16 Judgment No. CCZ 3/18 Constitutional Application No. CCZ 15/18 “When the appellant lodged the application for the interim relief before the court a quo the acquisition of the land by the State was a fait accompli, all rights of ownership having been extinguished on its part. The acquiring authority having done everything it was obliged by the law to do to acquire the land for resettlement purposes, there was no outstanding act against the performance of which the acquiring authority could be temporarily interdicted. An interim interdict is not a remedy for prohibiting lawful conduct. At the time the first respondent made the order by which the appellant was deprived of ownership of the land, he acted lawfully in the exercise of the power conferred upon him. Subsection (1) of s 8 of the Act gave him the power to make the order and its effect reflected the legal consequences of that lawful act. To suspend the effects of the order of acquisition lawfully made and intended by the legislature would amount to striking down the Act of Parliament or rendering it completely ineffective, thereby creating a vacuum pending determination of the constitutionality of the impugned sections of the Act. That would be improper for the court to do because the clear intention of the legislature was that an order of acquisition, properly made in terms of subs (1) of s 8 of the Act, should have the effect of depriving the owner or occupier of the rights of ownership in the land and vesting them in the acquiring authority.” GOWORA JA weighed in on this principle in Zimbabwe Revenue Authority v Packers International (Private) Limited SC 28/16 where, at pp 16-17 of the cyclostyled judgment, she held: “An interdict serves to protect a right not an obligation. The papers filed on behalf of Packers did not identify any right that ZIMRA had threatened. The court a quo found as a matter of fact that ZIMRA had acted in terms of the law in assessing VAT which remained unpaid. Once this finding was made including the further finding that the agent had been appointed lawfully, there was no lawful justification at law for suspending payment for a week. I am fortified in this view by the remarks of the learned DEPUTY CHIEF JUSTICE MALABA in the Mayor Logistics case supra to the following effect: ‘The subject of the application is not the kind of subject matter an interdict, as a remedy, was designed to deal with. An interdict is ordinarily granted to prevent continuing or future conduct which is harmful to a prima facie right, pending final determination of that right by a court of law. Its object is to avoid a situation in which, by the time the right is finally determined in favour of the applicant, it has been injured to the extent that the harm cannot be repaired by the grant of the right.