Zimbabwe's 2 rotten apples

One of life's greatest follies is assuming that what matters to us matters equally to others. That our fears are shared, our desires understood, our sense of decency mutual. Quite the contrary, reality proves stranger. That which disgusts you may delight another. That which you consider beyond the pale may be someone's daily bread, their sustenance.

Still, there are domains - law, ethics, morality - where one foolishly presumes universality, where certain principles seem self-evident. Surely no sane person would defend this scenario: imagine you are at a kiosk, purchasing pies and drinks for your family at a halfway house en route to a holiday. What if another man - perhaps with a more muscular physique and menacing countenance than yours - emerged from his vehicle, seized all the pies and drinks you had just paid for, and proceeded to hand them to his wife and children? Not speeding off to consume them later. Not even wearing a balaclava or sneaking away sheepishly. But sitting there, right beside you, as you watch them enjoy what was stolen from you. This, I believe, we would all consider beyond the pale. Barbaric. Savage. A brazen, crude, vulgar act. Some, in jurisdictions with gun rights, might even say such a person would justifiably be shot.

Yet in recent times, I have found myself in precisely those circumstances - albeit metaphorically.

About two years ago, Advocate Fadzayi Mahere filed a lawsuit against me alleging I had defamed her in a report. I had identified her - accurately, I maintain - as central to the collapse of a businessman's marriage, whose wife decided to leave the matrimonial home with her small children after believing Mahere was having an affair with her husband. Indeed, I possessed authoritative evidence that I preferred not to use but was prepared to if matters came to a head.

When the lawsuit was filed, I thought it frivolous - mere legal theatre designed to muffle the sting of the truth, an attempt to neutralise my revelations. To some extent, it succeeded, as friendly media quickly rushed to trumpet headlines: "Kudzayi Sued for $100,000," "Kudzayi sued." On Twitter, taunts and trolls followed, claiming "she'll take you to the cleaners" and "she'll take even your underwear!"

But for two years, nothing happened. She did not advance the case. This did not surprise me.

Eventually, the matter was struck off the roll for want of prosecution - good riddance to bad rubbish. Or so I thought.

Yet some weeks later, new court papers arrived. Advocate Mahere now sought condonation - a legal resurrection of the suit - armed with a convoluted narrative that largely blamed recent disruptions within the High Court's newly implemented case management system. But this explanation could not possibly justify the extensive period of inactivity before that system was even in place.

The application rested on one particular claim, cunningly introduced in the second sentence of her papers and split across two or three sections in such a manner as to deceive an inattentive reader who prefers to glance rather than peruse. In that crucial sentence, she stated the case had not been abandoned but was "ripe for set down" - for a pre-trial conference (PTC). In another section, she claimed that "what was only outstanding was the set down date," implying this was merely a court administrative function and not her responsibility, and thus the case should never have been struck off.

As I read these snippets sprinkled throughout her papers - crafted to create a mirage of diligence - something did not seem quite right. It took a few days of delving into the High Court rules, tracing the procedural trail, and cross-referencing her claims before the truth crystallised: she claimed she had prosecuted her case up to the PTC stage and was merely waiting for a court date. This alarmed me. I knew she had stopped acting early on. After investigating the mechanics by which a PTC is arranged, I became supremely confident: according to the High Court rules, a pre-trial conference generates a trail of documentation that would have been shared with me. None of this ever happened. Because there was never any such application. I had caught a senior lawyer, an officer of the court, in a lie. A fraud.

I then replied to a letter from her lawyer inviting me to a round-table meeting. I thanked them for writing but pointed out that the foundation of this litigation appeared fraudulent. Acknowledging I was a layperson and might be mistaken, I requested clarification so we could proceed without hindrance.

They never did. They would go on to refuse to address the issue over a series of four letters exchanged.

This was not entirely unreasonable. To clarify would be to confess. To confess would be to collapse their case and potentially seal their own professional coffins.

Instead, they pressed forward - undaunted. Undeterred, they even threatened me with costs should I dare challenge the resuscitation, warning that any attempt would be futile and would only backfire financially. Despite having been confronted with apparent fraud - fraud they did not and could not refute - their eagerness to proceed was unmistakable. What could explain such brazen disregard unless they believed - indeed, knew - that the process could be bent to their advantage, rendering their transgressions irrelevant? What other explanation is there, unless one is prepared to suggest both lawyer and client are insane - which, clearly, they are not?

On the second occasion, with Justice Wamambo presiding over yet another application for condonation - following the case's second dismissal - he purported to have read the papers on record, which included my letters outlining two damning points:

1. That there had never been any pre-trial conference arranged, questioning the phantom PTC and asserting this claim was fraudulent;

2. That I had responded and agreed to a round-table meeting in January 2025, indicating my readiness to join them.

For Justice Wamambo to issue a ruling claiming he had read the papers - and then proceed to grant condonation without requiring Mahere to explain herself - first, for the fraud by which she resuscitated the case (a fraud that potentially amounts to perjury, a jailable offence), and then proceed to facilitate her flagrant procedural breach in bypassing the mandatory round-table meeting - is nothing short of unconscionable. I will shortly be writing to the Judicial Service Commission to formally spotlight his role in what increasingly appears to be a coordinated judicial conspiracy.

That round-table meeting was not some dispensable formality - it was the single most dangerous procedural step for their case. It is at that mandatory meeting that parties agree on uncontested facts, clarify disputes, and chart the course of proceedings. Once captured in the official minutes, those facts become part of the judicial architecture - fixed, irremovable. And that is precisely why it had to be avoided. Because my persistent letters had made one thing unmistakably clear: I intended to place Mahere's perjury on the record - where it could not be unseen, unheard, or unjudged. For that reason alone, it became imperative that the meeting never take place.

So they sidestepped it. Deliberately.

When my former lawyer - appearing on my behalf as I was indisposed due to ill health - raised the glaring irregularities at the bogus PTC that Justice Wamambo had facilitated to shield Mahere from the inevitable insertion of her crime into the judicial record, and questioned the fraudulent genesis of the entire case, the judge's response, as reported to me, was so staggeringly inadequate it bordered on contempt: “But letters were written to you.”

Yes. And I replied to them. What exactly does it mean to say letters were written to you? What is the legal or procedural import of those letters? A judge behaving like a cheap bouncer for hire, feigning deafness when the truth knocks at the door, is a disgrace to the robe. What was the basis for skipping the round-table meeting? There was none. Nothing - except fear. Fear of what the record would reflect. Fear of the truth.

What is happening here is plain: a group of individuals have decided that someone too important to them has committed perjury - but that this crime must never appear on the judicial record. They have convinced themselves they can bamboozle me, a self-actor, violate my rights with impunity, and now have the audacity to place this fraudulent case on the unopposed roll. This, despite the fact that I spent six hours in Justice Wamambo's office waiting for him; despite the fact that I had sent him a letter, duly signed for by his office, which they now claim he never read - without explaining why they signed for a letter they never intended to open, nor why they couldn't be bothered to call me in over two weeks to inform me that it needed to be submitted electronically through the High Court system.

After that six-hour wait, Wamambo - through his clerk - responded that he would only see me in the presence of the applicant. I replied that I had no wish to see him at all, merely to request his indulgence to formally file, via electronic system, the same letter he had already received two weeks prior and pretended not to have read. The clerk returned shortly after - this time, the story had shifted completely. Alarmed, no doubt, by the contents of the letter he was trying to bury through procedural delay, Wamambo executed a shameful but necessary retreat. 

Suddenly, the presence or absence of the applicant was no longer the issue. No, the ruling had already been made, the matter was now unopposed, and it was - conveniently - “out of his hands.” Goodbye. Justice - Wamambo style.

For this kind of hanky-panky to emerge from a judge's office is embarrassing; it is beneath him.

But today is not about the law or judicial failure. It is about shamelessness.

When Advocate Harrison Nkomo entered the matter - following the withdrawal of Mahere's original lawyer - I gave him the benefit of the doubt. His name surfaced often enough in the press, attached to prominent cases. My initial inclination was charitable: here was a man of some repute, presumably unaware of his client's treachery. He had likely been misled, I thought.

But as I exchanged communications with him, it quickly became apparent: this was no dupe. These two apples were working in cahoots; it was not a case of one polluting the other - they were both equally rotten.

And that, for me, is quite perplexing, even horrifying: the idea that a qualified lawyer can have no regard whatsoever for their own dignity. To the extent that they feel no shame in knowing that I know they are lying, as long as they believe they can get away with it.

This calls for deeper reflection. What does it say about our society when those we regard as custodians of the legal process consider no indignity a step too far, fear no disgrace, and feel nothing? Perhaps they've been calloused by the very society that bred them, numbed by an economy that starved them, or moulded by a system that tolerates the vile and rewards the cunning. But if this is what passes for honour among officers of the court - then what, precisely, is left to corrupt?

To call such people "rotten apples" is an act of generosity.

Consider the thug at the kiosk - the one who lacks even the decency to flee, or the shame to cover his face with a balaclava. Instead, he sits there, crudely consuming what he has just stolen, right in front of his victim. Confident that his menacing visage and bulging muscles - capable of inflicting real violence - are deterrent enough. And there is nothing the victim can do. To most, this behaviour resembles that of a brute - an animal. But to the likes of Mahere and Nkomo, such conduct is not savagery; it is strategy. His timing, his boldness, his ability to arrive at just the right moment - when the pies and drinks lie in that transactional no-man's-land, claimed by neither seller nor buyer - is to them a mark of cunning. An act of admirable dexterity.

Had I been told that lawyers could conduct themselves in such disgraceful fashion - even in the midst of a war zone - I would have struggled to believe it. But evidently, they can. They do. And they are doing it right now in Zimbabwe. And what's worse: newspaper editors, fully aware of the facts, refuse to report it - not because it isn't newsworthy, but because the perpetrator is too sexy, or the victim is someone they are all too eager to destroy by any means necessary.

Fadzayi Mahere, Harrison Nkomo, Justice Wamambo - it seems they have made their decision: 

“Yes, beautiful little girl, you did it. You committed perjury. You lied to the court. But we can't let you be held to account - because you're special. Who is Edmund Kudzayi? He's nothing. Look at you - your beautiful, sexy body. Oh, such a sexy body. How could we possibly punish that for the sake of a dark, small boy like him? Nonsense. Don't worry, my girl, we'll take care of it. I'll read the papers - and ignore that part. His lawyer will come to court - and I'll dismiss her objections. I'll pretend not to understand. What can he do to us anyway? The government doesn't like him. Nobody listens to him. He can scream all he wants. No one will hear.”

These are the kinds of people who dwell among us. And that - that - is the most terrifying thing of all: not merely the act itself, but the silent, collective assurance that they can carry it out with impunity.

What stands out as their most profound failing - their most disturbing quality - is not merely the tally of their wrongs, but the insatiable depth of their appetite. They are not just greedy; they are endlessly hungry. Simply acting without principle is not enough - perhaps because brazen amorality would be too obvious, too hard to disguise.

So instead, they cloak themselves in the garments of virtue. They wrap their actions in borrowed integrity, masking deception behind practised smiles. They speak earnestly of justice and the rule of law, even as they gut those ideals from within. They point fingers with one hand while clutching the proceeds of corruption with the other. And each day, without fail, they commit fresh offences - deliberate, cynical, and calculated.

They are not satisfied to be the godless people they are. They also wish to appropriate the wings of angels - feeding off the social reverence reserved for the righteous. And so, they become performers of goodness, choreographers of lies. Not merely liars, but illusionists. Not merely deceivers, but predators who crave praise as they prey.

They are psychopaths.

And this case - simple, self-evident - has become the stage upon which we must test whether even the smallest flame can pierce great darkness. If Mahere were truly the brilliant lawyer so many, beguiled by appearances, believe her to be, she would have fled the moment I invited her lawyer for tea - to settle matters quietly, like professionals - after informing him I had caught his client in an act of deception. Perjury. A crime.

But she is not brilliant. She is a fool. And ego whispered in her ear: “Don't worry, my girl. The judges are ours.”

And thus far - as Justice Wamambo has so helpfully confirmed - she was not wrong.

But this cannot stand. I will not have it.

Miss Mahere may fancy herself the Iron Lady. Yet her tactics reek of rotten cheese. Still, let us indulge her fantasy.

The Iron Lady had best be prepared.

Because I have stoked a furnace.

And the fire is already hot enough to melt that so-called iron - into an alloy of my choosing.