Zuva, ex-managers legal battle far from over

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THE legal fight between Zuva Petroleum and two of its managers is far from over amid reports that the employees, Don Nyamande and Kingston Donga, have not given up.

THE legal fight between Zuva Petroleum and two of its managers is far from over amid reports that the employees, Don Nyamande and Kingston Donga, have not given up.

BY RICHARD CHIDZA

Constitutional law expert Lovemore Madhuku, who is leading a team of lawyers representing the two, confirmed the matter was still pending at the Constitutional Court (ConCourt) and would now be heard like any other case.

“There has been a misinterpretation in the media that the case is closed and over. That is wrong because Justice Vernanda Ziyambi was asked by the Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku to rule on whether the case should be heard as an urgent matter or not.

“In her ruling on this, she passed comments on the quality of the appeal but those comments will not have a bearing on the outcome. It is still going to be heard and it is true that it might not be proper for our clients to make comments regarding this issue at this point,” said Madhuku.

Legal sources interested in the matter claimed that Nyamande and Donga still had pending cases against Zuva at the High Court as well as the Labour Court. Madhuku, however, said he was not aware of these. “We are only representing them on this ConCourt application,” he said. Nyamande seemed to confirm this in a short telephone interview with The Standard on Friday. When asked to comment on how they had been handling the legal defeat, he said: “It will be premature for me to comment because our case is still on-going.” He could not be pushed into elaborating. On July 17 Justice Chidyausiku handed down the judgement that gave government institutions, private companies and quasi-State institutions the right to shed off excess workforce through termination letters and without benefits. In his ruling Justice Chidyausiku said employers had the same rights as employees and could terminate a contract on three months’ notice. The ruling was followed by never before seen job cuts estimated to have affected about 20 000 workers.