A high-stakes boundary war between two prominent traditional leaders collapsed in the High Court last week—not over the merits of land ownership, but due to a geographical error on a sworn affidavit.
Chief Murinye, born Ephias Munodawafa, had approached the court seeking a declaratory order to confirm his jurisdiction over the Boroma area near the historic Great Zimbabwe site.
He accused Chief Mugabe, born Matubede Mudavanhu, of encroaching on his authority despite a previous 2017 agreement that ostensibly placed Boroma under Murinye’s control.
However, Justice Jacob Manzunzu struck the case off the roll after upholding a preliminary objection regarding the validity of Chief Murinye’s legal documents.
The dispute hinged on a technicality. Chief Murinye’s founding affidavit claimed he took his oath in Harare, yet the commissioner of oaths who signed and stamped the document is based in Masvingo.
Under High Court rules, a deponent and a commissioner must be physically present together when an oath is administered and a mismatch in locations renders the entire affidavit invalid.
“There must be strict adherence to the proper methods of commissioning affidavits,” Manzunzu ruled, declaring the document “fatally defective”. He warned that there are “many dangers” in the court accepting improperly commissioned paperwork.
The court also highlighted procedural failures in the application. Manzunzu noted that Chief Murinye had failed to exhaust internal remedies mandated by the constitution and the Traditional Leaders Act.
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Under Section 286(1)(f) of the constitution, disputes between traditional leaders should first be referred to the Provincial Assembly of Chiefs, which is tasked with facilitating settlements.
While the judge clarified that the National Chiefs Council and provincial assemblies lack the adjudicatory power to grant enforceable legal declarations—a power “exclusively vested in the High Court”—he noted that Chief Murinye’s decision to bypass these internal advisory processes made the relief he sought “incompetent”.
Ultimately, the technical failure of the affidavit was enough to collapse the case, leaving the long-running boundary dispute between the two chiefs unresolved.
