her, but…
Indeed, one of the country’s national newspapers at the time, the ZAMBIA MAIL (forerunner to the present-day
Zambia Daily Mail), even offered a 500 pound reward to anyone who produced this mysterious ghost girl!
From press reports, it appeared that poor bachelors were in big trouble; for they happened to be Rosemary’s favourite victims.
Just imagine: an unsuspecting motorist would stop for this cute chic thumbing for a lift by the roadside.
She would beam into a lovely smile and the motorist, having been swept off his feet by her beauty, would begin kissing and caressing her as they proceeded on their journey.
Suddenly, the young beauty would ask her newly acquired “lover” to stop so that she attended to nature’s call….and the next thing the man discovered was that he was lying on a grave in the middle of a cemetery or the girl would just disappear into thin air before his very eyes, leaving him nonplussed.
Then came the news that Rosemary had invaded Lusaka. How she journeyed to the capital from Ndola was quite conveniently not discussed or disclosed.
The police in Lusaka had this to say: “We have heard rumours about the girl being in Lusaka. But we are doing everything to dispel these rumours.”
But five families in Lusaka’s Old Chinika Compound told the ZAMBIA MAIL to have seen the ghost girl who had brought so much misery to the bachelors of several Copperbelt towns.
The MAIL first heard about the report from a “highly reliable source.” It dispatched its reporters to Chinika immediately. And this, in their own words, was the story the
ZAMBIA MAIL reporters were told:
On the night of Saturday, May 21, 1966, at about 08:30 hours, a strange-looking girl went to House No. B112, Chinika. Two young girls lived there with their parents. They were Rosemary (figure out for yourself) who was aged 14 years and Catherine, who was 11 years old.
The strange girl knelt politely and asked for a cup of water. Catherine gave her some water. The girl then asked for fire. Catherine obliged. The stranger dipped a piece of burning charcoal into the water and drank, after which she started chewing the charcoal.
At the same time, the strange girl took the remaining water and poured it over her head. Catherine and Rosemary claimed they did not see the water dripping from her head.
Then the strange girl said to the two girls: “Do not fear me. I am Rosemary, the girl you have probably heard about. I came from Ndola. I am looking for the man who killed me, nothing else.” So saying, she disappeared…
She re-appeared and repeated her performance at B66, where a Mr Remember Sakala, the owner of the house, told the MAIL team that she had ended up with: “I am Rosemary, the girl you have read about in the newspapers.”
She visited three more homes in the compound. At her last stop, she told the family that she was visiting a bar in the second class trading area.
Police were later called to Chinika but they found that the girl had disappeared as mysteriously as she had appeared. Similar reports were received by the MAIL from other areas of the capital.
As the news of the mysterious ghost girl spread, a spokesman for the Office of the President assured the public that there was no substance in the “Rosemary story.”
Commenting on the activities said to be those of Rosemary, the spokesman said that none of the reported activities of the ghost girl could be substantiated nor could the source of the rumour be traced.
And referring to an allegation that a policeman lost his teeth after kissing the woman in a car, the spokesman said police had been unable to obtain any information whatsoever of the incident.
Meanwhile, the ZAMBIA MAIL was later to report in its issue of May 26, 1966: “The 500 pound reward offered by the ZAMBIA MAIL to anybody who produced Ndola’s ghost girl, Rosemary, is unattainable. Rosemary is too elusive for any mortal to catch.”
The comedy of the situation was that it later transpired that the “Rosemary Kapenta” story was after all a creation of a man who was found asleep one morning in the cemetery near a Masala beerhall in Ndola, the scene from which the Rosemary story originated.
According to investigations by the ZAMBIA MAIL, the man picked a girl from the beerhall but because he had “one too many,” he fell asleep. Naturally, the girl left him there.
The next morning, the cemetery caretaker was surprised to find the man still sleeping off the previous night’s enjoyment. He was questioned about the circumstances of his predicament and, apparently for want of a more plausible explanation, gave the caretaker the “Rosemary Kapenta” story….
The Heinrich’s Syndicate employee was but just one of the many “victims” of the mystery girl nicknamed Rosemary Kapenta of Ndola who was reported to be on a manhunt for a boyfriend who had killed her so that she would avenge her death.