Michael Mashiri
A man, who is facing fraud and defeating the course of justice after he practised as a lawyer with a fraudulent certificate from Council for Legal Education.
Jabulisa Tshuma, 57, residing in Kwekwe appeared before magistrate Marehwanazvo Gofa at the Harare Magistrates’ Courts facing fraud and defeating the course of justice allegations.
The co-accused is Huggins Hardwork Duri, who is the Executive Secretary of Council for Legal Education and has already appeared in court.
The complainant in this matter the State, represented by Joe Zimba who is the Finance and administration manager for Council for Legal Education.
The State, through prosecutor Pardon Dziva, alleges that sometime in 2010, Tshuma graduated from University of South Africa, UNISA, with a Bachelor of Law degree.
For him to practise law in Zimbabwe, Tshuma had to attain a certificate of conversions with the Council for Legal Education.
He was supposed to write and pass at least six modules for him to get the CLE certificate.
As a result, sometime in 2016, Tshuma enrolled with CLE and started writing conversions examinations in 2017 June.
From June 2017 to November 2020, he sat for 3 modules that is criminal procedure, evidence and statute law.
In 2017 June and November he sat for statute law and evidence and in November passed statute law only.
In 2018 and 2019 June and November, he sat for criminal procedure and evidence and failed both modules on all sittings.
He then wrote again the same modules in November 2020 and passed.
Instead of writing the remaining three modules book keeping, civil practice and procedure and ethics Tshuma then connived with Council for Legal Education officials to facilitate printing of a certificate, regardless of him not having passed the remaining three modules.
The officials engaged Duri, who is the Executive Secretary of Council for Legal Education who then managed to process the certificate for Tshuma dated April 16, 2021.
The certificate was processed though Tshuma had not passed all the six required modules and that enabled him to be admitted as a legal practitioner.
By doing that he caused prejudice to the reputation and good administration of the Council for Legal Education.
After that, he went on to approach the High Court of Zimbabwe and made an application to be admitted as a legal practitioner.
He submitted the fraudulently obtained certificate to the High Court, portraying that he was a qualified person to be admitted as a legal practitioner yet when was not.
Tshuma was duly admitted and registered as a legal practitioner and a certificate of registration was issued on November 17, 2021.
Using the fraudulently obtained certificate of registration, the State alleges that Tshuma is currently practising as a lawyer, misrepresenting that he is a duly qualified lawyer when in actual fact he did not pass the required subjects for him to be registered as a lawyer.
Gofa remanded Tshuma to August 25.
He was ordered to pay US$300 bail.
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