TAFADZWA Muguti, the Harare Metropolitan Secretary for Provincial Affairs and Devolution and Chitungwiza Municipality Acting Town Clerk Evangelista Machona risk imprisonment after they wilfully defied a High Court order which stayed all demolitions against informal traders’ structures in Harare and Chitungwiza.
Source: Muguti and Machona risk imprisonment for brazen contempt of court over demolitions – The Zimbabwean
In an application for a contempt of court order filed at Harare High
Court on Friday 21 January 2022, Alice Kuvheya, the Director of
Chitungwiza Residents Trust (CHITREST and the residents association
argued that Muguti and Machona should serve a three-month jail term
for contempt of court for brazenly defying a High Court order
prohibiting demolitions in the two cities.
Kuvheya and CHITREST, who are represented by Rudo Bere of Zimbabwe
Lawyers for Human Rights, argued that they obtained a court order
granted by Justice Edith Mushore on the 10 June 2021, who ordered that
all unprocedural demolitions of homes, durawalls and informal traders’
structures should be stayed as they were not in compliance with the
law in particular Section 32 of the Regional Town and Country Planning
Act and Section 3 of the Administrative Justice Act.
Muguti, Machona, Chitungwiza Municipality and City of Harare, Kuvheya
and CHITREST argued, completely disregarded the High Court order and
unilaterally commenced demolitions of informal traders’ structures in
Harare and Chitungwiza. Kuvheya and CHITREST said Muguti also made
utterances in which he openly denigrated the High Court order and also
foretold that demolitions would continue in defiance of the lawful
court order.
The applicants want the High Court to declare Muguti, Machona,
Chitungwiza Municipality and City of Harare to be in contempt of
court. They also want the High Court to order Muguti and Machona to
serve alternate three months in jail for contempt of court until such
a time they would have purged their contempt and comply Justice
Mushore’s court order granted in June 2021.