Natpak (Private) Limited v Francis Kunyavapa

### Preamble
IN THE LABOUR COURT OF ZIMBABWE
JUDGMENT NO LC/H/609/2014
HARARE, 1 AUGUST 2014
CASE NO LC/H/609/2014
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IN THE LABOUR COURT OF ZIMBABWE	  JUDGMENT NO LC/H/609/2014

HARARE, 1 AUGUST 2014 				   CASE NO LC/H/22/2014

& 26TH SEPTEMBER 2014

In the matter between:

NATPAK (PRIVATE) LIMITED						APPLICANT

Versus

FRANCIS KUNYAVAPA							RESPONDENT

Before the Honourable E Makamure  : 	Judge

For the Applicant		A K Maguchu  (Legal Practitioners)

For the Respondent	T Katsuro   (Legal Practitioners)

MAKAMURE J:

This matter was set down for parties to argue an application for interim relief. The record was prepared and paginated for that application. When the parties appeared the legal practitioner for the applicant withdrew the application so that parties could proceed to argue the merits. The parties had prior to their appearance before me,duly discussed and agreed to this route. I accordingly endorsed that that application had been withdrawn.

As I indicated, the record had been prepared for argument of the application. The record of the appeal itself had not been paginated. It was just a bunch of papers put together. The practical problem which this presents is that the record becomes difficult to follow.   What is not clear is whether when the matter was set down for hearing the legal practitioners were prepared to fumble their way through an unpaginated record. Thus maybe the Registrar’s office should just prepare the various stages of the record and make sure that the whole record is paginated.  This avoids unnecessary postponements especially where parties would have filed the relevant Heads of Argument

However before the appeal could be argued, the respondent raised a point in limine. This therefore saved all parties from having to deal with a record which was not ready. What this has also done is to leave the award unenforced while the matter continues to drag on.

In raising the point in limine Mr Katsuro argued that some of the grounds of appeal, namely grounds 1, 2 and 4 raise issues of a factual nature. On that basis Mr Katsuro submitted that the appeal should be dismissed. In response Mr Maguchu submitted that the fact that some grounds of appeal out of a total of seven grounds are not proper grounds of appeal should not lead the court to dismiss the appeal. I agree, there are more than three grounds of appeal. The fact that some grounds may not be properly before the court cannot be a reason for the court to dismiss the appeal.  There is therefore no merit in the point in limine raised.

Accordingly the point in limine is dismissed.

Dube, Manikai & Hwacha, applicant’s legal practitioners

Munyaradzi Gwisai & Partners, respondent’s legal practitioners