Thirty-four (34) villagers from Zvishavane’s Mudereri Village have lost part of their ancestral land after it was sold to FBC Building Society by the Runde Rural District Council.
FBC has started developing the land to create a residential suburb and the villagers claimed that the financial institution did not notify them beforehand.
The villagers then tried to seek the court’s intervention to prevent the conversion of their ancestral land into a residential suburb.
In their court application, they cited the Local Government Ministry, Runde Rural District Council, Zvishavane Town Council, Chief Masunda, Zvishavane Rural District Administrator, and the FBC Building Society as respondents.
However, High Court judge, Justice Siyabona Paul Musithu, ruled that the villagers were trying to deceive the court and threw out the application.
The judge noted that there was an existing court order granting respondents authority to carry on, hence his court could not make another ruling on the same issue. Said Justice Musithu:
There was therefore clearly no reason why a claim involving the same parties and same cause of action had to be split.
Such an approach leads one to reach the conclusion that some mischief was intended.
The mischief behind the splitting of the claim is not difficult to decipher. It was meant to deceive the court.
If those matters were placed before a different judge one judge could be persuaded to declare annexation of the plaintiff’s lands by the defendants unlawful.
The plaintiff’s claim be and is hereby dismissed.
The villagers initially approached the court in 2020 after their land was put under the Zvishavane Town Council by the Minister of Local Government and Public Works.
In response, the RRDC, Zvishavane Town Council and the FBC Building Society had filed a special plea, arguing that the matter should be dismissed as Justice Clement Phiri had already dismissed a similar application that the villagers had filed before. | NewZimbabwe.com