Staff Writer
The High Court has quashed the conviction and sentence of Gweru businessman and miner Charles Simbi and his wife Zodwa in an explosive land dispute.
The dispute centres around a contested resettlement offer letter for a gold-rich plot at Kanuck Farm along the Gweru-Shurugwi Road.
High Court judges Sunsley Zisengwe and Christopher Dube-Banda, sitting in Masvingo, upheld the couple’s appeal on Wednesday and acquitted them of forgery and fraud charges.
“The appeal against conviction on both counts is hereby upheld and consequently the sentence imposed is quashed,” the judges said in their ruling.
“The decision of the magistrates court is hereby substituted by the following; that each accused, meaning the appellants, is hereby found not guilty and acquitted on each count.”
The couple had been convicted last year by the Gweru Magistrates Court over allegations that they forged a resettlement offer letter claiming ownership of Plot 42 at Kanuck Farm.
Prosecutors alleged Simbi used his wife to falsify documents indicating they had been allocated the property under Zimbabwe’s land reform programme and later used the papers to assert rights over a 10-hectare gold-rich plot.
But the High Court ruled in favour of the couple after their lawyers, Esau Mandipa of Mandipa, Makwara and Chikukwa Legal Practitioners and Brian Muzenda of Hore and Partners, argued that the lower court had erred in both fact and law.
The defence maintained that the resettlement permit was authentic and lawfully issued by the relevant authorities.
They also argued that the trial court had improperly applied the doctrine of common purpose and unlawfully shifted the burden of proof onto the accused instead of requiring prosecutors to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt.
Simbi is among 53 beneficiaries allocated land at Kanuck 4 Farm under Zimbabwe’s post-independence land redistribution programme.
Land disputes are very common in the mineral rich Midlands province and often times lead to violent clashes.
