VICE PRESIDENT Constantino Chiwenga has won the legal battle for the custody of his three minor children he fathered with estranged wife Marry Mubaiwa, the other party.
This was after the VP had lodged an appeal at the Supreme Court against an earlier order granting Mubaiwa custody to the minors.
Justices Elizabeth Gwaunza, Paddington Garwe and Chinembiri Bhunu ruled that the order granted by the High Court in favour of Mubaiwa could not stand.
Chiwenga had argued his children could not stay with their unsettled mother he described as being “under constant care of a surgeon, physician and a psychiatrist”.
The two were married under an unregistered customary law marriage and the union was blessed with three children aged 9, 8, and 6 respectively.
However, the marriage fell under turbulent times, leading to Marry’s arrest on multiple charges of attempted murder on her husband, fraud, money laundering and contravention of the exchange control regulations.
“The court was at fault in that it determines a matter that was not before it and without arguments on the question of whether or not to grant a final interdict,” reads the Supreme Court judgement.
“The matter that was before it was whether or not to grant the provisional order.
“The question of the final interdict was supposed to be granted and determined on the return day which however, never saw the light of the day.
“The difficulty with the respondent’s case in the court a quo was that she did not claim custody of her children under 5 of the Act.
“She, instead, for no good reason and at the instance of her lawyers, claimed custody of her children under the non-existent and inapplicable law of provisional spoliation.
“As already stated, the leaned judge in the court a quo presumably, having realised that the respondent’s claim was incomplete and nullity at law, improperly granted her a final interdict which she had not asked for.”
In January this year, High Court judge, Christopher Dube-Banda, granted Mubaiwa custody of the children and restrained the VP from interfering with access to the family’s Borrowdale Brooke home.
VP Chiwenga was represented by Advocate Lewis Uriri, instructed by Mr Wilson Manase of Manase and Manase while Mubaiwa was represented by Advocate Taona Nyamakura and Sylvester Hashiti.
