A ZANU PF youth activist Fundisani Dewa and his brother Phakamani have appeared in court facing charges of assaulting a co-tenant in a dispute over gate keys.
BY SILAS NKALA
Dewa was recently accused of refusing to vacate a rented house in Hillside suburb in Bulawayo, where he was failing to pay rentals.
In the new case, according to court papers gleaned at the courts yesterday, Fundisani and Phakamani were not asked to plead to assault charges when they appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Tinashe Tashinga on Friday.
The two were remanded out of custody to May 15 for trial. They allegedly assaulted Robert Munkuli who stays at the same house.
It is alleged that on May 4, the two went to the cottage where Munkuli stays and asked for the gate keys.
Munkuli said he had broken the gate keys the previous night when he was unlocking the gate and the two went away. The following day when Munkuli wanted to go to work he looked for the spare keys.
But when he tried to open the gate, he failed. He jumped over the gate and tried to open it from outside.
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The two brothers then arrived in a car and started assaulting the complainant with clenched fists and booted feet all over the body.
Munkuli sustained a swollen arm and made a report to the police, leading to the arrest of the two.
In the eviction case, Fundisani received a notice to vacate 1A Kerry Road, Hillside, Bulawayo, on November 25 last year from landlord Violet Bridget Lunga based in Botswana, but he allegedly ignored the notice and still owes $1 500.
Fundisani allegedly failed to pay rentals, water and telephone bills since then, and was in January arraigned before the Matabeleland Rent Board where he was given 30 days’ notice to vacate the house.
The eviction was supposed to be with effect from February 7 according to the notice dated January 29 and stamped at the provincial Magistrates’ Courts on January 31.
Fundisani also reportedly owed $430 to the Bulawayo City Council for water supplies and $873 to TelOne in outstanding telephone bills.
