A FORMER employee of OK Zimbabwe, Sifelani Makaita Gomo,
has accused her former employer’s lawyer of misrepresenting facts at the
Supreme Court to get a favourable judgment, 15 years after her dismissal from work.
Gomo was employed by OK Zimbabwe before she was dismissed
from work in 2005 over allegations of gross incompetence.
She challenged the dismissal in a legal battle that took
three years and ended at the Supreme Court, which upheld the dismissal in 2008.
But Gomo, 12 years later, wrote a letter to the Law Society
of Zimbabwe (LSZ), accusing OK Zimbabwe lawyers Wintertons Legal Practitioners
of bias, claiming she had discovered that they filed documents in a way aimed
at misleading the court.
Gomo said Andrew Mugandiwa of Wintertons misled the court
by filing the documents upside down the chronological order to mislead the
court.
“When my then lawyer filed his heads of arguments, he wrote
it in the chronology order and he was naturally quoting the pages of the
documents he was referring to in his argument. Mugandiwa, after being granted
leave to appeal, then turned the file upside down,” Gomo said.
“I wrote a detailed response to his leave to appeal also
quoting the pages as they were in the labour court file. Mugandiwa went on to
remove some critical documents I was referring to, like the charge sheet used
to dismiss me and some other important documents.
“He also changed the numbering of the pages to suit his
agenda and rearranged the documents in such a way that the charge sheet that
was dropped and the minutes of the hearing that was nullified are the ones
filed at the end of the file to give the impression that they were raised
last.”
Gomo said after that, Mugandiwa removed the charge sheet
for which she was dismissed, thereby misleading the court.
“The Supreme Court judges hence found me guilty of charges
that were presented before them and not what I was dismissed for because the
correct charge sheet had been removed,” she said.
“If the file had been left intact, it would have made it
easier for the judges to cross-check the arguments presented by my former
lawyer which are still in the file.”
Gomo was dismissed for gross incompetence after she missed
sales target by 4%.
She said she surpassed the profit target by 239%, but got a
warning three months later.
“I had missed sales target by 4% (it’s written on the
warning), but surpassed the profit target by 239%, but I got a warning three
months later when my bosses decided to start building a case against me.
“The disciplinary committee even commended that
performance, but Mugandiwa put a decimal comma between the figures, making it
read 2,39% above profit target. This was still an excellent performance, but it
was manipulated to mislead the court.”
The LSZ confirmed receipt of Gomo’s complaint, but
Mugandiwa refused to comment.
However, a source familiar with the issue claimed Mugandiwa
represented OK well, but was not part of the internal disciplinary measures
against Gomo, who was represented by another law firm.
The source said Gomo had an opportunity to notify the
Supreme Court that the papers had been tampered with on September 15, 2008 and
that the court could not have proceeded with the case without a charge
sheet.
If Gomo had a copy of the appeal record when the appeal was
argued before the court, she, therefore, had an opportunity to advise the court
that the record had been changed, the sources queried. Newsday
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