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Innocent Ruwende Senior Reporter
A Harare couple has taken Aspindale Park owners, Marimba Industrial Properties Limited, to court after it allegedly revalued outstanding instalments for stands using the interbank rate of 2,5 RTGS dollars to the United States dollar.

Brighton and Shyrlyn Mufumi, who bought a residential stand at Aspindale Park through their lawyers Messrs Alex Majachani and Godfrey Nyamukuwa of Alex F and Associates Legal Practitioners filed an application at the High Court seeking to overturn the property owner’s decision.

The lawyers argue that the company’s action is inconsistent with the agreement signed by the parties which specifically states in Clause 20 that, the agreement is full and complete between parties.

The respondent in the case is Marimba Industrial Properties Limited trading as Aspindale Park.

In his founding affidavit, Mr Mufumi argues that sometime on or before about January 12, 2019 together with his wife they entered into an agreement of sale with the respondent in respect of stand 2013 Aspindale Park measuring 200 square metres.

In terms of the agreement, the purchase price of the property would be US$19 400, which would be settled over a 24-month period through instalments of US$600 per month from February.

The occupation of the property would be given upon payment of at least 75 percent of the agreed purchase price.

To that end, the lawyers argued, their clients made payments through bank transfers accordingly as it was implied in the terms of agreement that payments could be effected otherwise through a POS, RTGS, or like facility.

“Upon our inquiry of our balances, respondent’s employees advised us that balances standing on purchasers’ accounts after the announcement of the monetary policy statement would be multiplied by the official rate of the US$ to the local RTGS dollar of 2,5 percent,” argued Mr Mufumi.

The couple says it was shocked by this development as this would mean that their balance would multiply and Marimba Properties were refusing further payments although there was no agreement to that variation nor any legal instrument supporting the variation.

Mr and Mrs Mufumi contend that the respondent’s actions offend against the provision of statutory instrument 33 of 2019. Section 4(1) (b) and (d) thereof which stipulates that the real time gross settlement system balances expressed in the USD$ immediately before the effective date, shall… be deemed to be opening balances in RTGS dollars at par with the United States Dollars; and

“4 (1) (d) that for the purposes of accounting, all assets and liabilities that were immediately before the effective date valued and expressed in USD shall on and after the effective date be deemed to be values in RTGS as the rate of one-to-one to the USD.”

The lawyers contend that, applicants have no other remedy at law to protect their investments in Zimbabwe which is the essence of their toil and sweat.