HARARE — The High Court has temporarily halted the rape trial of Walter Magaya, founder of Prophetic, Healing and Deliverance (PHD) Ministries, pending the determination of a legal challenge to a magistrate’s decision to conduct the proceedings in a Victim Friendly Court.

Justice Tawanda Chitapi, sitting in the High Court at Harare, issued the stay by consent on Friday following an urgent chamber application filed by Magaya’s legal team.

The criminal proceedings before Regional Magistrate Estere Chivasa are now suspended pending the outcome of a review application Magaya filed before the High Court on February 27.

Magaya, 42, faces three counts of rape. The alleged victims aged 24, 22, and 21 are all former congregants or associates of his church. He denies all charges.

The legal battle began on February 16, the first day set down for trial, when the prosecution applied – on the strength of oral submissions by its counsel alone – for the matter to be transferred to the Victim Friendly Court and heard in camera.

The state argued that the complainants, as church members who faced the prospect of sitting in the same room as their alleged rapist, were vulnerable witnesses who would suffer substantial emotional stress in an open court setting.

Magaya contested the National Prosecuting Authority’s characterisation of the complainants as vulnerable witnesses, pointing out that they are adult women in their early twenties who lodged their complaints years after the alleged incidents and only after the police made public appeals.

He maintains that the entire prosecution is the product of a coordinated effort to solicit complaints against him.

Magistrate Chivasa granted the application without interviewing the alleged victims, without receiving affidavit or psychological evidence, and without conducting the independent inquiry mandated by Section 319C(1) of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act, says Magaya’s defence.

In her ruling, she said the witnesses “clearly” appeared to be vulnerable based on what she had “heard from the state counsel and from the state outline that has been filed in the record,” adding that she believed the prosecution’s account that the witnesses had been interviewed.

Magaya’s defence team, led by Admire Rubaya, attacked that ruling as a gross irregularity. In his founding affidavit, Magaya characterised the magistrate’s decision as “not adjudication – that is abdication,” arguing that the magistrate had “swallowed the state counsel’s say-so hook, line, and sinker” and had, in the process, surrendered her independence and compromised his constitutional right to a fair trial.

The defence further argued that relocating the proceedings to the Victim Friendly Court where witnesses testify through intermediaries would severely curtail its ability to cross-examine witnesses directly and assess their credibility, and that the right to a public trial under section 69(1) of the constitution is a non-derogable right that admits no limitation.

With the trial having been set to resume on March 12, and the prosecution having declined to voluntarily postpone it pending the review, Magaya’s lawyers filed the urgent chamber application for a stay of proceedings.

Justice Chitapi granted the order by consent, with the National Prosecuting Authority not opposing.

The court has now case-managed the underlying review application on a firm timetable. The respondents – magistrate Chivasa and the Prosecutor General – are required to file their responses March 13. Magaya has until March 20 to file an answering affidavit, and until March 27 to file heads of argument.

The respondents must file their heads of argument by April 7, Magaya must consolidate the full record by April 10, and the matter is set down before Justice Chitapi for hearing on May 14.

The relief Magaya seeks in the review is threefold: that the magistrate’s ruling directing a Victim Friendly Court trial be set aside; that the matter be remitted for trial in an open court before a different regional magistrate; and, ultimately, a final order confirming the stay of proceedings pending finalisation of the review.

Magaya was first arraigned before the Harare Magistrates’ Court on January 26 this year on four counts of rape after police made a call for potential victims to come forward in November 2025. Three of those counts are now before the regional court.

The charge sheet refers to incidents allegedly occurring in July 2020 and in 2023 at rooms in Magaya’s Yadah Hotel in Waterfalls, Harare.

The matter returns to the High Court on May 14.