Online Reporter
Yeukai Karengezeka-Chisepo
Court Correspondent
The High Court has temporarily suspended the rape trial of Walter Magaya, founder of the Prophetic Healing and Deliverance Ministries, which was scheduled to proceed at the Magistrates Court.
The decision was handed down by High Court judge Justice Tawanda Chitapi after Magaya filed an urgent chamber application seeking to stop the trial.
In this particular case, Magaya is accused of raping four complainants. Magaya is challenging magistrate Esthere Chivasa’s decision to have the case heard in a Victim-Friendly Court.
He argued that the trial should take place in an open court in order to have a fair trial.
The High Court is yet to fully hear his application challenging Chivasa’s ruling.
In issuing the temporary stay, Justice Chitapi declared that the trial must not proceed until the review application has been resolved.
“The proceedings in the Magistrates Court in Case Number CRB HRE R 139/26 are temporarily stayed pending the determination of the application to review those proceedings filed before this court in Case Number HCH 953/26 on 27 February 2026,” Justice Chitapi ruled.
The judge also outlined a timeline for the filing of documents related to the review application.
Respondents (Estere Chivasa and Prosecutor General) are required to file their responses by 13 March 2026, with Magaya expected to submit his reply by March 20, 2026.
Both parties must file their heads of argument by early April 2026. Magaya, who is represented by lawyers Everson Chatambudza and Admire Rubaya, and is also seeking the removal of Magistrate Chivasa from the case.
He wants the trial to start afresh under a different magistrate, arguing that Magistrate Chivasa prematurely dismissed his objections without hearing his full arguments.
In his application, Magaya accused Magistrate Chivasa of relying solely on the State’s outline of a document containing allegations without conducting her own independent verification.
He criticised her decision-making, alleging that it lacked judicial rigour and amounted to a miscarriage of justice.
“The 1st Respondent openly confessed to relying on the State outline, a document of mere allegations, and to ‘believing’ the State Counsel’s word without independent verification, without interviewing the witnesses herself, and without any evidentiary foundation,” Magaya stated in his court papers.
“This is the flimsy basis upon which the 1st Respondent ordered that my trial be held in a Victim Friendly Court. That is not adjudication; that is abdication. It is shocking, profoundly disturbing, constitutionally reckless, and a grave miscarriage of justice.”
Magaya is asking the High Court to nullify Chivasa’s decision and order that his trial be conducted in an open court.
The latest development follows magistrate Chivasa’s dismissal of an earlier application by Magaya to have his case referred to the Constitutional Court.
Chivasa ruled that the application lacked merit, and her decision was issued even as the High Court was hearing Magaya’s urgent chamber application.
She argued that the High Court’s proceedings had no bearing on her decision.
In a separate case before Harare Magistrate Francis Mapfumo, Magaya is seeking to refer the matter to the Constitutional Court, arguing that prosecutors continue to pursue the case despite some complainants withdrawing their accusations.
He is still testifying to support his application.
