THE High Court has struck off an urgent application by Side Electrical (Pvt) Ltd, trading as Botha Gold Mine, which sought to block police from using evidence obtained under a search warrant, ruling that the company approached the court with the incorrect legal remedy.
Justice Samuel Deme struck the application from the roll, ordering the mining company to pay legal costs, after finding that its request for an "interdict" was fundamentally misplaced.
The case centered on a warrant of search and seizure issued by the Bindura Magistrates Court on December 18, 2025, at the request of detective assistant inspector Lisita.
The applicant sought to stop the respondents—police officials and the provincial magistrate—from executing the warrant or using any information gathered from it, arguing it was illegally obtained.
However, Justice Deme found a critical flaw in the application's foundation.
The judge noted that while the application was framed as one for an interdict, the substance of the relief sought—to halt the operation of a warrant presumed valid—aligned more with a "stay of execution."
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“The Applicant cannot purport to rebrand the present application in paragraph 28 which is towards the end of the founding affidavit. Doing so will confuse every interested stakeholder,” the judge said.
The court rejected the argument by the applicant’s lawyer, B. Maunze, that the requirements for an interdict and a stay of execution were similar.
Justice Deme sided with the respondents’ counsel, F. Chimunoko, who maintained the applications were distinct.
“If the two applications are similar, then the phrases 'application for interdict' and 'application for stay of execution' ought to be interchangeably used whenever one of the two applications is before the court. I do agree with Mr. Chimunoko's submission that there is a special reason why the two applications are named differently,” the judgment read.
Citing precedent, the judge emphasized that an interdict is designed to prevent future unlawful harm to a right, not to suspend a process issued under presumed lawful authority. The warrant, the court said, “is presumed to be valid until set aside through a lawful process.”
“What the Applicant seeks to do is similar to the situation where the Applicant seeks to interdict the execution of the judgment of the court which has not been set aside,” Justice Deme found.
The ruling also highlighted that the applicant failed to plead the core principle required for a stay of execution—that "real and substantial justice" demanded it.
“By failing to plead distinctive requirements of application for stay of execution, the present application becomes fatally defective,” the judge said.
With the main application struck off, an interim order Justice Deme had earlier granted—which barred the use of any information from the already-executed warrant—automatically fell away.
Botha Gold Mine, also known as Kitsiyatota in Bindura, had approached the High Court in an urgent bid to block police investigations after a document obtained from the Ministry of Mines allegedly exposed serious irregularities in its mining operations.
The urgent application followed a long-running dispute between Side Electricals and three miners, Angel Mpofu, Mcpern Enterprises and Laird Enterprises who had been operating mining shafts at Kitsiyatota.
According to court documents obtained by this publication, Side Electricals closed the miners’ shafts on November 14, 2025, without obtaining a court order, effectively barring them from accessing their operations.
The affected miners subsequently approached the High Court, where the matter was heard by Justice Chikowero. The judge ruled in their favour, finding that they had been unlawfully dispossessed.
However, Side Electricals allegedly closed the shafts again in direct defiance of the court order. This prompted the opening of a contempt of court case against the company.
Following the repeated closures, Mpofu, Mcpern and Laird filed a police report.
As part of the investigation, police sought and obtained a warrant of search and seizure to establish ownership and legality of the disputed mining area.
According to police, a survey diagram obtained from the Ministry of Mines revealed that the area being mined by Botha Gold Mine falls within Freda Rebecca Gold Mine’s Mining Lease 21.
The diagram, which demarcates surveyed boundaries, allegedly showed that Side Electricals had encroached onto ground legally registered to Freda Rebecca Gold Mine.
The police argued that the warrant was lawfully obtained and that the investigations are legitimate, necessary and in the public interest.