Articles

By Vusumuzi Bhebbhe (final year LLB student- Midlands State University in collaboration with DBN research team).
Issues to be addressed:
1. The case of Nyamande and Anor v Zuva Petroleum (Pvt) Ltd SC-43-15
2. Whether the Labour Amendment Bill of 2015 has retrospective application
3. Possible court challenges to the Labour Amendment Bill of 2015

THE NYAMANDE V ZUVA PETROLEUM CASE
This case has generated much tension in Zimbabwe and most importantly has generated much debate amongst practicing lawyers, academics and law students. The decision by the chief justice did not make any new law but was rather rehashing of principles that already existed.

Friday the 17th of July saw the deliverance of a judgment long awaited by Employers in Zimbabwe as the Supreme Court ruled in their favor in the Zuva Petroleum case. Two managers were held to have been properly dismissed on three months’ notice as in accordance with the common law. At the end of the day this judgment opened the flood gates to dismissal with three months’ notice by employers and the general feeling across the country was that of betrayal to the Labour Act which has always been viewed as the protective shield against employer brutality. There is always many sides to a story.

Every corporate’s investment into its real estate can be a corporate’s strength or weakness. Generally a company’ real estate comprises of its real property such as its premises of operation, branches, franchises and other immovable property used by the corporate enterprise. Strategy and management of all these components is imperative or else could result in losses, image and brand deterioration as well as inevitably drops in share prices. Maximising the value of corporate real estate has begun to be emphasized in the past two decades. With the rise of giant corporations such as Time Warner which has subdiary as huge as HBO, MacDonald Coporation having led by example.

Identification of the functionality, placement and productivity of each asset maintains a company’s competitive edge. It is important that each division, be it a franchise or branch or merely a premises attained by the corporate for retail or manufacture, must perform its allocated function and therefore make its contribution to cash inflow. Often corporates invest in assets that do not themselves continually produce inflows and are merely dormant assets which are believed to be assets on a financial statement and therefore underestimate the impact of depreciation and amortization.

The article below has been complied to shed light on the current realities of the mining sector in Africa. It gives a comparative analysis on the markets, West Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa. It later merges the situation on the continent and how Zimbabwe can take advantage.

The period between 2010-2014 braced the mining sector across the globe with an unprecedented plummeting of metal prices. This has seen gold going down from a remarkable LMB $42/g to an average of $35/g. Base metals have never dined with joy as well as we see the copper, iron ore prices fluctuating. As a reaction to this the stock holders have started disposing their mining shares as it clearly shows signs of bears. New Crest a gold mining company based in Canada also reacted to the market trends as we saw it receiving confirmation from Toronto Stock Exchange with effect from the close of business on the 4th of September 2013 of delisting of its ordinary shares.

The National Employment Code of Conduct (hereinafter called the code) was enacted in terms of section 101 (9) of the Labour Act. An employer who does not have in place a registered code of conduct is obliged to adhere to the provisions of the Code whenever an employee is arraigned before its disciplinary authority on allegations of serious misconduct. One of the objectives of the Code, which is the subject matter of this article, is to provide guidelines on procedural and substantive fairness and justice in handling disciplinary matters at work place. The Code specifies acts that amount to misconduct and goes further to prescribe the procedure to be followed should the employer decide to institute disciplinary proceedings against an employee. What follows hereunder is a brief analysis of the steps an employer is obliged to take in order to stand the test of substantive and procedural fairness in disciplinary proceedings against its employees.