Online Reporter
Fidelis Munyoro
Chief Court Reporter
THE High Court has dismissed an application to evict alleged occupiers from a Chegutu farm, ruling that rights under an A2 land offer letter do not pass automatically to a deceased person’s estate.
Delivering judgment in the civil dispute between the applicant, Edmund Tasiana Mutale, and the respondents, Patricia Nyikadzino and others, Justice Sylvia Chirawu-Mugomba said the applicant failed to show a clear legal right to the land after the death of the original holder.
“The rights in the land . . . remain ‘suspended’ until the executor takes steps to engage the relevant minister,” the judge said.
The dispute centred on a farm known as Subdivision 62 of Railway 30 in Chegutu.
The land had been allocated to the late Stella Lilian Mauni Mutale under an offer letter issued in 2005. She died in September 2020.
Edmund, acting on behalf of the estate through a power of attorney from the executor, approached the court seeking to evict the respondents, whom he described as illegal occupiers who moved onto the land in 2022.
He also sought a declaration that the deceased’s estate held rights to the property and that beneficiaries were entitled to succeed to it.
The respondents opposed the application, saying they were on the land through an arrangement linked to another person who had been allocated the same property.
Justice Chirawu-Mugomba said the central issue was not eviction, but what happens to A2 land when the holder dies.
“What has to be determined first is whether or not the rights accruing from the offer letter are automatically transferable to the estate of the deceased,” she said.
The court found that A2 land remains State land and cannot be treated like private property in an estate.
“What it means is that the land still belongs to the State and there should be a process via the relevant authority for transfer of that land to the rightful heir,” the judge said.
She said the law requires the executor to seek approval from the Minister of Lands and Rural Development before any transfer or continuation of rights.
“The applicant has not pleaded that at the death of the deceased, the minister was approached and what took place,” she said.
Because of that failure, the court ruled that no clear right had been established to justify an interdict or eviction.
“If the application is considered from the perspective of an interdict, no clear right has been established . . . and the matter ends there,” she said.
The judge added that even if the case were treated as a request for a declaratory order, it would still fail.
“The applicant cannot seek rights that have not yet been established through the correct legal process,” she said.
Although the respondents raised preliminary objections, the court said they had not addressed the key issue relating to the effect of death on land rights.
The court dismissed the application and made no order as to costs.
Peter Tanyanyiwa