Judgment No. SC 10/18
Criminal Appeal SC 185/14
registration of an arbitral award for purposes of execution in the absence of provision
for interest in the award itself.”
The quoted excerpt shows that the judge a quo’s decision was based on her assessment that the
decision of the judge in HC 4641/13 was substantively wrong. It is possible that her assessment
could be sound at law especially if regard is had to case authorities, as in Conforce (Pvt) Ltd v
City of Harare 2000 (1) ZLR 445 (H) at 540D where the following was stated:
“I agree that a court should not interfere with the Arbitrator’s Award so as to alter it to
accord with what the court thinks the Arbitrator actually decided.”
This Court is however not seized with the determination of the correctness or propriety of the
decision in HC 4641/13. This Court is rather faced with the issue of the propriety of the decision
of the High Court whereby a judge of the that Court reviewed an earlier decision by a judge of
the same Court and therefore of parallel jurisdiction, and substituted the earlier order with one
that she felt the earlier judge ought to have made, for the reason that she disagreed with the
earlier court’s decision.
The High Court had no power to so act. It trod on the prerogative of the Supreme Court.
In City of Mutare v Mawoyo 1995 (1) ZLR 258 (HC) at 266E – 267C it was
said:
“In Parker v Parker & Ors supra SCOTT J was asked to alter an order by SANDURA
JP directing that an exception in case HC 3196/84 and an application in case HC
1108/85, both cases involving the same parties, be heard together on the same occasion.
Declining jurisdiction, SCOTT J said at 85B:
‘The whole thrust of the reasons advanced by Mr O’Meara seems to point to an
assertion that in his view the order was wrongly made. As a judge of the High
Court, it is not up to me to vary or alter an order of a judge of parallel
jurisdiction, short of expanding on it.’
Mr Wernberg’s argument was that the court has inherent powers to vary its orders. No
authority was cited for this general proposition. Rule 449 (1) of the Rules of the High
Court of Zimbabwe 1971 does not cover variations of the orders in the manner suggested
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