Woman claiming to be a cadre sued over illegal plot sale

CHAWAMA Local Court has heard how a 45-year-old woman of John Howard sold someone’s plot claiming that she was a Patriotic Front (PF) cadre with powers to allocate land.
This is in a case in which Charity Hakuwa 37 of Lusaka’s Kuomboka Township sued Precious Chitambo for failing to refund her K2,560.
Hakuwa told the court that she paid K7,000 out of the K7,500 Chitambo demanded after the defendant assured her that she belonged to the ruling party and therefore entitled to allocate plots.
“I asked her if the plot was hers, and she told me that she was a PF cadre who was entitled to land allocation. She was accompanied by a chairperson for that area,” she said.
Hakuwa said she later paid the balance after being put under pressure by the chairperson.
She said after asking some bricklayers to work on her plot, the rightful owner of the plot who produced title deeds stopped them.
“I spent K2,560 to work on the plot and I was moved to a different one” she said. “After the bricklayers started working on the second plot, the owner of the plot came to stop them again and was moved to a third place. This forced me to demand for a refund of the K7,500 plus K2,560 which I used on the plot.”
She said the defendant managed to refund her the K7,500 but refused to give her the K2,560 she had spent on the plot hence the decision to seek court’s intervention.
But in her defence, Chitambo said she was the owner of the plot and only decided to sell it because her mother was ill and needed money to take her to the hospital.
She said she moved Hakuwa to a different place because she demanded for a better place and not where she had allocated her.
Chitambo said the K2,560 should be refunded by the person who had claimed ownership of the second plot where Hakuwa had been allocated.
She said the owner of the plot promised to refund Hakuwa her K2,560 but he changed his mind because Hakuwa insulted him.
Chawama Local Court Magistrate Serah Nyendwa Phiri sitting with Magistrates Contildah Kamono and Mubukwanu Matakala adjourned the case and requested the presence of the person who had claimed the ownership of the second plot.