A HARARE man who three years ago claimed his foster daughter had been raped by Munyaradzi Kereke, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor Gideon Gono’s former advisor, at gunpoint has not yet given up his fight for justice and wants the newly-elected Zanu PF Bikita West MP prosecuted.
BY CHARLES LAITON
Francis Maramwidze, the girl’s guardian, filed the application through his lawyer Charles Warara, but the matter failed to be heard at the High Court yesterday after it emerged that the respondents (Police Commissioner-General Augustine Chihuri and Prosecutor-General Johannes Tomana) had a pending application of the late filing of their heads of arguments.
High Court judge Justice Happious Zhou urged the State’s representative, Sharon Fero, to pursue the State’s application for condonation of late filing of heads of arguments and update the court of the outcome before the case could be entertained.
The court further urged Warara to consider citing Kereke as one of the respondents in the matter since he was an interested party.
“What I need to say is to indicate that you may need to deal with the question of whether the order being sought may be granted without Munyaradzi Kereke being cited as a respondent in the papers since he is the one you want to be prosecuted,” Justice Zhou told Warara.
The matter was eventually postponed indefinitely to allow the State to make a follow-up to its application and to also allow Warara to amend, if need be, his application and cite Kereke as a third respondent.
In his application, Maramwidze claims he had since lost faith in the country’s judicial system after all his efforts to have Kereke prosecuted over the rape charge appeared to be thwarted.
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He said all his efforts to have Kereke interrogated over the matter by police met resistance from the law enforcement agents who were allegedly connected to Kereke.
Maramwidze said at one point he held a meeting with one Senior Assistant Commissioner Chihuri at Creda Court in Harare whereupon the latter allegedly admitted the police’s failure in carrying out their mandate.
He also said on several occasions, Kereke paid him visits at his place of residence in a bid to influence him (Maramwidze) to drop the rape charges, but he turned the requests down and insisted on protecting the interests of his child.
The Attorney-General’s Office, however, argued in its opposing papers that Kereke’s prosecution was declined for “want of consistent, coherent and incriminating evidence” and that the docket had been referred to the police for “further management”, an assertion Maramwidze dismissed.
