VICE-PRESIDENT Constantino Chiwenga’s estranged wife, Marry Mubaiwa says she was certain someone was taking advantage of her husband’s paranoia to mislead and destroy him with outright lies.
Marry said this in a letter to Chiwenga’s lawyers, Manase and Manase Legal Practitioners, where she was demanding to be furnished with the letter of complaint written by the VP to Judge President George Chiweshe, accusing him of leaking a judgment on their legal battle over their three minor children’s custody.
The letter, written by Beatrice Mtetwa, accused Chiwenga of making lies to justify his intimidation of the Judiciary and try to influence the pending appeal. This was after Chiwenga accused Chiweshe of being compromised as Marry’s relative, although the Judge President was not handling Chiwenga’s divorce case.
This came after Justice Christopher Dube-Banda ordered Chiwenga to surrender three minor children he illegally took from Marry after engineering her arrest on allegations of trying to kill him.
But Chiwenga immediately appealed against the ruling, which also chastised him for being a threat to the constitutionalism by abusing his position as Vice-President through using the military to settle his divorce dispute.
Mtetwa, in her letter, in which she gave Chiwenga 24 hours to furnish them with the letter of complaint to Justice Chiweshe, denied that her client was given the judgment before it was handed and also denied that she visited the school before the ruling to access her minor children.
“Your letter further alleges that our client attended at the children’s school at 0800hrs on January 24, 2020 ‘armed with an order of this court’ and stated to the school authorities that she had been granted an order by the High Court to have access to the children,” Mtetwa’s letter dated January 30 read.
“That this is an outright lie is clear from the fact that the court order granted by Honourable Dube-Banda is, in fact, not an access order.”
Mtetwa said Marry denies visiting the school on the said date and also denies she had an order relating to the children as at 8am on January 24.
Marry, Mtetwa wrote, also denies seeing any school authority “as alleged in the article and if this quote in your letter was given to yourselves as instructions by your client, we are absolutely certain that someone is out to destroy your client through outright lies by taking advantage of his paranoia”.
According to Mtetwa, Marry only called the headmistress at 11:31am and again at 12:18pm, who did not pick calls on both occasions.
“When she called us, we advised that the execution of the order, once availed, is not done by her or ourselves and as at that time, she did not have a copy of the judgment or order as you allege. That you appear to be relying on nameless school authorities can only be because the discussion with the authorities only exists in the fertile imaginations of your informants,” Mtetwa wrote.
Mtetwa also barraged Chiwenga for “misinterpreting” a Zimbabwe Independent story to insinuate that it was on the judgment that had not been handed down, claiming “whoever has ascribed that interpretation to it suffers from extreme illiteracy as even a child who has just mastered reading would not interpret the article as being based on a judgment or court order”.
By accusing Justice Chiweshe of leaking the judgment, Mtetwa wrote, Chiwenga is alleging that both the Judge President and trial judge had been party to the alleged illegality.
“We consider it extremely serious to ascribe illegal conduct to a sitting judge, we request that you provide us with a copy of the complaint within 24 hours of this letter so that our client can take whatever action she considers necessary, including filing complaints to the law society as her integrity has been falsely assaulted through outright lies designed to influence the pending appeal.” – News Day
