Pachena
- Airmen ripped out doors and ceilings and painted clubhouse in military colours, court told
- Air Force commander unveiled plaque ‘opening’ 55-year-old club as the military’s own
- Club holds a council lease valid until 2070 and says it was evicted without a court order
Brenna Matendere
The Air Force of Zimbabwe has been dragged to the High Court for allegedly seizing Falcon Golf Club in Harare, with the club accusing the military of a “brazen hostile takeover” that ended with the Air Force commander unveiling a plaque claiming the course as its own.
The community-owned club, which has operated in the Hatfield suburb since 1971, filed an urgent chamber application for a spoliation order on 17 September.
Defence Minister Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri and Air Force commander Air Marshal John Jacob Nzvede, both cited in their official capacities, and the Air Force of Zimbabwe itself are the first, second and third respondents in the matter filed under case number HCH 4662/26.
The club wants the court to order the respondents to hand back its clubhouse, golf course and all other improvements on the 17 pieces of land it leases from the City of Harare, and to pay its legal costs on the punitive legal practitioner-and-client scale.
Part of the court application states:
“…The applicant was in peaceful and undisturbed possession of its various building structures, Golf Club House, managers club house and other amenities used for golfing by the generality of its membership.
“The 2nd and 3rd respondents unlawfully took occupation of the whole Falcon Golf Club … claiming that the whole property is now owned by 3rd Respondent, such occupation was taken in the absence of a court order allowing such eviction. It is unlawful for the respondents to appropriate without the applicant’s consent and without compensation to the applicant for the building structures constructed by the applicant at the Falcon Golf Club.”
Falcon Golf Club therefore wants a court order to restore to it, “peaceful and undisturbed” possession of the property.
Doors ripped out, walls repainted
According to the founding affidavit of club trustee Alex Elias Mashamhanda, owner of Mashwede Holdings, the takeover began on 5 September when two Air Force officers, Group Captains Kereke and Dube, arrived at the club.
The officers, he said, “invaded our premises without our permission taking down doors and ceilings and started painting the 3rd respondent’s colours on to our buildings”, and told staff that the Air Force was taking over.
The first sign of military interest had come two months earlier.
On 6 July, Kereke allegedly telephoned Mashamhanda to say the Air Force wanted to occupy the club manager’s house. Asked to put the request in writing, he never did.
Mashamhanda said the club’s leaders initially thought the September incursion “was a joke”, unable to believe that a state security institution would evict them unlawfully.
Efforts to secure a meeting with the Air Force leadership went nowhere, and lawyers were instructed on 9 September.
Tournament and plaque
Three days later, on 12 September, the Air Force staged the Zimbabwe Inter-Service Golf Team Championship at Falcon. Club members were barred from the clubhouse and other facilities for the entire day, the affidavit says.
The event programme, attached to the court papers, shows that Nzvede delivered the keynote address and unveiled what was billed as the Falcon Golf Club plaque.
Photographed and filed as evidence, the plaque states that “this golf estate” was officially opened by the commander that day.
“To add salt to the applicant’s wound,” Mashamhanda said, the Air Force “purported to officially open the Airforce Falcon Golf Club”. The club, he added, neither consented to the takeover nor surrendered its premises.
“The actions of the 2nd and 3rd respondent smack of a brazen hostile takeover of the premises that belong to the applicant. Their actions also speak to the unlawful eviction of the applicant, applicant’s employees and golfing members from the applicant’s golf club. These actions the applicant did not consent to and neither did it voluntarily surrender its premises and or improvements to the respondents,” Mashamhanda said in his affidvait
A lease running to 2070
The club’s case rests on a 99-year lease signed on 30 June 1971 with the former Hatfield Town Council, whose land later passed to the City of Salisbury, now Harare. The lease, which runs until 29 June 2070 at a nominal rent of two dollars a year, required the club to build a golf course and clubhouse facilities.
Mashamhanda estimates the improvements are worth more than US$2 million, though he stresses this is his own figure and that valuers have been engaged to carry out a formal assessment.
The cantonment claim
The Air Force’s claim traces back to Statutory Instrument 210 of 2025, gazetted on 5 December, in which the Defence Minister declared a 75.2-hectare area in Harare, named “Falcon”, a military cantonment under the Defence Act. A further notice, SI 28 of 2026, redrew its boundaries in February.
The club argues that the notices neither compulsorily acquired the property nor cancelled its lease, and did not amount to a court order for its eviction. Members continued to use the club undisturbed until September.
Ownership of part of the land has been contested for nearly a year. In October 2025, the City of Harare accused the club of encroaching on the Remaining Extent of Lot 227 Hatfield Township, which it said it was subdividing for housing. The club wrote back twice, pointing out that the stand falls within its lease, but received no reply. In May, the council advertised plans to rezone the land from golf course to residential use, creating 17 stands of 2,000 square metres each.
The Air Force responded with a newspaper notice insisting it had “always been the lawful owner” of the property, describing it as a military camp held on behalf of the state and warning that anyone buying or selling stands there would be prosecuted. In July, the Ministry of Local Government instructed the council to withdraw its rezoning application.
‘No court order’
Mashamhanda said the club accepted that the Air Force was asserting ownership, but argued that a dispute between the military and the city could not give the Air Force the right to throw the club out without a court order. Even if the land proved to belong to the Air Force, he said, the club would hold an improvement lien over the buildings it had put up.
In a certificate of urgency, lawyer Edson Nyasha Matsanura of Bonongwe Law Chambers said the respondents had taken the law into their own hands, conduct at odds with the rule of law guaranteed by section 3 of the Constitution.
Nzvede took command of the Air Force in March 2024, succeeding Air Marshal Elson Moyo.
The respondents have 24 hours from service to file notices of opposition, failing which the matter may proceed unopposed. The application was filed by Mapfidza and Rutsito Legal Practitioners.
