FORMER First Lady Grace Mugabe will have to mount a fresh application, challenging a court order to exhume her husband’s remains for reburial at a national shrine.
This comes after her current claim was struck off the urgent roll by the High Court on Wednesday.
Her application was struck off the urgent roll after the High Court ruled that it was fatally defective as it did not join, as one of the respondents, Tinos Manongovere, who was a party in the magistrates’ court that gave the order to exhume Mugabe.
The magistrate court last month confirmed an order, delivered by a traditional leader in May which fined Grace Mugabe five cows and two goats for improperly burying Mugabe and ordered his exhumation and reburial in Harare.
Zimbabwe’s longtime former ruler Mugabe was buried in his rural home village of Kutama, about 90km west of the capital Harare, in September 2019 after weeks of wrangling over his final resting place.
The High Court agreed that Manongovere should be granted an audience in the latest application at the High Court.
Where a matter has been struck off the roll for failure by a party to abide by the Rules of the Court, the party will have 30 days within which to rectify the defect, failing which the matter will be deemed to have been abandoned.
In his founding affidavit, Manongovere said he had been surprised that Grace did not cite him as one of the respondents.
“What totally surprised me is that the applicant did not bother to cite me as a party to the proceedings despite the fact that the rules of the court require that I should be cited. I was a party in the magistrate’s court and I deserve to be heard before this honourable court makes a decision which adversely affects me,” Manongovere said.
“To my utter shock, even though the proceedings in the community court related to a claim against Moyo by me, Grace deliberately failed to cite me in her application to set aside of chief Zvimba, Stanely Mhondoro.”
Grace in early October filed an urgent chamber application challenging a Chinhoyi magistrate’s order to exhume the remains of her late husband, Robert Mugabe.
She said the magistrate’s order upholding the directive of the traditional chief was “grossly irregular and unreasonable”.
