THE High Court has struck off the roll a case in which former first lady Grace Mugabe, pictured, was challenging a ruling by Chinhoyi magistrate Ruth Moyo to uphold Chief Zvimba’s order to exhume the late former President Robert Mugabe’s remains.
This comes as Tinos Manongovere, credited for initiating the current court proceedings, approached the court through a joinder application requesting to be included in the current High Court case.
The High Court concurred that Manongovere must be granted an opportunity to be part of the proceedings as he started the saga.
Grace was demanding that the High Court grant an order nullifying a ruling by magistrate Moyo and Chief Zvimba —Stanley Wurayi Mhondoro — which stated that Mugabe, who was interred at his Kutama rural home in Zvimba, be exhumed and reburied at National Heroes Acre.
“I wish to submit that the delay by the provincial magistrate in giving her legally flawed response to legal practitioners is extremely prejudicial to me and to the justice delivery system.
“Her subsequent refusal to review the Community’s Court’s decision is an indication of her unpreparedness or unwillingness to dispose of the matter and that is clearly infringing on my rights of equal protection before the law and my constitutionally entrenched right to a fair hearing,” Grace submitted.
In his application, Manongovere averred that Grace had a made a glaring omission by not citing him in the High Court proceedings.
“What totally surprised me is that the applicant did not bother to cite me as a party to the proceedings despite the fact that the rules of the court require that I should be cited.
“I was a party in the Magistrates Court and I deserve to be heard before this honourable court makes a decision which adversely affects me,” Manongovere submitted.
He added that Grace was under the authority of Chief Zvimba by virtue of burying her husband in the communal land.
“Because the applicant chose to bury the deceased in her house at Kutama village, Zvimba which is a communal land, she naturally brought herself under jurisdiction of Chief Zvimba, the third respondent in this matter.
“Third respondent is constitutionally recognised and empowered to resolve disputes amongst people in their communities in accordance with customary law,” Manongovere averred.
“To my utter shock, even though the proceedings in the Community Court relate to a claim against the first respondent by me, the applicant deliberately failed to cite me in her application to set aside the judgement of the third respondent.”
