By Linda Tsungirirai Masarira
The recent High Court ruling in favour of Zimbabwe Platinum Mines (Zimplats), which nullified a US$7.1 million royalty claim by Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, is not merely a technical legal outcome. It is a damning indictment of systemic governance failure particularly by Parliament of Zimbabwe and the legal advisory architecture surrounding the Ministry of Mines and Mining Development.
At the centre of this judgment lies a simple truth: for years, Zimbabwe’s mining law failed to clearly define royalty obligations on intermediate mineral products such as matte and concentrates. This legislative vacuum allowed a multinational mining corporation to successfully argue that no legally prescribed royalty rate existed for such products during the period in question, making it catastrophic law making.
Zimbabwe Parliament can’t continue legislating in its sleep. Parliament’s core constitutional duty is to enact clear, precise, and enforceable laws that safeguard national interests.
Yet this case proves that lawmakers either:
• Did not understand the technical realities of mineral beneficiation or
• Understood them and failed to act, or
• Actively chose ambiguity, which benefits corporate actors at the expense of public revenue. Any of these scenarios point to institutional incompetence.
Zimbabwe has been exporting mineral-bearing products for decades. That Parliament only moved to clarify royalty definitions years later and only after massive revenue losses, reveals a legislature that reacts after damage rather than anticipates risk. Law-making by hindsight is governance malpractice
The Ministry of Mines’ legal advisory system is broken.Equally troubling is the role of legal advisors within the Ministry of Mines. A competent legal advisory unit should continuously audit legislation against emerging industry practices. It should proactively flag loopholes. It should push urgent amendments.
This glaring defect persisted from 2018 to 2021 and only surfaced in court exposes:
• A passive legal advisory culture
• Weak inter-ministerial coordination
• Absence of legislative foresight
In plain language, lawyers tasked with protecting Zimbabwe’s mineral wealth failed to do so and the country is now paying the price.
The political economy of loopholes is the tragedy of our governance system.
Legal ambiguity is never neutral. In extractive economies, loopholes disproportionately benefit multinational corporations while depriving citizens of schools, hospitals, water infrastructure, and decent public services. Every dollar lost through weak legislation is:
• A nurse not hired
• A classroom not built
• A road not repaired
• A clinic without medicines
When Parliament fails, ordinary Zimbabweans subsidise corporate profits through suffering.
This case is bigger than Zimplats. While the ruling concerns Zimplats, its implications stretch across Zimbabwe’s entire mining sector:
• Other mining companies may now challenge past royalty assessments.
• The state’s negotiating power is weakened.
• Zimbabwe’s claim to resource sovereignty is further eroded.
This is how countries remain resource-rich but people-poor. I recommend the following;
1. *Legislative Competence Audits*
Parliament must subject existing mining and fiscal laws to urgent technical review with independent experts.
2. *Strengthened Parliamentary Committees*
Portfolio committees must include mining economists, mineral processing engineers, and fiscal law specialists not only politicians.
3. *Professionalization of Ministerial Legal Units*
Legal advisors must be hired based on demonstrated sector expertise, not patronage.
4. *Mandatory Pre-Legislative Impact Assessments*
Every mining-related amendment must include revenue impact modelling.
5. *Public Accountability*
Officials responsible for prolonged legislative gaps must be named and held accountable.
The deeper crisis is that the State must stop reacting. This ruling exposes a governance culture that waits for crises, court cases, and scandals before acting. Serious states govern proactively. They close loopholes before corporations discover them. Zimbabwe currently governs defensively. That must change.
The High Court did its job by interpreting the law as written. The tragedy is that the law itself was poorly written. This loss is not the court’s fault. It is not even primarily Zimplats’ fault. It is the fault of a Parliament that slept on its constitutional duty and a Ministry of Mines whose legal machinery failed to defend national interests.
Until Zimbabwe fixes the political economy of incompetence, courtrooms will continue to expose what Parliament should have prevented and Zimbabweans will continue to pay the price.
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