AN ex-Shabani-Mashava Mine Holdings (SMM) employee has been evicted from a company house after his former employer approached the High Court over the property.
SMM Holdings and Afaras Gwarazimba were the applicants in the matter before High Court judge Justice David Mangota citing Manyika Sigauke as the respondent.
Sigauke was working for SMM Holdings which allocated to him the house in Maglass Township, Zvishavane, as his condition of service before he resigned from work in 2013.
In terms of SMM Holdings’s policy Sigauke was allowed to remain in the property for 90 days during which period he had to look for alternative accommodation.
The grace period was reckoned from the date that he left his employment with SMM and he should have vacated the property on or before May 13, 2013.
Sigauke, however, continued to occupy the property from May 14, 2013 to March 26 this year when SMM sued for eviction.
He, however, entered appearance to defend submitting that the special plea of prescription was that the grace period of three months to which he was entitled lapsed arguing SMM had three years within which it should have sued for his eviction which had lapsed on May 13, 2016.
But SMM argued that the plea was without merit.
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SMM further argued that the court could not sanction an illegality.
The company further insisted that, as an owner, it could not be deprived of its property against its will. The SMM further argued that ownership of immovable property was acquired after Sigauke had possessed it openly and adverse to its interests for an uninterrupted period of thirty, and not three years which he is alluding to.
SMM also stated that no debt ever came into existence between the parties adding that Sigauke occupied the property in terms of a contract of employment which was terminated.
Justice Mangota ruled that SMM was within its rights to sue for the eviction of Sigauke from the property as it did under HC 437/24.
“His special plea on this aspect of the case is without merit and it is dismissed without any further ado. The defendant gives the raison de’etre for the existence of his first defence of prescription.
“The defence, he asserts, is designed to prohibit a plaintiff or an applicant who has not sued to recover what a defendant or a respondent owes to him or her within certain time-limits which are specified in the Act.
“The plaintiff was, during the existence of the contract, enjoined to pay the defendant for the services which the latter offered to it as well as to offer to him for his occupation, as per its policy, the property which is the subject of the parties’ dispute in the main case. The defendant’s obligation was to offer his services to the plaintiff.”
Justice Mangota further ruled that the relationship terminated on the date that the defendant resigned from work and all that was due to him including his continued occupation of the property fell by the wayside.
In dismissing the case, the judge ruled the special plea of prescription is devoid of merit and dismissed it.
