Rent debt sees Walkers Pub evicted

Auxilia Katongomara Court Reporter
AN upmarket pub has been evicted from the Bulawayo Centre. Walkers Pub owes property owners, the National Railways of Zimbabwe Contributory Pension Fund, rent arrears exceeding $330,000. Justice Nicholas Mathonsi, in his judgement in the civil matter pitting the NRZ pension fund and Walkers Pub, ordered the eviction of the former top pub and cancellation of the lease agreement.

He said the pub, one Wayne Allan Jones, and anyone claiming title or occupation of numbers 31 to 34 Bulawayo Centre, should be evicted.

The judge ordered that they should pay $333,209,47 to the NRZ with interest at 15 percent per annum from the date or summons to date of payment.

Justice Mathonsi also ruled that the tenant shall jointly or severally pay holding damages in the sum of $4,858 per month from August 1, 2014 with value added tax and operating costs to date of eviction.

The parastatal had been engaged in a protracted legal battle with the defendants since 2009.

The NRZ pension fund, through its lawyer Advocate Lucas Nkomo instructed by Coghlan Welsh and Partners, demanded $333,209,47 as at July 2014 and confirmation of cancellation of lease.

According to court papers, Jones signed a written lease agreement with the NRZ pension fund on March 7 and 8, 1999 which was to subsist from September 1, 1999 for a five-year period.

The papers show that after struggling to run the pub, Jones handed over the business to one of his employees, Gersham Gara, who has been running it since.

Justice Mathonsi slammed the arrangement as a mockery of the biblical maxim: “whatever a man sows, that he shall reap”.

“That biblical aphorism has been corrupted by some of our people into one which says you have to reap where you did not sow at all, or as is the case in this matter, you sow as little as possible and reap aplenty.

“Otherwise how else can one explain the circumstances of this case when an employee of a company for just 10 years wakes up one day owning the business of that company worth $600,000 without making an outlay,” said Justice Mathonsi.

He added: “ He then takes over and runs the business for five years without paying rent or at best paying only what he wants to pay while reaping benefits throughout.

“Despite that, proceedings for eviction are contested all the way to the wire on what are demonstrably tenuous grounds”.

Justice Mathonsi noted that Gara last paid rentals of $700 in April last year against the fixed monthly rentals of $4,858.