The Supreme Court has struck off an application by former National Social Security Authority (NSSA) chief executive Robin Vela and his company, Firstmile Apartments (Livingstone Avenue) Private Limited, after ruling the proceedings were filed without proper authority in a debt dispute with Al Shams Global Limited,a British Virgin Islands-registered company owned by businessman Jayesh Shah.
Al Shams Global, a property development company, had successfully sued Firstmile Apartments in the Commercial Court under the provisional sentence procedure over an acknowledgement of debt, with Vela and Gaudencia Rufaro Vela cited as guarantors.
In a judgment handed down on July 17, 2026, Justice Jacob Mafusire ruled that the applicants' bid to revive an appeal against the Commercial Court decision was irregular because it had been filed by lawyers who no longer had authority to act for the company.
"I hold that the present application was irregularly filed. It is improperly before the court. It is liable to be struck off the roll," Mafusire said.
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The judge ordered: "The application be and is hereby struck off the roll with costs."
The dispute arose after Al Shams sought provisional sentence against Firstmile Apartments based on an acknowledgement of debt signed in its favour. Vela, the former NSSA chief executive, and Gaudencia Rufaro Vela were sued as guarantors.
The applicants challenged the provisional sentence proceedings, arguing they were unconstitutional because they limited litigants' right to a fair hearing. The Commercial Court dismissed that challenge with costs, prompting an appeal to the Supreme Court.
However, the appeal was deemed abandoned after the applicants failed to serve a copy of the notice of appeal on the Registrar of the Commercial Court within the prescribed time. They later sought condonation and reinstatement of the appeal, blaming the omission on their former legal practitioner's oversight.
The Supreme Court did not consider the merits of that application after finding it had been instituted without proper authority.
Mafusire reaffirmed the legal principle that companies can only litigate through duly authorised representatives.
"A company is a juristic person. In legal proceedings before a court, it has to be represented by a duly authorised natural person," he said.
Quoting earlier Supreme Court authority, the judge added: "...a company, being a separate legal persona from its directors, cannot be represented in a legal suit by a person who has not been authorised to do so."
The court found that the applicants' former legal practitioner and his law firm had already had their mandate terminated and had formally renounced agency before the application was filed. A subsequent board resolution attempting to ratify the proceedings could not remedy the defect.
"At the critical time when this application was launched... there evidently was no such authority," Justice Mafusire ruled.
The judgment also highlighted allegations that a supporting affidavit purportedly filed by Gaudencia Rufaro Vela had been forged. Al Shams argued she was in the United Kingdom when the affidavit was allegedly signed and commissioned in Harare.
During the hearing, counsel for the applicants "all but conceded" that the affidavit was not genuine.
Mafusire remarked: "Apparently, the third applicant's affidavit was indeed forged."
He criticised the explanations offered by the applicants' legal team, saying the answering affidavits "disclose an unfortunate state of affairs" and that one affidavit "conceals more than it reveals."
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The judge said he was "quite surprised by the tone" adopted by the applicants' current legal practitioner and his "whole attitude to the issue."
Although the court said there was a "huge temptation" to determine whether the applicants had approached the court with "dirty hands" because of the disputed affidavit, Justice Mafusire declined to decide that issue after finding the application fatally defective for lack of authority.
Al Shams had sought punitive costs, including an order requiring the applicants' former legal practitioner to pay personally, but later abandoned that claim. The Supreme Court awarded ordinary costs after finding the matter had been resolved on the preliminary issue of authority alone.
