Sam Levy’s heirs fight in court over Harare property empire

Sam Levy built the shopping complex that became the commercial centre of wealthy Harare, an English-style village of cobbled lanes and clock towers in the suburb of Borrowdale. He died in 2012 as one of the richest men in Zimbabwe. His four children are now suing each other over what he left.

Zimbabwe’s High Court dismissed an urgent application this week by Isaac Samuel Levy, who was seeking to restore dividends and other payments from two companies his father founded. Justice Benjamin Chikowero struck it off the roll and ordered him to pay costs, finding that he was pursuing through urgent proceedings the same relief already claimed in a pending action.

The ruling turned on procedure rather than merit. The judge held that the dispute did not warrant urgent intervention because the issues are already before the court in separate proceedings, which the respondents had argued should run their ordinary course.

Levy had sued his sister, Julia Naile Naome Aryeh, and his brothers, Maurice Samuel Levy and Raymond Samuel Levy, alongside two companies, Farmex (Private) Limited and Mutual Finance (Private) Limited.

What the main case claims

The pending action is considerably wider than the dividend question.

Isaac Levy is asking the court to declare a special power of attorney dated November 30, 2025 a forgery. He is separately seeking to have an acknowledgement of debt for $15 million set aside, arguing that he signed it under economic and psychological duress. And he is asking the court to compel the companies to pay remuneration and shareholder dividends he says have been withheld from him.

The respondents oppose all three claims and maintain that the matters should be resolved through the ordinary court process.

None of the allegations has been tested. No finding has been made on the authenticity of the power of attorney, on the circumstances in which the debt acknowledgement was signed, or on whether any payments were improperly withheld.

The man who built the Village

Samuel Rahamin Levy was born in Que Que, now Kwekwe, on October 9, 1929, into a Jewish family, and educated at Prince Edward School in what was then Salisbury. He died on June 5, 2012.

He was among the wealthiest people in Zimbabwe at the time of his death and is described in some accounts as a self-made billionaire, though no independently verified valuation of his estate has been published.

Sam Levy’s Village is what he is remembered for. Built in Borrowdale to resemble an English market town, it became the retail and business centre for affluent Harare and remains among the most recognisable commercial addresses in the country. According to a retrospective published by The Herald in 2014, Levy was rumoured to have built it without municipal approval and only brought the structures up to code after the city threatened demolition.

He served as a councillor for Ward 8, covering the Harare suburb of Waterfalls, from 1975 to 1979. He was posthumously given a lifetime achievement award at the Victor Night Awards and recognised by the United Nations EMPRETEC programme as one of the most influential entrepreneurs of post-independence Zimbabwe.

He married Gloria Levy. Their four children are the parties now in litigation.

A property already on the market

The dispute follows an attempt to sell the family’s central asset.

Sam Levy’s Village was listed for sale in June 2024, in a transaction that would have ended 34 years of family ownership. The outcome of that process has not been publicly reported.

Farmex and Mutual Finance, the two companies named in Isaac Levy’s application, are the corporate vehicles through which parts of the family’s interests are held. Neither publishes accounts, and the size of the dividends in dispute has not been disclosed.

A pattern in Zimbabwean business families

The case is the second inheritance dispute to reach the Zimbabwean courts in recent months involving a founding business family.

Meikles Limited, the retail and hospitality group founded by Thomas Meikle in 1894, has been through a public succession fight in which John Moxon, the founder’s grandson, opposed a takeover of the group by his own son Matthew. Moxon subsequently ceased to be chairman, and the group has since sold its remaining hospitality asset.

Both disputes concern the same structural problem. Zimbabwean family conglomerates built over decades typically hold their assets through private companies that publish nothing, with ownership arrangements set out in documents only the family has seen. When the founder dies, those documents become the only record of what was agreed.

Isaac Levy’s main action returns to the High Court. No date has been set.