Chewore Lodge dispute has been portrayed to the public by various local and social media platforms as a stark cautionary tale: a long-standing investor allegedly stripped of his business by a rigid legal system, a Government hostile to private capital and a tourism sector undermined by judicial “technicalities.”
Yet this portrayal bears little resemblance to what the courts were actually asked to decide or what they ultimately ruled.
An examination of the High Court (HH192/25) and Supreme Court (SC06/26) judgments, alongside the factual record placed before those courts, reveals that the Chewore Lodge matter was never about the arbitrary “cancellation” of an investment.
Rather, it concerned the attempted creation of rights that conflicted with pre-existing leases and statute, which ultimately could not be legally sustained.
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Entirely absent from most reporting is the fact that Big Five Safaris (Private) Limited already held a valid pre-existing lease over the entire Chewore North Safari Area, long before Suscaden Investments (Private) Limited was formed or began operations.
That lease granted Big Five exclusive rights to occupy the entire Chewore North Safari Area and to conduct hunting, fishing, photographic and game-viewing safaris thereon. These rights were not theoretical or informal; they were operative and enforceable.
It was against this backdrop that Mr Kelly, through his company, sought to establish operations within the Chewore North Safari Area.
Rather than obtaining a lease in the ordinary manner prescribed by the Parks and Wildlife Management Act – a process that would have required confronting and acknowledging Big Five’s pre-existing rights – a purported joint venture arrangement was entered into to place Suscaden on the land without any statutory basis ordinarily required for occupation of a safari area.
The Parks and Wildlife Management Act does not permit occupation or use of a safari area without a properly constituted lease approved in accordance with the law. A joint venture, regardless of how it is styled, cannot override statutory requirements or extinguish private pre-existing rights already granted.
ZimParks ultimately accepted this position and cancelled the joint venture, recognising that it could not lawfully endure.
That cancellation triggered Mr Kelly, through his company, to institute litigation against ZimParks. Significantly, Big Five was joined to those proceedings because it had a direct and substantial interest in the outcome.
However, ZimParks and Mr Kelly, through his company, reached a purported out-of-court settlement one concluded without Big Five’s knowledge or consent.
Procedurally and legally, this could be argued to be improper as there could be no settlement of the dispute in the absence of Big Five, who had an interest in the matter.
It accumulated in the filing of a notice of withdrawal against ZimParks alone, while leaving Big Five formally bound to proceedings.
The settlement purported to grant Suscaden a long-term lease over land already leased to Big Five. In legal terms, this amounted to a double allocation of rights – something the law does not permit.
Two parties cannot simultaneously hold exclusive rights of occupation and use over the same area.
When Big Five later became aware of this arrangement, it initiated legal proceedings against both ZimParks and Suscaden.
Those proceedings were later withdrawn in an effort to allow the parties to reach an amicable resolution. That effort ultimately failed.
Contrary to claims that ZimParks acted maliciously, the record shows repeated attempts by Zimparks to engage Suscaden to resolve the impasse.
These attempts were unsuccessful and promptly dismissed by Suscaden. Faced with a legally untenable situation – one involving a double allocation of rights, statutory non-compliance, and ongoing commercial activity which infringed Big Five’s pre-existing and exclusive rights – ZimParks approached the High Court seeking declaratory relief.
Central to the courts’ decisions was the purported lease relied upon by Suscaden. Much commentary has dismissed its invalidation as the result of a mere technicality – specifically, the alleged absence of ministerial approval. The courts firmly rejected that characterisation. Under the Parks and Wildlife Management Act, ministerial concurrence is not optional, it is a mandatory precondition for the validity of any such lease.
The evidence before the courts also revealed a number of irregularities. Multiple different versions (three to be precise) of Suscaden’s purported lease were presented by it, all with discrepancies in the manner of signing and dates, which could not be reconciled or explained by Suscaden and no expert evidence was led by Suscaden to verify the Minister’s purported signature.
In earlier litigation against Zimparks and in letters to Zimparks, Suscaden itself had relied on an unsigned version of their purported lease, a fact which the court noted that no explanation had been proffered by Suscaden as to why it had relied on such unsigned version in previous litigation. Accordingly the courts, in coming to their decision, were justified to draw adverse inferences against Suscaden as it was in essence admitting that it never had an agreement signed by the Minister in prior legal proceedings.
Despite Suscaden calling a witness, such witness could not testify to having seen the responsible Minister sign the purported document. When the Minister denied having signed it, the burden rested on Suscaden to prove otherwise. The courts found that it failed to do so.
Notably, this was not the only defect affecting Suscaden’s purported lease. Its duration also exceeded the statutory maximum of 25 years. It purported to confer rights on Suscaden already vested in Big Five. It authorised activities that infringed upon Big Five’s exclusive rights. While the court nullified the lease on the clearest available ground, these additional irregularities underscore why the agreement could never have been lawfully enforced.
Following the Supreme Court judgment, in a widely circulated social media post, Mr Kelly openly questioned the integrity of Zimbabwe’s judiciary, characterised the Supreme Court’s decision as “shocking,” and suggested that justice could not prevail through the courts.
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In any constitutional democracy, disagreement with a court’s decision does not entitle a litigant to undermine the authority of the judiciary or to invite public distrust in judicial institutions.
The proper avenue for contesting a judgment lies within the bounds of the law — through recognised appellate or constitutional processes not through public campaigns that question the legitimacy of the courts.
Ultimately, the Chewore Lodge case was not about a state turning against investors. It was about enforcing statutory safeguards, respecting pre-existing private rights and preventing the unlawful duplication thereof.
Both the High Court and the Supreme Court concluded that no valid lease ever existed in favour of Suscaden and that ZimParks acted reasonably within the bounds of the law in seeking judicial clarity.
The real threat and damage to Zimbabwe’s investment climate may lie not in the judgments themselves, but in how inaccurately the dispute has been portrayed and the persistent distortion of their meaning and the refusal by an unsuccessful litigant to accept lawful outcomes.
When legal defeat is recast as injustice and judicial authority is publicly disparaged because it did not deliver a desired result, the damage extends far beyond a single dispute.
It is respect for the rule of law – not sympathy-driven narratives – that ultimately sustains investor confidence and institutional credibility.
