JUDGE President Justice George Chiweshe yesterday dismissed defrocked Anglican Bishop Nolbert Kunonga’s quest to overturn a Supreme Court ruling confirming his rival Bishop Chad Gandiya as the legitimate leader of the Anglican Church of the Province of Central Africa (CPCA).
CHARLES LAITON
In his brief ruling following Kunonga’s application to bar Gandiya’s CPCA from executing the Supreme Court’s judgment, Justice Chiweshe said he had no jurisdiction to hear the matter.
“Accordingly, I hold that I have no jurisdiction to entertain this application. For that reason I would, as I hereby do, dismiss this application with costs,” he said in his judgment.
The ruling by Justice Chiweshe brought to an end the protracted war over control of Anglican Church properties between Gandiya and the disgraced Kunonga.
Kunonga last week tried to invoke the sympathy of President Robert Mugabe by citing Zanu PF’s indigenisation laws, anti-homosexuality stance and sensationally claimed that Gandiya should be punished for supporting sanctions imposed on the Zanu PF leader by the West.
In submissions presented by his lawyer Jonathan Samukange, Kunonga said Gandiya’schurch, whose origins were in Britain, supported the imposition of sanctions on Mugabe and his inner circle.
“The defendant (Gandiya) and its officials and mother church spoke openly against the Head of State (Mugabe), its ministers, the Judiciary and anyone who had equal persuasion or shared the same political beliefs and would be seen actively castigating the government of the day,” Samukange said.
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The Supreme Court recently ruled that Gandiya’s CPCA was the legitimate owner of the Anglican Church properties that had been grabbed by Kunonga when the church split in 2007.
Kunonga was ordered to hand over the property to the CPCA and move out of church buildings, but the excommunicated bishop had been resisting the evictions, at times physically.
Citing the country’s indigenisation laws that require foreign-owned firms to cede 51% of their shareholding to indigenous blacks, Kunonga said the church’s properties were Zimbabwe’s natural resources that should be enjoyed by locals.
He equated church assets to other resources such as land and minerals, arguing handing back the properties to Gandiya was tantamount to accepting neo-colonialism.
“Plaintiff cannot claim ownership of property in a foreign land such as the United Kingdom, so mustn’t the defendant,” Kunonga argued. “The Anglican Church represented by the defendant did not accept the current political ideology of the government and Zanu PF in particular.”
Throughout the proceedings, Gandiya’s lawyer Advocate Thabani Mpofu accused Kunonga of being contemptuous after he attempted to block the evictions. In his opposing affidavits, Mpofu argued that Kunonga’s appeal lacked urgency.
