adminLeonard Ncube Court Reporter
A CLERK of court collapsed in Bulawayo yesterday while giving evidence in a case in which former Plumtree senior magistrate Stephen Mavhuna allegedly hid about 200 records.Patience Mhiti from Plumtree magistrates’ court had just responded to 15 out of about 300 questions which Mavhuna has reportedly prepared to quiz her when she collapsed.
Mhiti is a State witness. Mavhuna, who has since been dumped by his lawyer and has been out of work since January 9, 2013, when the Judicial Service Commission fired him for misconduct and neglect of duty, took it upon himself to deal with his own case. This forced lawyer Dumisani Dube of Cheda and Partners to renounce urgency.
“So how then can the court know which of the records were received or not reviewed if you say you do not know?” Mavhuna quizzed her.
Mhiti collapsed before responding to the question and the prosecutor Goodluck Katenaire and court orderlies rushed to the witness stand to resuscitate her.
The magistrate immediately adjourned proceedings as Mhiti was helped to sit on a chair before being led out of court. The case was then postponed to January 21, next year. Mhiti left Tredgold Building after about an hour indicating that she was hypertensive.
She had told Mavhuna that registers of records were received and signed for by court orderlies while her duty was to keep them in her office.
“I will only respond to what I know,” she told Mavhuna, adding that she would only fill in respective sections on the records when instructed to do so.
Mavhuna looked desperate to draw an inference from Mhiti to the effect that she would sign and monitor records, which she denied.
He has denied the charges and on his first appearance, the former magistrate read his own defence despite the presence of his lawyer prompting regional magistrate Trynos Utahwashe to question whether he was represented or not.
Mavhuna, who resides in the judiciary quarters at Kezi where he had been transferred to, reportedly indicated that he wanted to interrogate witnesses on his own.
Mavhuna implicated clerks of court for hiding records, adding that his former superior at the station Mark Dzira and former provincial magistrate Douglas Zvenyika, now late, knew about the issue.
He wants Dzira subpoenaed to court. The court records allegedly went missing under Mavhuna’s custody in a period of about three years, from 2009 to 2012.
He was discharged from duty for a contingent of charges which have now been commuted to criminal charges — negligence in performing his duties, incompetence and falsification of registers of records.
It is alleged that false entries were made into the scrutiny, review and appeals registers to give an impression that the records had been dispatched.
This could have deprived several appellants and convicts of their rights to appeal as they could not have access to their records.
The State has produced records that were meant for review at the High Court and scrutiny at the regional court and others supposed to have gone for appeal.
The court heard that a total of 191 records were not accounted for. About 162 were supposed to go for review, 16 for scrutiny and 13 for appeals but were allegedly channelled otherwise.
A statement by the incumbent resident magistrate for Plumtree, Livard Philimon, showed that the rot was discovered in April last year.
Philimon said he assigned Mhiti to inquire with the relevant courts and found out that the records had been received and Mavhuna allegedly endorsed false dates to give a false impression that he had sent them for respective assignments.
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