Online Reporter
Patrick Chitumba
A 45-YEAR-OLD traditional healer who was jailed for 15 years for drugging and repeatedly raping a young woman seeking spiritual help has walked free after the High Court in Masvingo overturned his conviction.
The reason for the acquittal was that “the victim took too long to report the issue.”
Following months of alleged abuse, the traditional healer had instructed the client to elope to her boyfriend when he discovered she had fallen pregnant.
Innocent Chikovo of Heydon Village 3, Chinu, near Mvuma in Chirumhanzu District, was initially convicted by Gweru Regional Magistrate Sibongile Msipa-Marondedze following a full trial.
He had pleaded not guilty to rape.
This week, High Court Judges Christopher Dube-Banda and Sunsley Zisengwe upheld Chikovo’s appeal, found him not guilty and acquitted him, setting aside both the conviction and the 15-year jail term.
Chikovo had served four months of the sentence.
The judges’ reasoning centred on the timing of the complaint. Court papers showed the alleged incidents occurred on 13 March 2024, but the complainant only reported the matter on 29 May 2024 — almost two months later.
“There was no reasonable explanation given for such an inordinate delay in making the rape complaint,” the judges ruled.
Chikovo was represented by Esau Mandipa of Mandipa, Makwara and Chikukwa Legal Practice.
During the regional court trial, Chikovo, who was a self-actor, told the court he had consensual sexual encounters with the 22-year-old woman.
Chikovo, who is a self-styled traditional healer, denied the charges throughout.
His defence throughout the trial was that the various sexual encounters were consensual.
He testified that regarding the initial sexual encounter, the complainant followed him to a bushy area while he was out walking.
She allegedly asked for sexual intercourse, which he declined.
He told the court the complainant then sat down, opened her legs and began seducing him, and “as a fallible human being, he fell for it.”
Thereafter, Chikovo said, the complainant would incessantly demand sexual intercourse, to the point that she borrowed the village head’s bicycle to follow him on a 10km journey to treat other patients so they could have sexual intercourse. They had intercourse and she later returned to his homestead.
Chikovo also told the court the complainant’s mother had refused to pay him two cows for healing her daughter, and he was shocked when police came to arrest him.
Msipa-Marondedze had dismissed that defence as hollow and unconvincing.
She asked: “If that was so, what was the purpose of administering concoctions that rendered her weak?”
She found him guilty and sentenced him to 15 years behind bars.
The State, led by Eggrina Matutu, told the court the complainant, whose name cannot be published, first visited
Chikovo with her mother in August 2023 for spiritual assistance.
She returned with her mother again in January 2024.
The court heard Chikovo told them the young woman needed to stay at his homestead to complete her healing. Her mother left her there and returned to Rusape.
The State alleged that in January, Chikovo told the complainant he had to administer medicine through sexual intercourse to “completely heal her.”
He allegedly took her to a nearby bush, instructed her to undress, cut her pubic hair and mixed it with concoctions.
He is then said to have had unprotected sex with her without consent, before giving her substances to drink and to apply to her private parts and having sex with her again.
The court heard the abuse allegedly continued on several occasions.
On 19 March 2024, after discovering the complainant was pregnant, Chikovo allegedly told her to elope to her boyfriend, who was also his client.
The woman later told her mother, who advised her to go to police.
She made a report on 28 May 2024 at Harare Central Police Station and was taken to Parirenyatwa Hospital for a medical examination. That led to Chikovo’s arrest.
Following the acquittal by the High Court in Masvingo Chikovo was released from custody.
