Nelson Chamisa has panel of top SA lawyers in court with him, who are not allowed to say anything

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Nelson Chamisa has panel of top SA lawyers in court with him, who are not allowed to say anything

4:55 CAT | 22 Aug 2018

The constitutional court battle by Nelson Chamisa to reverse Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa was under way in Harare with three top South African lawyers — Dali Mpofu, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi and Jeremy Gauntlet — sitting in the courtroom but not allowed to present arguments before the nine-member bench.

“The official position is none of the SA-based lawyers will present arguments in court. They did not apply in time to appear in today’s court session. But they are free to appear in court just like other observers,” justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi said in Harare on Wednesday morning.

Court proceedings began with respondent Noah Manyika and Daniel Shumba, both presidential candidates, arguing that they should be allowed to support Chamisa’s petition.

Manyika’s lawyer, Regina Mabwe, said her client had a right to be heard as there were matters over which he agreed and disagreed with Chamisa’s petition.

Shumba, who was representing himself, said the court would benefit more from him if he is allowed to be part of the proceedings This was after chief justice Luke Malaba argued that the respondents had an opportunity to lodge their own petition to contest the election instead of riding on Chamisa’s submission.

Another presidential candidate, Elton Mangoma, said he opposed Chamisa’s petition.

Chamisa’s lawyer, Thabani Mpofu, told the court the respondents had a right to be heard as prescribed in the constitution.

Almost 70,000 extra votes

His lawyers have claimed the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) cooked up 69,000 votes to give an unfair advantage to Mnangagwa to win the July 30 election.

The lawyers also tore into the ZEC for announcing three different results of the presidential election, saying that alone proved that the electoral body could not be trusted to give a fair outcome of the poll.

Chamisa’s lead counsel, advocate Thabani Mpofu, said the 69,000 votes alone were enough to reverse Mnangagwa’s victory after he sailed through the 50% benchmark by just 39,000 votes.

“On the figures that are purely arithmetic, we have 69,000 under circumstances where we require 39,000 to establish that first respondent (President Mnangagwa) did not win this election,” he said.

Advocate Mpofu accused ZEC of manipulating the primary data from V11 forms that constitute of results tallied at polling stations. He also said the ZEC had created more than 9,000 “ghost polling” votes to rig the election in favour of Mnangagwa.

Responding to Adv Mpofu, chief justice Malaba suggested Chamisa’s legal team appeared to be relying on secondary evidence instead of the V11 forms, which are considered to be the primary sources of evidence.

Earlier, Malaba disallowed evidence from co-respondents that had wanted to support Chamisa in the court in what was a small victory to Zanu-PF.

Judgement is expected no later than Friday, according to the Zimbabwean constitution.

Source: Business Live