President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s lawyer Advocate Lewis Uriri provided free legal services to Sengezo Tshabangu, the self-proclaimed Interim Secretary General of the opposition Citizens Coalition for Change (CCC).
Tshabangu disclosed this during an interview on the Asakhe Online program, The Breakfast Club which is produced by the Centre for Innovation and Technology (CITE).
“It is difficult for us to meet our litigation costs. Our legal team is headed by Advocate Uriri, one of the best lawyers to ever come out of Zimbabwe. He is very expensive,” Tshabangu told the show.
“We sat down with him, and he said he understood where I was coming from. He said he would get the ball rolling so that the people, in general, would know what was going on and understand my cause. He did the first appearance free of charge.
“After that, we started having people coming in to help us meet our legal costs. Some are from the business communities, people with huge amounts of money.
“They understood our cause and they gave us money to channel to our legal needs. We are accounting for each cent of that money.”
Uriri provided Tshabangu with pro bono legal services when the CCC led by Nelson Chamisa took legal action against his authority to recall its Members of Parliament and Councillors.
The involvement of Mnangagwa’s lawyer in Tshabangu’s controversial recalls adds further fuel to arguments that he was merely a ‘tortoise perched on a lamp post’ used by the Zanu PF leader in his drive to get a two-thirds majority in parliament and change the constitution to extend his term in office.
