School moves to evict AFM from farm

Tinomuda Chakanyuka Sunday News Reporter
FORMER proprietor of Elite High School Mr Maxwell Shumba says he is now preparing to evict the Apostolic Faith Mission of Portland Oregon from Green Gables High School (formerly Elite), after the High Court judge threw out the church’s urgent application to stop the eviction. Mr Shumba was granted a provisional order in March 2014 directing AFM to move out of the farm which is situated on the outskirts of Bulawayo, pending determination of the church’s fate by the Supreme Court.

Since then Mr Shumba has been failing to execute the order after the church, through its legal representatives Majoko and Majoko Legal Practitioners, made several court challenges against the order. The church’s latest bid to stop execution of the order, an urgent High Court application of January 2015, was, however, thrown out by Bulawayo High Court judge Justice Martin Makonese, allowing Mr Shumba to proceed with the eviction.

Mr Shumba told Sunday News last week that following Justice Makonese’s ruling in November last year, he had been waiting for schools to close before evicting the church from the school premises, to avoid disturbing learning business at the institution. He said he was now laying the groundwork to move into the school with a new administration before schools open for the second term.

“We are moving in any time from now. The timing had to be perfect because we didn’t want to disturb the smooth running of learning. When schools open for the second term we would have moved in with a new administration and it will be business as usual. No lessons will be disturbed,” said Mr Shumba.

He reiterated that the eviction of the church from the school premises would not affect pupils in any manner.

Dismissing the church’s application with costs, Justice Makonese described the application as a legal nullity and blasted the church’s lawyers for trying to abuse the courts by attempting to appeal against an interlocutory order.

“The urgency is self-created and to some degree the attempt to appeal against an interlocutory order as a means to deflect the imminent execution of an order of the court is mischievous. As I have already indicated, my view is that this matter is not urgent and the application could be dismissed on that basis alone,” he said.

Justice Makonese also questioned the locus standi of Reverend Richard Sibanda to appear on behalf of the church on the matter. “It is clear to me that the issue of the authority of Reverend Richard John Sibanda to depose to the affidavit on behalf of the applicant is by no means a resolved or settled matter. I am not satisfied that it has been established that Reverend Richard John Sibanda is still the General Overseer of the applicant,” he said.

Reverend Sibanda is locked up in a decade old legal wrangle over the control of the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM) of Portland Oregon (Southern African headquarters). The matter is before the Supreme Court after Rev Sibanda appealed against a High Court ruling which granted full control of the church’s assets to the parent church based in America.

Apostolic Faith Mission are also seized with a $183 million lawsuit from Mr Shumba who is claiming damages and losses suffered during the period between 2009 and 2013 when AFM repossessed the farm where he was running Elite High School.

Mr Shumba is also claiming $5 million from AFM as compensation for the developments he made at the farm since 1999 when he entered into a lease agreement with the church to run a school at the property.

The two parties have been involved in a protracted legal battle spanning over five years which started when Mr Shumba was evicted from Green Gables farm where he was running Elite High School, for non-payment of rent.

AFM canceled the lease agreement with Mr Shumba, after obtaining an eviction order that was granted in 2009 by Justice Maphios Cheda and took over running of the school which they renamed Green Gables High School.

Acting Bulawayo High Court judge (as he was then) Justice Misheck Cheda, however, set aside the ruling for Mr Shumba’s eviction, which automatically meant that Mr Shumba should have returned to the property.

AFM continued to occupy the property resulting in a protracted battle which saw the two parties in and out of court.