News / Local
Chombo, Chihuri in trouble over Grace Mugabe
29 Mar 2017 at 04:35hrs | Views
Home Affairs minister Ignatius Chombo, Commissioner-General of Police Augustine Chihuri and Lands and Rural Resettlement minister Douglas Mombeshora have been caught up in First Lady Grace Mugabe's Mazowe farm grab as villagers want the trio charged with contempt of court after authorities disregarded a court order stopping the evictions.
Arnold Farm residents were last week granted an interdict barring demolition of their homes and eviction from the farm by the law enforcement agents.
They have again approached the court seeking contempt of court charges against three top government officials, NewsDay reported.
The urgent chamber application was filed last Sunday after the police, despite the existence of the court order, continued with the demolitions, bundled the residents into trucks and dumped them in a bushy area along the Mvurwi Road allegedly to make way for Grace business expansion.
In their application, the residents said the conduct of the law enforcement agents in the unfolding events was "a sad commentary to the status of the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe".
On Friday last week, High Court judge Justice Felistas Chatukuta ruled in the residents' favour and ordered the police to immediately stop demolishing houses and evicting the families from the farm, but the police allegedly scoffed at the court order and continued with their actions unabated.
"The demolitions continued on the 25th of March 2017 and this time the police were forcing the villagers whose homes they had demolished to board trucks.
" The residents would be driven some 35-40km along the Mvurwi Road and dumped in the bush and told to find their way to where they originally came from," the villagers, who are represented by Donsa-Nkomo and Mutangi Legal Practitioners, said in their affidavits.
"The villagers are just dumped in the open, without food, water, or shelter. Our crops and livestock are left at Arnold Farm; our children are still at the schools they were attending since 2000 when we resettled at the farm and now their education is being disrupted."
Added one villager: "I aver that the disobedience of the court order by the respondents is wilful or reckless and also mala fide (in bad faith). There can be no worse form of contempt than to appear before this honourable court and consent to an order which respondent (police) had no intention of respecting.
"The conduct of the respondents in this case is a sad commentary to the status of the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe. As applicants, we had hoped to get relief from this honourable court, but when the orders of the court are brazenly disobeyed, as in this case, then there is no hope for us."
The villagers argue that they had been staying at the farm over the past 17 years before the forced removal by gun-toting police and military personnel.
Arnold Farm residents were last week granted an interdict barring demolition of their homes and eviction from the farm by the law enforcement agents.
They have again approached the court seeking contempt of court charges against three top government officials, NewsDay reported.
The urgent chamber application was filed last Sunday after the police, despite the existence of the court order, continued with the demolitions, bundled the residents into trucks and dumped them in a bushy area along the Mvurwi Road allegedly to make way for Grace business expansion.
In their application, the residents said the conduct of the law enforcement agents in the unfolding events was "a sad commentary to the status of the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe".
On Friday last week, High Court judge Justice Felistas Chatukuta ruled in the residents' favour and ordered the police to immediately stop demolishing houses and evicting the families from the farm, but the police allegedly scoffed at the court order and continued with their actions unabated.
"The demolitions continued on the 25th of March 2017 and this time the police were forcing the villagers whose homes they had demolished to board trucks.
" The residents would be driven some 35-40km along the Mvurwi Road and dumped in the bush and told to find their way to where they originally came from," the villagers, who are represented by Donsa-Nkomo and Mutangi Legal Practitioners, said in their affidavits.
"The villagers are just dumped in the open, without food, water, or shelter. Our crops and livestock are left at Arnold Farm; our children are still at the schools they were attending since 2000 when we resettled at the farm and now their education is being disrupted."
Added one villager: "I aver that the disobedience of the court order by the respondents is wilful or reckless and also mala fide (in bad faith). There can be no worse form of contempt than to appear before this honourable court and consent to an order which respondent (police) had no intention of respecting.
"The conduct of the respondents in this case is a sad commentary to the status of the Rule of Law in Zimbabwe. As applicants, we had hoped to get relief from this honourable court, but when the orders of the court are brazenly disobeyed, as in this case, then there is no hope for us."
The villagers argue that they had been staying at the farm over the past 17 years before the forced removal by gun-toting police and military personnel.
Source - NewsDay
