Housing cooperatives in Harare recently approached the High Court challenging a joint venture agreement which saw City of Harare (CoH) transferring land worth millions of United States dollars to a company with links to Kenneth Raydon Sharpe’s Augur Investments.
According to the joint venture agreement in which City of Harare is a minority shareholder with only 30 percent shares, the two entities formed a company called Sunshine Development which was supposed to carry out a number of projects including construction of a hotel, a truck Inn and housing units among others.
As part of its contribution to the joint venture deal, City of Harare was supposed to transferred 99,4197 hectares but ended up transferring 239, 3823 hectares of prime Harare land while Augur Investments’ commitment of between US$20 million to US$30 million has not been honoured to date.
In a High Court application challenging the transfer of City of Harare land to Sunshine Development Private Limited, a joint venture company with Augur Investments, housing cooperatives under their umbrella organisation the Zimbabwe Homeless People Federation and two other applicants sought to have the shareholders agreement and the joint venture agreement declared null and void.
The applicants, the Zimbabwe Homeless People Federation said the shareholders agreement that culminated in a joint venture agreement stipulated that Sharpe’s company Augur Investments would provide capital through a loan account for improvement of land supplied by City of Harare.
In terms of the Shareholders Agreement a total of 99,4197 hectares of land would be transferred to the 7th Defendant (Sunshine Development (Pvt) Ltd),”
Zimbabwe Homeless People Federation however claimed that more 239,3823 hectares of land eventually ended up being transferred to Sunshine instead of the 99,4197 as per the shareholders agreement.
The shareholders agreement between Sharpe’s company and City of Harare also involves the conversion of Warren Hills Golf Club, a recreation area on stands 8114 and 19606 Warren Park Township of Salisbury District into a residential housing unit.
What has set tongues twitching is according to Zimbabwe Homeless People Federation the fact that Sunshine Development has not fulfilled any of its part of the bargain including injection of the capital sum of US$30 Million meant to operationalize the joint venture.
This is despite the fact that City of Harare has already transferred land to Sunshine Development as per the agreement.
The failure by Augur to inject capital into the joint venture has irked Zimbabwe Homeless People Federation who described the agreement as a fraudulent vehicle of extracting land from the City of Harare.
“The agreement therefore represented a fraudulent vehicle of extracting land from the City of Harare. This is against the laws of Zimbabwe. This is against the Constitution of Zimbabwe and the funding principles in the Constitution of Zimbabwe. This is against decency,” further reads the application.