Chamisa, Khupe case on today

Published: 02 July 2018

Hearing of the dispute involving Nelson Chamisa and Thokozani Khupe over ownership of the MDC name, symbol and logo is expected to commence today at the High Court.

The two's legal counsels had last Friday, tentatively, agreed to postpone commencement of the trial to Sunday depending on the schedule of Thabani Mpofu, who is representing Chamisa's camp.

However, Mpofu on Saturday advised that he had another engagement in Bulawayo, compelling the matter to be rolled over to today, Khupe's legal counsel Lovermore Madhuku confirmed to the Daily News yesterday.

This came after Khupe's camp had claimed that Chamisa's faction had developed cold feet.

"The correct position is that we had a case management meeting in the chambers with Justice Mary Dube on Friday afternoon. In that meeting, advocate Mpofu, representing Chamisa, was not present.

"He was represented by his instructing attorney, Gumbo. So, we had tentatively set the matter to commence today (Sunday) subject to confirmation by advocate Mpofu who was not there," Madhuku said.

"So yesterday (Saturday) advocate Mpofu advised that he would not be available today (Sunday) so nothing happened. No one went to court. We are meeting the judge tomorrow (Monday) at 9am before judge Dube, that's when will know when trial will begin," he said.

Khupe's camp had gone into overdrive claiming on micro blogging site Twitter that Chamisa's lawyer had chickened out.

"Our erstwhile cdes have developed cold feet, their lawyer advocate Thabani Mpofu is not keen to represent them in the High Court trial since he seems to appreciate that his clients have a snowballs chance in hell of winning the case. They are virtually chickening out of the legal battle," Khupe faction spokesperson Linda Masarira posted.

"The case was supposed to commence this morning Sunday July 1, 2018 before Honourable Justice Dube at the High Court in Harare. As we expected, our erstwhile cdes are certainly in no mood to have the case kick off.

- dailynews