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Fidelis Munyoro
Chief Court Reporter
TWO small-scale miners are embroiled in a wrangle over control of potentially lucrative gold claims in Macheke, Mashonaland East.
In many gold mining areas, disputes arise between artisanal miners who fight over the money-spinning mining pits, seeking to displace each other.
Disputes are aggravated by the country’s manual system used to peg claims which leaves room for corruption and abuse of the system.
The wrangle over the gold claims in Macheke, pitting Mr Shingirai Muchinapo and Ms Edwick Dzapasi, has now spilled into the High Court.
Ms Dzapasi is suing Mr Muchinapo for allegedly encroaching into her territory.
Both are registered holders of blocks of mining claims in Mashonaland East.
Mr Muchinapo owns claims under the block Chifumbi 2 Mine (registration No 1688G) while Ms Dzapasi owns claims under the block Averum 22 (Registration No 37918).
However, a dispute arose between the two when Ms Dzapasi started mining in an area Mr Muchinapo claimed was within his registered claims.
In a bid to resolve the dispute, the parties appeared before the Ministry Mines and Mining Development adjudicator, Mr Godfrey Dadirai, in 2022, who ruled in favour of Mr Muchinapo.
Ms Dzapasi was ordered to confine her operations to her registered block. It was established that her block was 4km from Mr Muchinapo’s Chifumbi 2.
It was, therefore, viewed not as a case of encroachment of mines sharing a common boundary, but of Ms Dzapasi moving from her mine, about 4km away, to Muchinapo’s.
The order was made after Ministry of Mines officials made a site visit and verified that Ms Dzapasi’s registered coordinates were not in line with her ground position, that is, the area where she was actually carrying out her mining operations.
So Ms Dzapasi was ordered out of Mr Muchinapo’s block and confine herself to her registered block.
However, in January this year Mr Dadirai made another determination, wherein he issued a notification for the cancellation of Mr Muchinapo’s mining licence.
On the same day, Mr Dadirai issued an order suspending Mr Muchinapo’s mining operations, effectively reversing his decision of December 2022, in his favour.
Unhappy with Mr Dadirai’s determination of January 8 2024, Mr Muchinapo filed an application for review, which is still pending under Case Number HCH 319/24.
At the same time he filed an application for an interdict stopping Ms Dzapasi from mining in his territory.
In his ruling, Justice Rogers Manyangadze ruled that Mr Muchinapo had an arguable case, noting that his application for review lodged with the court cannot be said to lack merit.
“In the circumstances, it cannot be said that the application for review lacks merit,” he said.
“To the contrary, it has bright prospects of success. In view of this, the probabilities in this matter lie heavily in favour of granting the interim relief sought.”
It was the court’s view that if Ms Dzapasi was allowed to continue extracting gold from the mine Mr Muchinapo would suffer prejudice if the matter is eventually decided in his favour.
The solution, hence, was to stop all mining activities until the review application is determined, granting the provisional order sought by Mr Muchinapo.
In his application for interdict, Mr Muchinapo argued that he would suffer irreparable harm if the interdict was not granted because Ms Dzapasi continued to mine on the disputed claims even though the matter was pending in court.”
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