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The Southern Rhodesian period (1880-1896) was marked by social, economic and political changes that affected women. The introduction of European legalities disrupted inheritance practices that marginalised women's rights. In Shona culture, inheritance was governed by customary law, which emphasised the importance of family and community. Spiritual agency was significant in inheritance customs, influencing how property rights were communally understood. Property inheritance and estate management were cardinal attributes of African social landscapes in pre-colonial Zimbabwe. They (re)shaped, and (re)defined cultural practices and vice versa. This article dissects the Shona ethos in managing the deceased’s estate, especially the roles and values circumscribed by kinship (ukama), property ownership and the deceased’s agency in familial cords, showing the collisions of Shona tradition and colonial law in Southern Rhodesia.

Grounded in Africana Womanism and Ukama philosophy, this article debunks Eurocentric claims that Shona women had concealed inheritance rights in deceased’s estates. It reshapes the narrative by recovering Shona women’s experiences and uncovers histories of Shona women's inheritance in the pre-colonial period, exploring how they traverse intersections of indigenous customs, colonial laws and economic change. By examining the material and symbolic meanings of inheritance, it illuminates how women's livelihoods were shaped by colonial modernity and cultural change. Cultural and historical evidence debunks the claim that women were inherently deprived. It builds on Chinweizu, who refutes the view that women are powerless and men are their natural oppressors.[1] He contends that this view is illusionary because most men are controlled by women. Contrary to Eurocentric feminism, where motherhood is considered as unpaid work, Africana Womanism conceptualizes it as responsibility.[2] Adopting Africana Womanism enables relational understanding of femininity and motherhood in conceptualizing African marriage and inheritance systems.

This article demonstrates that the marginalisation of women was not an inherent feature of Shona culture, but a complication of European colonisation which industrialised the colony on the basis of male labour, discriminating against women and dividing the landscape between rural and urban. Rural areas were reserved for women whilst urban spaces became masculine. This is observable within the infrastructure that was established in the colonial period, with bachelor’s quarters in Mbare, Highfield and other towns.[3] The legislative framework restricted women’s movement to towns. Colonialism thus villagized women and urbanized men.

Methods and Materials

This article adopted a qualitative research design which relied on the archives of missionaries such as the Roman Catholic and Presbyterian Churches, deceased-estate files, minutes and reports by government officials, Native Affairs Department Annual (NADA) records, court records, reports and correspondences by District Commissioners, and 15 oral interviews.  This evidence together provided rich insight into conflicts that arose over deceased’s estates and policy interventions. Missionaries often overlooked or misinterpreted local practices. Africanist have devised methods of reading for and against the grain to uncover misrepresentations in skewed records. Few deceased estate disputes were settled in civil courts. Cases involving rural Africans went unrecorded. [4] To counter these gaps, oral interviews were used. Interlocutors included men and women conversant with inheritance cases from previous generations, including former and current chiefs, headmen and spiritual leaders. Proverbs were valuable in analysing how women’s belongings were understood in Shona philosophy.

 

Contradictions of Culture and Legislation

A collision of Shona norms and Rhodesian legislation was rooted in ontological, epistemological and power-based tensions that shaped the experiences of women. Cosmologies of Shona social organisation was grounded in holistic communal understanding of the world where identity and property relations were inextricably linked to kinship, ancestral lineages, and spiritual beliefs. Contrastingly, the BSAC’s legalities foregrounded Eurocentric individualism that celebrated private property rights. These divergent worldviews created tensions, as the codification of ‘native law’ and the appropriation of land by colonial authorities disrupted women’s rights.

Clashes between culture and legislation manifested in orally transmitted forms of knowledge and the written, codified systems of legal reasoning imported by colonial administrators. While women's inheritance rights and burial practices were deeply embedded within communal understandings of cultural contexts, the colonial legal system imposed a universal, rationalist framework that transverse Shona customs. This epistemological divide exacerbated contradictions, as women’s voices were marginalised. Underlying these ontological and epistemological tensions were unequal colonial power dynamics. Imposed foreign legislation represented the coercive assertion of European dominance over Shona populations, undermining their political and economic autonomy. For women, the erosion of self-determination was particularly acute, as the colonial legal order redefined their inheritance rights and economic determination.

Contradictions between culture and legislation manifested in experiences of Shona women, with profound ramifications on belonging, personhood and cultural continuity. Emphasising individual property rights and demarcation of land, colonial law severed the collective connections between women, their ancestral lineages, and communal structures. Coupled with the imposition of ahistorical, linear temporalities, this displacement worsened contradictions, as women struggled to reconcile their culturally grounded sense of self with the alien, depersonalising tendencies of capitalism. Contradictions revealed the profound philosophical and ontological challenges faced by marginalised women. This clash of worldviews not only disrupted the societal fabric, but exposed the enduring tensions on the self-determination of indigenous communities and the coercive imposition of foreign laws.

Pre-colonial Zimbabwe exhibited oral ethical guidelines inherited from Maat constitutional principle of goodness.[5] African philosophers coined Ubuntu as the model of humanness derived from a worldview based on togetherness. Shuttleworth views Ubuntu as an ethical concept which expresses the vision of what is valuable and worthwhile.[6]  Rooted in the history of Africa, Ubuntu reflects Africans’ understanding of diversity, solidarity, compassion, respect, dignity, spirituality and belief in universal participation and connectedness. Existing ceremonial male-leadership had no conscious attempt to otherise or discriminate women because gender stereotyping had no place in humanness. Both males and females discharged complementary duties.[7] This concept suggests that men and women have different, yet complementary, responsibilities. It values the strengths and contributions of each gender without forcing them into a uniform standard of equality. In that arrangement, no sex was weaker. Relations were progressive and complementary as both sexes worked together for procreation and production, promoting collective ownership of belongings through ukama (bloodline relations). Equality inadvertently fosters competition between men and women, overshadowing the potential for complementary strengths that enhance collaboration and mutual understanding. Contrary to individualistic systems of social organisation, Shona culture was deeply rooted in collective ownership. Colonial individualism transformed male ceremonial leadership into discriminatory patriarchy. It revolutionarised male leadership by creating seductive connections with capitalism anchored on private property rights. Relations previously based on complementarity of males and females were abandoned by adopting sexism. Collectivism was replaced by brutal capitalist competition which promoted private property. This is how inheritance conflicts based on deculturisation of Shona guidelines emerged.

 

Shona Ethos on Death and Belongings

The term ‘belongings’ (upfumi), is used in place of ‘property’ to differentiate it from the colonial legislation on ownership of assets. ‘Belongings’ refer to personal items left by the deceased, including rights over children which were common causes of inheritance disputes. Herein, ‘belongings’ are assets left by the deceased. Early anthropological researches provide glimpses into the importance of spirits in Shona communities’ administeration, supervision, and distribution of the deceased’s belongings. In the pre-colonisation period, belongings included usufruct land rights, outstanding bride wealth payments, belongings and rights over children and widows.

Families settled inheritance matters. During conflicts, they consulted samusha (family head), sadunhu (sub-chief), or mambo (chief). The latter would consult the svikiro, (regional medium) connected with chiefly ancestors, to adjudicate. Spirit mediums provided advice. When a woman died, her belongings were shared among her paternal relatives in a practice called kuparadzwa (distribution).[8] Maldistribution of these belongings caused misfortunes from avenging spirits (ngozi). Holleman observed that sometimes husbands handed over more belongings than were due to ensure they escaped retribution.[9] Children were not major beneficiaries of their mother’s estate. They belonged to their father’s lineage, hence the Shona saying amai haisi hama yako (Your mother is not your relative).[10] For women, there was a strong link between their belongings and ancestral spirits.

Shona metaphysics never conceived death in terms of extinction, but as a rite of passage to supernatural existence.[11]  Africans consider death as separation of munhu from the body to celestial existence. Death is not the final destination, but graduation to superior existence. When one dies, the Shona say, “atisiya”, meaning leaving the material to metaphysical realm. Shona metaphysical reality considers humans as spirits (munhu mweya). Shona culture perceives the dead as active agents in estate distribution, a view emphasized by oral interviews. Chief Bushu said, “it’s only the body that dies but the soul continues to live”.[12] Other interviews concurred that the ‘dead are not dead’ as they continue to influence on inheritance management. Howman noted the tremendous influence of spirits and how ‘no one could quarrel with them’ under Chief Hwata, a former lorry driver for a bakery in Salisbury.[13] He observed that Shona society was composed of visible and invisible members. One could transcend into the spiritual world and retrieve Nehanda; the original spirit that existed before Hwata’s people moved in.[14] Most women gave oral evidence that if women were aggrieved because their belongings were not distributed fairly to their rightful bloodline relatives, avenging spirits intervened.[15]  Chief Bushu argued that churches played a detrimental role in exacerbating cultural erosion.

Shona people did not believe in natural death. All deaths had hidden causes which could be ascertained by spiritual consultation.[16] Several ceremonies were conducted to honour the deceased and distribute his/her property. Sudden death caused suspicions of witchcraft.[17] Therefore, consultation of traditional healers (kuenda kugata) was done to determine the cause through spiritual mediums (vadzimu). For Africans, divination had psycho-spiritual significance in restoring justice. This provokes questions on the role of spirits in seeking justice and truth. Colonial settlers despised this practice, describing it as ‘heresy’ and promulgating laws to suppress and criminalize it. Christians criticised kurova guva as a form of idol worship because it glorifies the dead, not Mwari Musikavanhu (Creator). They showed conviction that the worship of spirit mediums was blasphemous, reaffirming colonial settlers’ mindset which disregarded indigenous beliefs as ‘mere superstitions’ and passed legislations to suppress it.

 

Before kurova guva (ritual to bring home the deceased’s wandering spirit) was concluded, most Shona people distributed the deceased’s belongings (nhaka), with only a few cases done immediately after the funeral. Most African families waited till the kurova guva ceremony.[18]  Beer was brewed and cultural dances were performed throughout the night to appease the spirits of the dead,[19] a process called ‘libation’ by Ani.[20] It derived from the belief that when a person died, the invisible spirit returned to live among descendants. Women and men sang and clapped hands as the latter whistled during night vigils.[21] Mhike’s article describes this phenomenon as an expression of fluid cultural identities and evidence of youths’ contesting powers with the ‘civilising’ influence of education and Christianity.[22] When women died, their belongings were not ‘inherited’ but ‘destroyed’ (literally kuparadzwa) which meant distribution to paternal relatives. Children were considered to be of different lineage to their mother, so they barely benefited.[23] ‘Relatives’ of deceased women claimed their sister's belongings to prevent misfortunes caused by avenging spirits (ngozi).

 

In this order, women had property rights, notwithstanding settler misconceptions. In pre-colonial settings, all kitchen utensils belonged to women.[24] Their personal belongings were believed to have spiritual consequences and were inherited by their bloodlines. This was done to please her ancestors, who unleashed spiritual wrath if the protocol was disrespected. The settler misunderstanding of these practices can be seen in this narrative about a chief’s daughter in the Native Affairs Department Annual from an ethnographer Agnes Sloan:

 

It was without all equipment but a square dais mud, raised a few inches from the level of the floor, on which was spread a clean reed mat. The ever-smouldering embers of the fire lay in the depression which served as a fireplace. At my suggestion that she was cold without a blanket she laughed. There was fire and a well fitted door. She shut the door to show me and told me she had a sister to sleep with. They would take their limbo and cover their faces and bodies right to their toes. If the air grew, they woke up and add some more wood.[25]

 

This foregrounds ‘false narratives’ about Shona women because it did not entirely mean that they lacked blankets. When husbands died first, their belongings; including wives, clothes and cattle were inherited by eldest sons as first priority, and those of his paternal home. Society did not associate men’s belongings with spiritual consequences, unlike women’s.

Contrary to Eurocentric views, women were not at the periphery of the economy. For example, Gombe noted that cattle handed over to the widow and the eldest son were controlled by the widow:

 

The wealth left behind by the deceased would be under the jurisdiction of the son who would be assisted by his mother. Even though the wealth would not have been left directly in her hands, women (that is the mother) had great authority in making sure it was being used for the good of the family. In fact, the woman held the keys to the wealth, working behind her son.[26]

 

Women controlled family wealth, even if inheritance customs bequeathed them new husbands. They determined how inheritance was used, in stark contrast to the misperception that women hardly owned property.

 

Howman buttresses allegations that the political arena was ‘traditionally’ masculine.[27] This is discredited on the basis of written and oral evidence of head women who controlled political domains.[28] Although women typically did not have direct political influence, they controlled socio-political and family affairs. Despite being the prerogative of male heads to speak, mature women had the ‘ultimate’ say in family decisions. When asked about indigenous customs, elders say women subjected themselves to their fathers and husbands, but there is little evidence that anyone ‘really’ caused them to be submissive. Women were in fact, justifiably allowed to oppose their menfolk. They played an influential role in decision making, and could override men’s decisions. They were neither treated like children nor classified as ‘perpetual minors’ as exaggerated by Eurocentric scholars.

 

The Impingement of Colonial Legislation

When the BSAC annexed Southern Rhodesia, they misunderstood and distrusted the prevailing laws. They introduced new ways of maintaining law and order, dealing with crime, and settling disputes.[29] The 1896 Deceased Estate Ordinance Act introduced a new concept of property which conflicted with Shona practices of inheritance. What was considered ‘property’ by settlers was different from what Shona communities called ‘belongings.’ They defined such items and ‘rights’ in relation to legal frameworks, not in the context of social ties.[30] Colonial authorities neither acknowledged the power of paternal aunts as “female fathers,” in distributing property[31] nor appreciated the spiritual significance of women’s belongings such as mombe yehumai.[32] Finally, colonial rulers had no conception of agency beyond death, but focused on will writing and quasi-traditional inheritance rules, such as “from brother to brother.”[33]

The Estate Ordinance Act of 1896 and the Witchcraft Suppression Act of 1899 undermined Indigenous beliefs. They distorted both traditional inheritance laws and the powers of chiefs and mediums. The role of chiefs was not only important within their communities, inasmuch as they were undermined by colonial law. Nonetheless, the importance of chiefs was exaggerated in ‘colonial’ archival records because they were the ones to whom the state turned to in consulting about ‘customary law’. Prior to colonialism, African people did not have a written ‘customary law’. In 1939, Spicer  admitted that “there was no fixed code of ‘Native’ law and that foreign culture is rapidly modifying the old indigenous ideas, especially among the more intelligent members of the tribes”.[34] Colonial administration invented and dictated rules; informed by African chiefs who manipulated customs to suit themselves; neglecting opinions of commoners and creating gender tensions. As Ranger argued, ‘customary law’ was never formalised in Southern Rhodesia.[35] It lacked the originality practised at grassroots level. Ironically, chiefs and spirit mediums’ roles were undermined by white’s statutes like the Witchcraft Suppression Act. Their significance was overstated as a ploy for justifying European dominance. Court records over inheritance disputes indicate that inasmuch as chiefs were important, they had shortcomings. Their disparities prompted Indigenous Africans to prefer the Native Commissioners (NC) courts over the chief’s courts (dare).[36]

Colonial law presented African women with new dilemmas and opportunities that altered the distribution of power.[37] Founded on European Civil Law, colonial law was overlaid on but did not eradicate existing legal traditions.[38] Scholars argue that metropolitan legal frameworks were less important to Africans as they were subject to “customary law,” manipulated by colonial powers to “subcontract the administration of justice” and “shift the burden…onto African shoulders.”[39] While customary law was unwritten and based on local tradition, it evolved on social transaction and “resisted abstraction and codification.”[40] Subsequently, it was a complex amalgam of precolonial African legal frameworks, mission rules, and colonial metropolitan legal traditions shaped by early administrators and African elites in their efforts to adapt it to changing political and economic contexts.[41] Southern Rhodesia presented a complex case as the colony did not have a system of indirect rule. There was no official “customary law,” but a collection of statutes governing marriage and inheritance. The law was not solely subcontracted to chiefs and headmen, but jointly administered by Native Commissioners and local authorities. Nevertheless, Africans “continued to use their own systems of justice” and were often reluctant to settle disputes via white officials.[42]

 

Spear highlights the limitations that Africans imposed on customary law. Chiefs and ordinary Africans shaped customary law and legal practice.[43] Karekwaivanane’s seminal research on colonial and postcolonial Zimbabwean legal issues emphasized African agency within the colonial legal space, highlighting the law’s fluidity.[44] Building on such research, this article centers agency further, by focusing on women and their spiritual beliefs on inheritance.

Colonial officials and scholars misjudged women’s position in property management and inheritance. Michael Bourdillon said:

Under pure African law… a woman was under perpetual tutelage […] [B]ecause of her status, a woman… was a perpetual minor who could not enter any contract on her own… nor could she inherit any property or own property beyond limited circumstances.[45]

This article offers more nuanced assessment of women’s standing in society during colonialism.[46] Schmidt drew attention to changing times, showing how women had more opportunities to assert themselves in the early colonial encounters until colonial officials and missionaries aligned themselves closely with rural patriarchs in consolidating power.[47] Jeater posits that until the BSAC was replaced by responsible government in 1923 and the emergence of reserves, neither white administrators nor missionaries wanted African senior men to have power over women.[48] Makaudze’s recent anthropological assessment argued that contemporary Shona women’s options to “generate and accumulate wealth” are significantly underestimated.[49] Women used courts in their struggles for inheritance, as witnessed in recent cases that have stirred debate, in Zimbabwe and international human rights activists.[50] The article explores such questions historically by investigating colonial inheritance cases, allowing scholars to explore layered examples of female agency. It is important to differentiate between women in general or in relational terms. While some were powerful as vatete (aunt), they were simultaneously limited as wives. Only the latter situation has been rendered visible in the existing policy-oriented deliberations.

 

Conclusion

This article concludes that complementarity is a more fitting approach than equality in African male-female relations. This perspective respects cultural identities and aims for a balance that recognises the distinct contributions of both genders, promoting a more harmonious society. Departing from historiographical orthodoxy, the article challenged the falsity that women had little or no property and inheritance rights in (pre)colonial period. Such misinterpretation of Shona regulations about property ownership, inheritance and deceased estates management needed correction. The article did not overemphasise the prelapsarian nature of Shona kinship structures before the advent of European colonialism. Rather, it argued that even though women had fewer formally written rights, Shona culture entitled them to own property and were active agents in the broader inheritance system, particularly with regards to the distribution of items in the estate of deceased persons.  Women owned both movable and immovable property as well as spiritually inherited entitlements.

 

[1] Chinweizu, I. (1990) Anatomy of Female Power: A Masculinist Dissection of Matriarchy. Lagos, Nigeria: Pero Press, p.9.

[2]  See, Hudson-Weems, C., (2004). Africana Womanist Literary Theory. New Jersey: Africa World Press, p.8.

[3] See, Muhwati, I., (2012). The Private/Public Space Dichotomy: An Africana Womanist Analysis of the gendering of space and power, The Western Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36, No. 2: 100-110; Furusa, M. (2006). The muse of history and politics of gender representation in Zimbabwean women’s literature. African womanhood in Zimbabwean literature: New perspectives on women’s literature in African languages, p 13.

[4] For a discussion on the use of court documents, see Roberts, R. L. and Mann, C. (1991) ‘Law in colonial Africa: Social History of Africa,’ University of Michigan, Heinemann Educational Books, p. 447–463.

[5] Tirivangana, A. M. (2017). “Healing the World”: The Divine Role of Africa-Centered Metaphysics. DANDE Journal of Social Sciences and Communication, 2(1), Karenga, M. (1988). Black studies and the problematic of paradigm: The philosophical dimension. Journal of Black Studies, 18(4), 395-414, Asante, M. K. (2020). Afrocentricity. In Routledge Handbook of Pan-Africanism (pp. 147-158). Routledge.

[6] Shuttleworth, Mark (2012). Ubuntu Code of Conduct 2.0. Retrieved July 29, 2024 from http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/conduct

[7] Furusa, Z., & Furusa, M. (2014). Women's coping and adaptation capacities in pastoralist communities in Africa: Dealing with climate variability and change. Agenda, 28(3), 65-72.

[8] See M. Gelfand, The Genuine Shona: Survival Values of an African Culture (Gwelo, Mambo press, 1973),  p. 66.  See Bourdillon, M. F.C. The Shona Peoples: An Ethnography of the contemporary Shona, with special reference to their religion, (Gwelo: Mambo Press, 1976), p. 54.

[9] J.F., Holleman, (1952) Shona Customary Law, (Manchester: Manchester University Press), p. 323.

[10] Gelfand, The Genuine Shona, 41; Bourdillon, Myths about Africans, 13.

[11] See, Mbiti, J. S. (1990). African religions & philosophy. Heinemann.

[12] Interview with Chief Bushu, Chief, Male, Buhera, 2023.

[13] Howman, R. (1966) “Chieftainship” Native Affairs Department Annual, (hereafter referred to as NADA), Vol. 20, p. 11.

[14] Ibid.

[15] An argument put forward by 95% of the women who were interviewed in this study.

[16] See (Eds) Muhwati, I. Mguni, Z. Magosvongwe, R. and Munashe Furusa, M. Gwekwerere, T. (2012) Rediscoursing African Womanhood In the Search for Sustainable Renaissance: Africana Womanism In Multidisciplinary Approach, Harare: College press, p. 93.

[17] See further, C. Bullock, The Mashona. (1927), J.F., Holleman, "Disparities and Uncertainties in African Law and Judicial Authority: A Rhodesian Case Study," African Law Studies, 17 (1979): 1-35, J.F., Hollemann, “An anthropological Approach to Bantu law, with special reference to Shona Law”, Rhodes-Livingstone Journal, 10, 1950, 51-64. 'Indigenous administration of justice', NADA, 32: 41-8. 1979. 'Disparities and uncertainties in African law and judicial authority: a Rhodesian case study', African Law Studies, 1.

 

[18] Bourdillon, Shona Peoples, 211.

[19] Gelfand, 54.

[20] Arni, M. R. (2004) Let the Circle Be Unbroken: The Implications Of African Spirituality In Diaspora. Nkonimfo

Publications, p.29.

[21] Sloan, A. (1923) Native Affairs Department Annual, (hereafter referred to as NADA), Vol. 15, p. 64.

[22] Mhike, I. (2012). “Untidy Tools of Colonialism”: Education, Christianity and Social Control in Southern Rhodesia: The Case of Night Dances–1920s to the 1930s. Studia Historiae Ecclestiasticae, 38, p. 1.

[23]In an African setup children have no bloodline to the matrilineal relatives or parent (mother). They belong to the patrilineal lineage and by that they cannot benefit from the estate of the matrilineal side.

[24]Ncube, W. (1986). The Matrimonial Property Rights of Women During and After Marriage in Zimbabwe: A Study of Property Relations, Domestic Labour and Power Relations Within the Family (Doctoral dissertation, University of Zimbabwe), p. 135.

[25] Sloan, A. (1923) Native Affairs Department Annual, (hereafter referred to as NADA), Vol. 15, p. 65.

[26] Gombe, J.M. 1998. Tsika dzavaShona. Second edition. Harare: College Press, p. 190.

[27] Howman, R. (1966) Chieftainship, In Native Affairs Department Annual p. 12.

[28] See Mararike, C. G. (2011). Developing the Whole Person: Education Based on Concepts Drawn from the Shona Culture. Review of Human Factor Studies, 17(1). See, Muhwati, I. (2010). Cultural dialogues of agency and transcendence: The Shona and Ndebele example. Journal of Black Studies, 41(1), 151-163.

[29] See Mesaki, S. (1993). Witchcraft and witch-killings in Tanzania: Paradox and dilemma. University of Minnesota, p. 35. See Mlambo, A. S. (1998). Building a white man's country: Aspects of white immigration into Rhodesia up to World War II. Zambezia, 25(2), p.125.

[30] Suvorova and Romanov, What is property? Moscow: Progress Publishers, p.8.

[31] See Makaudze, G. (2014). Women, wealth generation and property ownership in traditional Shona culture in Zimbabwe. Latin American Report, 30(2), p. 18.

[32]  According to Makaudze, Mombe yamai is the cow of motherhood given by the son-in-law as part of the bride price. Mombe yehumai protocols and rituals can help sustain or destroy families; thus, despite rapid social changes, this sacred cow should remain (ibid.).

[33] See National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ) ED6/5/1-9 (Box) Shona Ethnographic Files by Edward Wiri; NAZ N1/2/3 Responses to Circulars of Succession to Property; NAZ S1069 Native Disputes in Southern Rhodesia. See also Mudenge, S. I. (1974). The role of foreign trade in the Rozvi empire: A reappraisal. The Journal of African History, 15(3), 373-391. Coldham, S. (1998). Succession Law Reform in Zimbabwe. Journal of African Law, 42(1), 129-134. See Beach, D. N. (1983). The Rozvi in search of their past. History in Africa, 10, 13-34. Aschwanden, H. (1987). Symbols of death: An analysis of the consciousness of the Karanga, p.41.

[34] Spicer, A. B.D. (1923) Native Customs in Nyasaland in Native Affairs Department Annual, (hereafter referred to as NADA), Vol. 16, p. 37.

[35] Ranger, T., & Hobsbawm, E. (1984). The invention of tradition. Cambridge University Press, p. 21.

[36] Dare is a Shona vernacular term used to describe the African traditional court system

[37] Moore, S. F. (1986). Social facts and fabrications:" Customary" law on Kilimanjaro, 1880-1980. Cambridge University Press, p. 23. See Ocran, M. (2006). The clash of legal cultures: The treatment of indigenous law in colonial and post-colonial Africa. Akron L. Rev., 39, p. 465. Waller, R. (2018). Legal history and historiography in colonial Sub-Saharan Africa. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, p. 48.

[38] Jeater, D. (2006). Law, Language, and Science: The Invention of the Native Mind in Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1930. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, p. 195. Waller, R. (2018). Legal history and historiography in colonial Sub-Saharan Africa. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, p. 10. The British South Africa Company (BSAC) imported from the Cape Colony the Roman-Dutch Law to Southern Rhodesia. The emerging Rhodesian common law was based on Roman-Dutch Law but also strongly influenced by British legal concepts and forms of justice.

[39] Waller, R. (2018). Legal history and historiography in colonial Sub-Saharan Africa. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of African History, p. 17.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Chanock, M. (1985). Law, custom, and social order: The colonial experience in Malawi and Zambia. (No Title), p34. Mamdani, M. (2001). Beyond settler and native as political identities: Overcoming the political legacy of colonialism. Comparative studies in Society and History, 43(4), p. 651-664.

[42] Jeater, D. (2006). Law, Language, and Science: The Invention of the Native Mind in Southern Rhodesia, 1890-1930. Bloomsbury Publishing USA, p. 195.

[43] Spear, T. (2017). Neo-traditionalism and the limits of invention in British colonial Africa. The Rise and Fall of Modern Empires, Volume III, p. 420.

[44] Karekwaivanane, G. H. (2017). The struggle over state power in Zimbabwe: Law and politics since 1950 (Vol. 139). Cambridge University Press, p.52.

[45] Bourdillon, M. F.C. The Shona Peoples: An Ethnography of the contemporary Shona, with special reference to their religion, (Gwelo: Mambo Press, 1976), p. 34.

[46] Jeater, D. (1994). Gender Comes in Two Sexes: A Critical Re-Evaluation of the Historiography on Zimbabwean Women. p. 12.

[47] Schmidt, E. (1990). Negotiated spaces and contested terrain: Men, women, and the law in colonial Zimbabwe, 1890–1939. Journal of Southern African Studies, 16(4), 622-648.

[48] Jeater, D. (1994). Gender Comes in Two Sexes: A Critical Re-Evaluation of the Historiography on Zimbabwean Women. p. 13.

[49]  Makaudze, G. (2014). Women, wealth generation and property ownership in traditional Shona culture in Zimbabwe. Latin American Report, 30(2), p. 19.

[50]  Shumba discusses the popular Magaya v. Magaya case, in which a daughter claimed the inheritance left by her late father. See Shumba, ‘Women and land,’ 237.