Mliswa’s fool’s errand comes to obvious ignominious end

IN the annals of legal misadventures, few cases stand out as starkly as Temba Mliswa’s recent ill-fated court bid to derail the ZIFA elections.

From the outset, it was evident that this was a classic fool’s errand — an exercise in futility destined for a short and unceremonious end.

Yet Mliswa, armed with misplaced determination, persisted, only to emerge from the courtroom three hours later battered by the weight of his own folly. The facts were glaringly clear: Mliswa’s urgent application was filed well beyond the stipulated eight-week time frame mandated for review. It landed on the court’s doorstep after an inexplicable 11-week delay.

Any competent legal practitioner worth their salt would have seen the futility of proceeding under such circumstances. But not for Mliswa.

After needlessly wasting the court’s time and resources, he conceded the obvious.

Justice Tawanda Chitapi’s courtroom became the stage for this theatre of the absurd.

ZIFA’s lawyer Lovemore Madhuku hardly had to break a sweat to dismantle the arguments put forth by Mliswa’s counsel.

After three hours of proceedings, the inevitable happened: Mliswa’s legal team withdrew the application, conceding that it lacked any foundation due to the glaring procedural misstep. “After some three hours of argument, we were able to reach a position where Mliswa, through his legal counsel, conceded that the review application was out of time, which then makes the urgent chamber application not founded on that,” said Madhuku. For Mliswa, the writing was on the wall from the beginning. The ZIFA statutes, adopted on October 18 last year, were explicit about the timelines for filing such reviews.

Yet, rather than acknowledge this and strategise accordingly, Mliswa and his legal counsel chose to embark on an ambitious quest that predictably ended in failure. The withdrawal of the application came with the added ignominy of Mliswa being ordered to pay the costs of the hearing. In the aftermath, Mliswa attempted to put on a brave face. “To me, it’s fair. The facts are there. We were out of time; figures don’t lie,” he conceded, as though stating the obvious could somehow make it exculpatory.

This debacle serves as a cautionary tale for litigants. The courts are no place for half-baked arguments and procedural lapses. Mliswa should have known better.

For that, let his misadventure be a lesson to all: the courtroom is no place for fool’s errands.