Suspended High Court judge Justice Erica Ndewere on Monday withdrew an urgent High Court chamber application she had filed a few hours earlier, challenging a decision of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) to ask President Emmerson Mnangagwa to establish a tribunal to investigate her for misconduct.
In her application challenging the JSC’s decision to ask Mnangagwa to establish a tribunal, Justice Ndewere accused Chief Justice Luke Malaba of pursuing a personal vendetta after she ignored an illegal order by him to rule in a certain way in a bail application. Her notice of withdrawal read:
The applicant, hereby, files a notice of withdrawal of the urge chamber application and tenders costs.
In her chamber application, Justice Ndewere had cited Mnangagwa, Justice Malaba, Judge President George Chiweshe, the JSC and Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi as respondents. She said:
It is unclear to me why the second respondent (Justice Malaba) is working with a common purpose to have me brought before a tribunal when they have clearly failed to comply with the Constitution and the code.
I am also concerned that I am being unfairly treated by CJ Malaba and the JSC. In my view, the second respondent is victimising me for refusing to follow his unlawful instruction which he issued in August 2019 in connection with a bail matter I handled that month.
This is why even before I had explained in June this year, CJ Malaba told Judge President Chiweshe to tell me that he wanted to take me to the tribunal.