River Valley Properties, a residential housing developer in Bulawayo, has filed an urgent application with the High Court seeking to prevent its clients, a group of aggrieved civil servants, from “invading” their workplaces.
This request comes after civil servants, under the beneficiaries of the Mhlaba Housing Scheme, petitioned the company to hand over the residential suites they allegedly paid for, over the past ten years.
The beneficiaries, numbering more than four hundred, claim that the company has failed to fulfill its obligations from the deal by not delivering the platforms for more than ten years. A portion of beneficiaries went on to hand-deliver their petition on April 3, 2024.
In the court application, River Valley, the plaintiff, named 81 members of the scheme as defendants.
River Valley claimed that the civil servants were threatening to hold a demonstration at the company’s offices, and further alleged that when they came to deliver the petition they were violent.
“The respondents have unilaterally chosen to withdraw from the contract concluded between the applicants and the respondents and are therefore not in good standing. Disagreements have arisen between the applicant and the respondents in this regard,” the application said.
“The defendants organized to rectify contractual matters by assembling and displaying the use of violence at the applicant’s business premises located at 4” and George Silundika Street, Bulawayo, and in the process violating the right of the applicant and its employees to carry on their business peacefully and without disturbance.
“Thus, in purporting to exercise any right that the Respondents may have, the Respondents may not do so by violating the rights of the Applicant and its employees. The Applicant therefore seeks interdiction. In relation to the draft order attached herein to prevent the Respondent’s intended violation of the Applicant’s rights ” Site