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Fungai Lupande Senior Court Reporter
MDC-Alliance leaders Nelson Chamisa and Morgan Komichi have approached the High Court seeking to include an affidavit of the late Morgan Tsvangirai in their record of appeal on their legitimacy at the Supreme Court.

In May this year, the High Court ruled that Chamisa was illegitimately acting as the MDC leader. The court upheld his appointment as vice president and subsequently declared his appointment as president null and void.

This followed an application by a Gokwe-based party member, Elias Mashavire, challenging Chamisa’s power in the party, saying there was no an extraordinary congress following the death of founding party leader Tsvangirai last year.

Chamisa appealed against the High Court judgment at the Supreme Court, but is now saying the appeal record is missing an affidavit from the late party founder.

Chamisa and Komichi insist that the affidavit is critical to the resolution of the matter.

In their application for rectification of the appeal record, the legal counsel Tafadzwa Chagonda said parties certify the record as correct, but it contains an omission.

“On May 8, this year the High Court handed a judgment against the applicants who subsequently prepared a notice of appeal making reference to earlier High Court judgement which was in favour of the applicants,” read the application.

“The Registrar prepared the record and the applicants were called to inspected and certified on June 19, this year. The last party inspected and certified the record on July 25, this year. Thereafter, the record was forwarded to the Registrar of the Supreme Court. On July 17, the Registrar directed the applicants to file their heads of argument.

“This is when the legal counsel noticed that the certified record was incomplete. The affidavit which is critical to the resolution of the matter had been omitted.”

They added that, Thokozani Khupe, “on whose behalf this disruptive position has been taken,” did not participate in the High Court matter.

Khupe was only cited for the purpose of form in the Supreme Court matter and should have readily conceded that there is an omission in the court record, read the papers. Chagonda said he regretted his error in certifying a record which had an omission and can only profusely apologise for its incidence.

He said the affidavit will help the court in making a determination on whether the matter has been resolved before and on what is the proper constitution for MDC.

“When the matter was heard before the High Court, the affidavit was before the court and was referred to,” said Chagonda. “Applicants are not seeking to bring anything new. I don’t see why any of the respondents should be justified in resisting this application.”

Mashavira, Elias Mudzuri, Khupe and Douglas Mwonzora were cited as respondents.