President Emmerson Mnangagwa has opposed a legal bid to extend the tenure of the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission.
Concilia Chinanzvavana, a legislator for the MDC, petitioned the high court to order that the commission be allowed to operate for 10 years, as enshrined in the constitution.
The commission is the legally constituted body that, among other things, probes the country's violent past with the aim to establish full disclosure and make recommendations to the government.
Part of its work is to make recommendations to the government about the Gukurahundi massacres of the mid-1980s.
Mnangagwa was minister of state security at the time of the Gukurahundi killings, when an estimated 20,000 people from the Midlands and Matabeleland provinces died.
In her court application, Chinanzvavana said delays in promulgating an act of parliament that would make the commission operational had reduced its lifespan by five years.
She argued that the commission should have become operational in August 2013 when former president Robert Mugabe was sworn into office, and that the tenure of the commission was then supposed to run for 10 years until August 2023.
However, the act enabling the commission only came into effect in January this year.
Chinanzvavana argues that this means "through deliberate omission or through negligence", justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi, Vice-President Kembo Mohadi and the government have effectively ensured that the commission's lifespan would be five years rather than 10. Mohadi is tasked with heading the peace and reconciliation arm of Mnangagwa's government.
In his response Mnangagwa, represented by attorney-general Prince Machaya, described the order being sought by Chinanzvavana as "an incompetent order at law" because she could not seek to amend the constitution through an order of the court.
"What the applicant seeks as relief in this matter therefore amounts to an amendment of the constitution of Zimbabwe.
"The same constitution provides that an amendment of its provisions can only be done through an act of parliament and not through the courts. On that basis, the application should be struck out," reads the notice of opposition by Mnangagwa filed with the high court.
The matter is now expected to be set down for hearing and determination by the high court...