HARARE- The Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) has filed a legal challenge seeking a declarator that a legal instrument used by the government to effectively float RTGS currency in February last year was unconstitutional.

President Emmerson Mnangagwa used the Presidential (Temporary Measures) Act to push through Statutory Instrument 33 of 2019, whose effect was that balances held in local bank accounts and mobile payment platforms, as well as bond notes and coins, would no longer be regarded as equal in value to United States dollars.

The statutory instrument also decreed that local dollar electronic balances and bond notes and coins would become ‘RTGS dollars’, part of Zimbabwe’s multi-currency system and trading at an exchange rate fixed by market forces.

The decree wiped out billions of dollars in value from individual savings, as well as pensions, as the RTGS currency’s value plunged.

The Law Society of Zimbabwe, representing all the country’s legal practitioners, now says the was unconstitutional adding that it stands to suffer prejudice together with its members.

Edwin Mapara, the LSZ’s executive secretary, said in an affidavit accompanying their application on Friday: “The actions of the respondents in compulsorily ordering and effecting the conversion of United States dollar balances in the applicant’s account into RTGS in February 2019 amounted to compulsory deprivation and expropriation of such U.S. dollars without adequate compensation and therefore breached section 71 (2) and (3) of the Constitution of Zimbabwe (which prohibits compulsory deprivation of property).

“Consequent to the introduction of the U.S. dollar (in 2009), Zimbabwean citizens, including the applicant, were allowed to open and operate U.S. dollar accounts for purposes of transacting in such currency. The applicant opened several bank accounts among them Barclays Bank, CBZ Bank, Stanbic Bank and FBC Bank and at all material times transacted in U.S. currency in respect of these accounts.”

He said the compulsory conversion of their members’ U.S. dollar denominated assets and bank balances done in terms of Statutory Instrument 33 of 2019 did not serve any public interest.

Mapara also argued that such deprivation was not accompanied by any payment or tender of compensation to individuals and companies affected by such deprivation.

Finance Minister Mthuli Ncube was cited as the first respondent while the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe and its governor John Mangundya were cited as second and third respondents respectively.

Mnangagwa and the Attorney General are the fourth and fifth respondents.

The matter is yet to be set down for hearing.