Zimbabwean Law Professor Issues Formal Apology to Supreme Court for Citing Fictitious Cases

Professor Welshman Ncube issues Formal Apology to Supreme Court for Citing Fictitious Cases

By Delicious Mathuthu

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe - Professor Welshman Ncube, a prominent Zimbabwean lawyer and politician, has issued an apology to the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe for citing non-existent and defective case law in a mining dispute case, Pulserate Investments (Pvt) Ltd vs Andrew Zuze and Others (Case No: SC202/25).

The apology, detailed in a letter to the Registrar of the Supreme Court, addresses a significant professional oversight and relience on Artificial Intelligence (AI).

In his letter, Prof. Ncube, a senior counsel at Mathonsi Ncube Law Chambers in Bulawayo, expressed deep regret for submitting Heads of Argument containing 12 case citations that were either fabricated or irrelevant to the legal propositions they were intended to support.

“I wish to express my profound regret and apology to the Court for the citation of defective and non-existent cases in the Heads of Argument I prepared.

“I take full and unequivocal responsibility for these errors,” Professor Ncube wrote.

The defective citations were exposed by the 1st Respondent’s legal team, led by renowned legal practitioner, Advocate Thabani Mpofu, who verified the references and highlighted their inaccuracies.

The erroneous citations included cases such as Marange Resources (Pvt) Ltd vs Core Mining & Mineral Resources (2016) and Zimasco (Pvt) Ltd v Marikano & Others (2014), among others, which were either non-existent or did not align with the arguments presented.

Ncube attributed the errors to one of his researcher’s use of AI to generate the citations without proper verification.

He admitted his own negligence, stating that, “It never occurred to me that it was possible for a graduate researcher to present to me non-existent and defective case law authorities… hence my negligent failure to check the authenticity of the cases.”

He described the errors as a catastrophic lapse in professional judgement.

“It is difficult to imagine anything more embarrassing to me personally as Senior Counsel and officer of this Honourable Court," he said.

Ncube said the errors were not deliberate or motivated by any intention to mislead the Court or to prejudice any party involved in this matter.

There is now a growing risk in the legal profession of case law research in the region as the world and lazy professionals gravitate towards over-reliance on AI tools.

Courts in South Africa have also recently dealt with similar issues.

In a 2025 case before the Pietermaritzburg High Court, seven non-existent authorities were cited in pleadings, a mistake traced back to AI-generated content.

A South African judge presiding over the case issued personal cost orders and referred the matter to the country's Legal Practice Council.

Legal experts in the region are urging firms and legal practitioners to implement stronger internal controls over legal research.

Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr, a leading South African firm, recently warned that "fictional citations are real consequences” of poorly monitored AI use.