BREAKING NEWS: Mupasiri v Mnangagwa Round 2 with Manikai the permanent feature in defending the President in his official and private capacity – any conflict or community of interests?

Iniafrica.com has learned that Mnangagwa will be represented by Edwin Manikai in an application launched by Mupasiri for leave to intervene in the Musengezi ascendency challenge in relation to the affairs of ZANU-PF.

The relationship between Manikai and President Mnangagwa if it was hidden has now come to the fore for any person as defined in s2(2) to be vigilant and take notice that if his choice of Manikai to act as his legal representatives in private and official capacities constitutes President Mnangagwa’s pattern, conduct, and custom that is inconsistent with the constitution, the court should have no title to tolerate this privatization of legal defences by a single firm.

It is not clear whether DMH competed to provide legal services to the President in both capacities especially having regard to the limitations imposed on the President by the constitution in engaging any private law firm outside the prescription of s114 of the constitution that vests such power with the Attorney General.

In this matter, it is being alleged that the President lacked any constitutional and legal pathway to succeed President Mugabe as the President of the party and also that the power to appoint the President of the party was vested in the congress.

Against this backdrop, there appears to be no provision or authority that could possibly have clothed the Central Committee meeting that was convened without the knowledge and consent of Mugabe who in terms of the constitution had a veto power.

The people who were designated to convene the meeting were all not involved in the enterprise to clothe the meeting with any legitimacy.

Even if the meeting was lawfully convened assuming that Mugabe had voluntarily resigned, the jurisdictional question is still paramount in order for an independent and impartial court to determine the dispute on merits.

The granting of leave to intervene to Mr. Nguni and a body corporate, a trust, albeit disputed by Musengezi, has opened the floor for the supremacy of the constitution test to be invoked and for the Court to pronounce its opinion on whether the ZANU-PF constitution can supersede the national constitution that provides that all persons are bound by it and that the obligation to obey, uphold, defend and respect it as the supreme law would automatically invalidate the conduct of extra-lawfully assuming power and authority without complying with the prescripts of the rule of law.

If President Mnangagwa was not above the law, then his version if ever it is provided to the court will be very interesting and educational.