VICE-PRESIDENT Constantino Chiwenga’s estranged wife,
Marry, who is in custody over charges of allegedly assaulting her house maid,
has accused her husband of engineering the allegations after his initial failed
attempts to have her locked up for failing to surrender a second passport in
the attempted murder charge.
Marry said Chiwenga was using State resources to ensure
that she is incarcerated at all costs and even on flimsy charges. Marry said
this in her bail appeal application filed at the High Court on Monday this week
and the matter is set to be heard today.
Through her lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa Marry said: “She
(magistrate Bianca Makwande) also misdirected herself in her failure to
consider and take into account that the charges are mere allegations engineered
by a disenchanted spouse (Chiwenga) and that the presumption of innocence still
operates. She also erred and misdirected herself in equating allegations of
common assault to attempted murder.”
“The applicant (Marry)’s husband had attempted to engineer
a breach of her bail conditions by pretending she was in possession of a
passport which was actually in his possession. The likelihood of his having
engineered the assault charge in order to achieve what he failed to do by lying
about the passport was a factor the magistrate ought to have taken into
account.”
Last Saturday, Marry was remanded in custody by Makwande,
who ruled that she had a propensity to commit violent crimes, an assertion
dismissed by Mtetwa.
“She (Makwande) also erred and misdirected herself in her
conclusion that two alleged incidents arising from circumstances where one
spouse is fighting another constitute evidence of “propensity” to commit
violent crimes, particularly where no evidence of such propensity was led in
respect of incidents unconnected with the acrimonious end of marriage,” Mtetwa
said.
In her defence, however, Marry said it was not possible for
her to assault the complainant in the matter, one Delight Munyoro, taking into
account that she has a swollen hand and also the sitting position of Munyoro
who was in her vehicle at the time of the alleged assault.
“She further erred and misdirected herself when she failed
to consider and take into account the visible festering wounds and a swollen
hand displayed to her making it unlikely that such a swollen hand and arm would
have been used to assault the complainant (Delight Munyoro). Any use of such visibly
damaged hand and arm would have resulted in more pain for the appellant (Marry)
than to the complainant, who is a stout and well-rounded woman,” Mtetwa said.
“She erred and misdirected herself when she failed to take
into account the physical difficulties of a backslap on the left cheek using
the left hand on a person who was sitting in a motor vehicle whose right cheek
would have been nearer to the applicant”.
Mtetwa further said the magistrate failed to consider and
take into account the many weaknesses in the State allegations and instead
treated the allegations as if they were proven fact in both cases.
“In all of these circumstances, appellant contends that the
magistrate’s many misdirections led her to come to the wrong conclusion and
that this court set aside her ruling as being based on the wrong bail
principles and that the State provided no compelling reasons why she should not
have been admitted to bail.”
In her chronological order of events, Marry said on January
28, 2020 she went to collect her children from school following the ruling by
the High Court and when she got there, she saw Munyoro sitting in a vehicle in
the company of security details from the army and the Central Intelligence
Organisation.
Marry said she then asked Munyoro why she had instructed
her (Marry) younger children not to speak to their siblings and Munyoro
responded that she (Marry) should be grateful and thankful that she was caring
for the children as Chiwenga could not look after them.
“Although there was a verbal exchange between them, there
was no physical contact as complainant had armed personnel and was also sitting
in the car,” Mtetwa said, adding her client was surprised to later learn that
she was wanted by the police for questioning on charges of assault. Newsday
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