Mliswa in Norton land row

A NORTON farm owner, Pieter Nicholas Nel, has filed a fresh urgent chamber application at the High Court seeking to bar Zanu PF Mashonaland West chairperson Temba Mliswa from taking over his Kingsdale Farm and allocating it to illegal settlers.

BY CHARLES LAITON
SENIOR COURT REPORTER

The dispute over the 161 8288-hectare farm was resolved in October last year by the Constitutional Court which ruled in Nel’s favour. The court also ruled that the government had illegally acquired the farm, a decision which left over 1 500 families settled at the property homeless.

Following a series of meetings between Nel and government officials, the parties then agreed that the affected settlers be given the right to buy their allocated pieces of land.

But the matter took a different dimension after the settlers allegedly reneged on the agreement and roped in Mliswa to help them regain the land for free, prompting Nel to make a fresh court application.

“My title to this urban land was duly confirmed by the Constitutional Court which nullified the acquisition of my land by the Minister of Lands and Rural Resettlement. Pursuant to the constitutional order, I sold the piece of land to Maparahwe Properties,” Nel said in his affidavit.

“I have witnessed the illegal acquisition of our land by first and second respondents (Mliswa and Simon Nyasha Sibiya) without any legal basis in defiance of the Constitutional Court order which confirmed me as the rightful owner and set aside the acquisition by the Minister of Lands and Rural Resettlement. I humbly submit that the actions by the respondents are purely illegal and contemptuous.”

Maparahwe Properties director and lawyer Cuthbert Mpame accused Mliswa of using his political muscle to illegally take over the land.

“On March 8, he (Mliswa) turned up and told the gathering that as the supreme authority in Mashonaland West, he was taking back Kingsdale. He denounced the Constitutional Court ruling and said that he was prepared to go to jail for contempt of court for as long as it was in the interest of his people,” Mpame said.

High Court judge Justice David Mangota yesterday deferred the matter to tomorrow to allow the defendants to file their court papers. Nel is represented by Advocate Lewis Uriri instructed by Admire Masango while Mliswa, Sibiya and Kingsdale Cooperative members are represented by Musindo Hungwe.