BULAWAYO — The cash-strapped MDC-T was yesterday taken to the High Court over refusal to pay a R5 million debt to two Bulawayo companies Cabat Trade and Finance (Pvt) Limited and Security Mills which supplied its campaign material for the 2008 polls.
SENIOR COURT REPORTER
The legal wrangle has been pending in the courts for the past six years and at one time it spilled into the Supreme Court. The case was initially thrown out by Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Lawrence Kamocha who ruled that the deal was not legal as the country was not officially using foreign currency at the time.
However, on November 28 2012, Deputy Chief Justice Luke Malaba, sitting with Justices Ann-Mary Gowora and Yunus Omerjee, set aside Justice Kamocha’s ruling and referred the matter back to the High Court for further trial.
The matter was heard before Justice Martin Makonese yesterday for a pre-trial conference, but could not be discussed as the MDC-T’s new lawyer Baron Sengweni was not prepared for the conference.
Initially, the MDC-T was being represented by Harare lawyer Advocate Lewis Uriri, but he has since renounced agency.
Justice Makonese yesterday postponed the pre-trial conference to April 2 and ordered the MDC-T to pay the costs of “wasted time” at an ordinary scale.
The opposition party has been refusing to pay the two companies arguing that it never entered into such an agreement with the two firms.
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Salient facts of the case are that the MDC-T, represented by Eddie Cross, authorised Simon Spooner to enter into a verbal agreement with Security Mills, represented by Laurence Zlattner, to print and supply 200 000 MDC-T campaign T-shirts and bandanas.
