Advocate Lewis Uriri has publicly turned down gifts worth US$350,000 offered to him and his wife by businessman Wicknell Chivayo, saying accepting them could create the impression that he owed Chivayo something beyond a professional relationship that has already been paid for and closed.

Chivayo announced the gifts on Monday in a tribute posted on X, telling Uriri to collect a 2026 Range Rover Sport Autobiography valued at US$250,000 together with US$50,000 in cash for fuel, and offering a further US$50,000 to Uriri’s wife, herself a senior lawyer, as what he called a “handbag allowance”.

Uriri declined all three within hours.

“Your announcement came as a complete surprise, without prior notice or discussion,” he wrote in reply. “Given the distance that has developed between us since our last conversation, the substantial nature of the gifts, and their express connection to past professional services, I must approach this gesture with particular care.”

He said the two had last spoken in June 2024 and that he had done no work for Chivayo since. “The historical work to which your tribute refers was performed in my professional capacity and paid for in full. My remuneration was for services actually rendered,” he said.

Uriri framed the refusal as a question of professional standards, pointing to Zimbabwe’s Legal Practitioners’ Code of Conduct and to the work of the International Bar Association and the International Commission of Jurists on the independence of lawyers.

“Applying those standards to these circumstances, I consider it necessary to decline benefits that could reasonably create a perception of personal financial obligation extending beyond a concluded and fully remunerated professional engagement,” he said. “My wife and I attach great importance to preserving both our professional standing and public confidence in our independence.”

Chivayo has spent the past two years handing out vehicles and cash to musicians, clerics, sportspeople and other public figures, and most have accepted. Uriri is the second prominent Zimbabwean in recent months to refuse publicly, after Eunor Guti, widow of the ZAOGA founder Ezekiel Guti, turned down a vehicle and a cash gift.

Sources: ZimLive; NewZimbabwe.com.

The High Court has ruled that Marian Chombo is entitled to 45 percent of the value of the rights and benefits attached to the 99-year lease over Allan Grange Farm, ending a property dispute that has outlived her marriage to former cabinet minister Ignatius Chombo by more than a decade.

Justice Philipa Phillips held that while the 3,098-hectare farm, on the boundary of Zvimba and Mhangura, belongs to the State and cannot itself be divided, the leasehold rights acquired during the marriage were a matrimonial asset capable of distribution. She awarded Ignatius Chombo 55 percent and his former wife 45 percent, and ruled that Marian Chombo’s share must include the farmhouse she has occupied since the divorce.

Chombo had argued that the lease carried little or no positive value when the marriage ended, saying banks had financed the machinery, fuel, seed and labour and that he had shouldered the debts alone after the separation. The judge was unpersuaded, finding he had not produced the evidence needed to make that case.

“The court would ordinarily expect financial statements, loan agreements, bank records, valuations or other documentary evidence from which the net value of the leasehold rights could be objectively assessed,” Phillips said.

Marian Chombo told the court she had jointly applied for the farm and was surprised when the lease was issued in her husband’s name alone in 2007. She said she ran the wheat, soya and maize operations along with dairy, beef and poultry projects while her husband attended to his ministerial duties in Harare.

The judge accepted that account, finding the couple had “operated as a farming partnership within the marriage.” She started from an equal split and trimmed Marian Chombo’s share by five percentage points to reflect the liabilities her former husband carried after the divorce. “Benefits come with liabilities, we take the good with the bad,” she said.

The couple married customarily in 1985 and in a civil ceremony in 1993. Divorce proceedings began in 2009 and were granted in August 2012. Each side was ordered to pay its own costs.

Sources: ZimLive; NewZimbabwe.com.

A passenger ferry has returned to the Kariba–Chalala route on Lake Kariba, six weeks after the disaster that killed 97 people and left lakeshore communities cut off from the town of Kariba.

The MV Silverstone, a privately owned vessel with a carrying capacity of 60 passengers, was launched at Lake Harvest Harbour and will work the corridor previously served by the RIDA-operated Mbuya Nehanda, which capsized on 11 August. The route takes in the Kings Camp and Musambakaruma fishing camps.

The launch was performed by Kingstone Magaya, a director in the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructural Development, standing in for the permanent secretary. Magaya used the occasion to argue that the August disaster had exposed the danger of leaving a critical transport corridor in the hands of one operator.

“Lake Kariba is too important to depend on one operator. Had there been alternative operators on the Kariba-Chalala corridor, the economic shock after 11 August would have been minimal,” he said, as reported by NewZimbabwe.com. He said liberalisation of transport corridors, including inland waterways, had become a plank of government policy.

The vessel’s owner, Mr Mangove, said the Silverstone was not meant as a replacement for the lost RIDA ferry. “We are not coming as a replacement to RIDA Mbuya Nehanda but to cover the gap that they left after the sad 11 August incident,” he told NewZimbabwe.com. He told The Herald the project had been in development for some time, but that the tragedy had accelerated the need to bring it into service.

The suspension of services has bitten hard. Fish traders around the lake have lost catches that spoiled for want of transport, and families have struggled to move between Kariba’s rural settlements and the town, particularly since schools reopened.

Fares on the new service are US$8 to Kings Camp and US$15 for a direct trip between Kariba and Chalala.

Sources: NewZimbabwe.com; The Herald.