adminFidelis Munyoro
Chief Court Reporter
Associated Mine Workers Union of Zimbabwe (AMWUZ) has seen the High Court nullify a US$14 million-arbitral award in its favour against Mazowe Mine over back pay for employees, because a union cannot represent workers in arbitration proceedings, the workers having to be involved themselves.
But even if that condition was met, the award would still be dumped as the abitrator had not followed the ruling of the Supreme Court over how to convert bank balances at the end of dollarisation, and abitrators must follow the law in their decisions.
Justice Tawanda Chitapi held that the suit before the arbitrator was incompetent because it had been initiated by the union, a non-suited party at law.
AMWUZ, which was represented by Advocate Tinomudaishe Chinyoka, was the applicant representing the workers at the arbitral proceedings on the grounds that they were affiliated to the union. But they should have gone to arbitration in their names.
The judgment disposed of two applications involving the same parties after the court consolidated the cases for purposes of hearing, with a single judgment given to dispose of the two matters.
The first case was for registration of the of the arbitral award, which was opposed by Mazowe Mine, which has also sought to nullify the award in its application.
Ruling on the legal standing of AMWUZ, the court found that the union could have no standing in law at the arbitration. Therefore the award was a nullity.
This, the judge said, would conflict with the public policy of Zimbabwe wherein courts are guided by and must apply the law.
According to the award, Mazowe was to pay its workers’ salaries owed to them totalling US$14 049 737 or the equivalent in local currency at the prevailing auction exchange rate on the date of payment.
But Mazowe Mine, through its lawyer Adv Thabani Mpofu, opposed the registration of the award and sought the nullification of the award.
The lawyer assailed the arbitral award on the basis that it was also in conflict with public policy, pointing out that the arbitrator made groundless verdicts not supported by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe exchange control directive converting US dollars’ accounts into RTGS accounts.
The currency reform that saw all balances and liabilities denominated in United States dollars before February 22, 2019 becoming balances in Zimbabwean dollars at par with the United States dollar, has since been endorsed by the Supreme Court, whose judgment remains precedent.
Justice Chitapi agreed with Adv Mpofu’s submissions that it offends the public policy of the country to allow an arbitral award in which the arbitrator interprets the law contrary to precedent of the highest court of the land in all matters not constitutional to stand.
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