Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe: State, Class, and Gendered Models of Land Resettlement

Citation:

Jacobs, Susie. 1990. “Zimbabwe: State, Class, and Gendered Models of Land Resettlement.” In Women and the State in Africa, edited by Jane L. Parpart and Kathleen A. Staudt, 161–84. London: Lynne Rienner.

Author: Susie Jacobs

Topics: Class, Gender, Governance, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 1990

Land and the Economic Empowerment of Women: A Gendered Analysis

Citation:

Gaidzanwa, Rudo. 1995. “Land and the Economic Empowerment of Women: A Gendered Analysis.” Southern African Feminist Review 1 (1): 1–12.

Author: Rudo Gaidzanwa

Abstract:

This paper focuses on the gender dimension of the land and indigenization debate in order to illustrate the problems relating to aggregated claims to land rights, as well as the potential and actual threats to sustainability, efficiency, and productivity which such analyses pose for the livelihood of poor rural and urban women in Zimbabwe. After a review of the literature on land issues the paper proceeds to differentiate types of land - urban residential land, commercial and industrial land, and resettlement land - and the related politics in order to understand better what the debates on land reform mean for men and women of different races and classes in Zimbabwe. Given that Zimbabwe's economy is not likely to divert dramatically from its dependence on manufacturing and agriculture as major contributors to the gross domestic product, it is imperative that policymakers address the question of black peoples', and in particular, women's relationships to all types of land. This would move the land debate forward from its present fixation on the ownership of arable land to issues of access to and control of such land in the short and medium term. (Abstract from AfricaBib.org)

Topics: Class, Economies, Gender, Gender Analysis, Women, Governance, Indigenous, Livelihoods, Race, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 1995

Tenures in Transition, Tenures in Conflict: Examples from the Zimbabwe Social Forest

Citation:

Bruce, John. 1993. “Tenures in Transition, Tenures in Conflict: Examples from the Zimbabwe Social Forest.” Rural Sociology 58 (4): 626–42.

Author: John Bruce

Abstract:

The landscapes of rural communities are commonly divided into areas in which distinctive resource uses are practiced and for which there exist particular types of property rights. Such tenure niches for different resources may overlap where those resources themselves occupy the same space (e.g., land and trees). Further, competing legal and utilization systems (e.g., national and local) may place the same resource in different incompatible tenure niches. Conflict may involve overlapping tenure niches. Co-management by conflicting right-holders may offer a solution.

Topics: Environment, Land Tenure, Rights, Property Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 1993

Women’s Struggles to Access and Control Land and Livelihoods after Fast Track Land Reform in Mwenezi District, Zimbabwe

Citation:

Mutopo, Patience. 2011. “Women’s Struggles to Access and Control Land and Livelihoods after Fast Track Land Reform in Mwenezi District, Zimbabwe.” Journal of Peasant Studies 38 (5): 1021–46. doi:10.1080/03066150.2011.635787.

Author: Patience Mutopo

Abstract:

Women’s access to land and the shaping of livelihoods after fast track land reform should be viewed with a new social and economic lens in Zimbabwe. This paper examines the extent to which negotiations and bargaining by women with the family, state, and traditional actors has proved to be useful in accessing land in one semi-arid district, Mwenezi, in southern Zimbabwe. Based on multi-site ethnography, it shows the complex and innovative ways women adopted in accessing land and shaping non-permanent mobile livelihoods. I challenge the assumption that Western notions of individual rights to land are the best mechanisms for women in Africa; rather it is the negotiated and bargaining processes that exist in patriarchal structures that lead to cultural contracts enabling women’s land access. Off-farm activities involving trading in South Africa became a major activity undertaken by the women. Trips to South Africa intensified due to land acquisition, leading to new market searches beyond national borders. The role of collective action and women’s agency in overcoming the challenges associated with trading in South Africa is examined within the ambit of the livelihoods analysis.

Keywords: women, access to land, fast track, land reform, negotiation, livelihoods, non-Western, Rights, non-permanent mobility

Annotation:

Quotes:

“Discourses on land and livelihoods1 have gained momentum in most Eastern and Southern African countries. Shifts in policy debates result in increasing importance being given to land use and management. Adding the issue of non-permanent mobility2 to the familiar gender3, land and livelihoods debates offers a new way to explore gendered mobility influenced by access to fast track farms, which have become the focus of attention, especially since 2000 in Zimbabwe.” (1021)

“Attempts at agrarianisation processes with women accessing land have led to intensification of mobile livelihoods. Rural women are increasingly dominating non-permanent mobility, which has traditionally been a male domain. Female mobility with the aim of securing sustainable livelihoods opens up new gendered geographies of mobility, with rural women participating more in the public space in search of better livelihood pathways. A symbiotic interdependence exists between women’s access to land and mobile livelihoods, and this ought to be considered with primacy in rural development thought and practice in Zimbabwe.” (1022)

“O’Laughlin (1998, 2002) brought attention to the existence of missing men in Southern Africa’s rural areas due to labour migration to South Africa. This created opportunities for women to gain access to land and control production activities. Women-headed households increased as men were missing demographically in rural areas, which could also be a result of urbanisation. O’Laughlin (2009) has termed this phenomenon in which women accessed land as ‘relatively secure access to land’. Women-headed households assumed a new form of power over livelihood organisation, and subsistence agriculture remained a key survival strategy.” (1022)

“The liberation wars did not even dislodge the women; most of them remained fixed on the land. This reflects that when women become key actors in rural livelihoods, new forms of power trickle down to them, and that power leads to new configurations in land use and livelihood options. Pelizolli (2010) demonstrates that women have taken over the land in a Chokwe irrigation scheme in Mozambique, competing with the few men left, as most men have left to look for full-time employment.” (1022)

“Variations in gender disaggregated data reveal the fact that women in rural set- ups had different participatory mechanisms and motivations for participating in the fast track land reform processes. In as much as mobilisation campaigns were held in the different districts, in Mazowe women played a leading role in the mobilisation campaigns during the land occupations as compared to other districts (Sadomba 2008). I disagree with Matondi and Sanyanga (forthcoming) who argue that the gender statistics hide more than they reveal the extent to which women were ostracised during the fast track process. What should be borne in mind is that the quantitative data present women’s entry point into the new farms and also the role they played as individuals in acquiring land.” (1023)

“A World Bank Report (2003, 23) notes that ‘if women have access to and control over land then family livelihood patterns improve. Most women-headed households have better management policies in terms of farming practices, marketing of produce and use of the income’.” (1026)

“In Zimbabwe most women do farm their husband’s land but they do not have any form of title (deed or customary acknowledged right) to that land. These take a form limited to ‘land offers’ from the Government of Zimbabwe in the fast track resettlement areas. Similar patterns also existed in the communal areas where land use and control has been under the domain of men and traditional leaders, making land a male-controlled resource. However in communal areas it should be understood that the interplay of customary, codified and colonial laws has disadvantaged women with regards to land access.” (1026)

“Makura–Paradza (2010), Cheater (1986) and Gaidzanwa (1994) note that in the communal and resettlement areas of Zimbabwe land access has become a field of contestation based on legal pluralism and semi-autonomous social fields that are constantly remodified by traditional authorities and local governments so they may continue controlling land. This creates a difficult social environment for women trying to assert a right to land, as much as their livelihood is tied to ever-changing rules governing this critical resource (Jacobs 2010, Tsikata 2003). Rural peasant women face exclusion. particularly from different political and traditional regimes that control land, in spite of their immense contribution to food production. This treatment of women has been accompanied by ‘gender specific discursive justification’ in Zimbabwe (Goebel 2005, 147). Land is a preeminent political resource for the state and for different actors at different geographic levels, and at this stage competing assertions of legitimacy and territoriality are always at interplay (Alexander 2003).” (1027)

“Women, like men, are not a homogenous category since they belong to different classes, ethnic groups, races, political parties and professions. Derman and Hellum (2004) and Mazhawidza and Manjengwa (2011) note that under FTLRP most women from urban or rural areas were discriminated against along political, social and economic lines. This had more to do with women being treated as minors in everyday life in most cases. This has constantly been challenged by non- governmental organisations (NGOs) such as the Women and Land Lobby Group, which tirelessly advocated that women, in spite of their biology and marital status, had a right to land during fast track (Moyo 2011).” (1027)

“Married women have a better social standing than non-married women in most patrilineal societies in Africa. During the fast track process, the state and some traditional actors wanted to capitalise on using culture to exclude women heads of households from accessing land, but in practice women heads of households emerged as victors as compared to their married counterparts (Mazhawidza and Manjengwa 2011, Scoones et al. 2010).” (1027)

“In some cases women gained access to land through land invasions, as these subverted formal forms of patriarchal traditional or administrative authority (Scoones et al. 2010, Sadomba 2008, Moyo 2011). This gave the opportunity to some women, often widows, divorcees, and those ostracised from their communal area communities as they were able to join the invasions and gain access to land (usually in A1 villagised schemes). Scoones et al. (2010) noted that the women were valued in the invasion process and in the base camps as independent and able to help with a range of gendered domestic tasks such as cooking and singing in the base camps; they did not have important positions like base commanders but at times some assumed posts of secretaries and treasurers. For them it was a liberation, and an escape from other settings where as women they would not gain access to such rights. This explains in part the higher number of women having access to land through offer letters in their own right compared to communal areas where traditional patriarchal lineage authorities allocate land or the old resettlements where a bureaucratic administrative authority that is equally patriarchal in many ways allocates land. “ (1028)

“Sen (1999) offers three interrelated concepts for analysing gender and production relations: ‘negotiative conflict, rights appreciation and cooperative bargaining’. Sen’s analytical framework based on rights and livelihoods entitle- ments sheds light on the household as a dynamic site where various actors negotiate diverse spaces and strike bargains as part of efforts to position themselves for more equitable gains. In these processes, some members’ rights are subjugated while others, particularly those of male members, are respected and asserted. Access to land by these women reflects the need to create a bargaining site where power dynamics erupt and have to be managed as much as possible to the benefit of the women. “ (1029)

“Women are slowly realising that the information on documents has an impact on their tenure security. If the permits are to be handed over and their names do not appear on them, their right to inheritance in situations of divorce or death of a spouse is compromised.” (1029)

“The need to have individual income emerged as a factor that made women realise the importance of accessing and controlling land. The married women had now established close relations with their husbands and the clan and so could now safely ask for land. Most of these women had been married for more than five years and had stayed with their husband’s families before coming to settle at Merrivale.” (1030)

“Marriage enabled the women to acquire land and have access to their own fields within the husband’s family after a certain period of time; these are referred to as ‘tsewu’ in the Karanga and Shangaan traditions found in southern Zimbabwe.” (1031)

“I argue that the nexus of land, farming, home and access to markets is critical for the well-being of women, in particular. At the same time, I also agree with Goebel (2002) and Vijfhuizen (2002) that the meaning and role of land for women changes not only in relation to local, national, and international trends, but according to the particularities of women’s lives (for example age, marital status, whether or not they have dependent children, and so on). Assets are neither fixed nor static; their value changes. Different assets are important at different times.” (1039)

Topics: Gender, Women, Gendered Power Relations, Patriarchy, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: South Africa, Zimbabwe

Year: 2011

Gender Implications of Decentralised Land Reform: The Case of Zimbabwe

Citation:

Manjengwa, Jeanette, and Phides Mazhawidza. 2009. Gender Implications of Decentralised Land Reform: The Case of Zimbabwe. 30. Bellville, South Africa: PLAAS Institute for Poverty, Land and Agriarian Studies.

Authors: Jeanette Manjengwa, Phides Mazhawidza

Abstract:

A bolder policy approach and more vigorous implementation are needed to support women’s empowerment, transfer of land rights to women, and to ensure their productive utilisation of land. The land reform programme focussed on racial imbalances of highly skewed land holdings and discriminatory land tenure systems while failing to mainstream the interests of women.

Annotation:

Quotes:

“Land was arguably the single most important reason leading to Zimbabwe’s liberation war and at Independence in 1980, expectations of land reform were high.” (1)

“An estimated 86% of those who work the land are women, and land is a major source of women’s livelihood strategies and food security. Yet, the current Fast Track Land Reform Programme continues to privilege men as primary recipients of resettlement land, and the involvement of traditional authorities in the land reform process continues to marginalise women (Goebel, 2005).” (1)

Topics: Gender, Women, Gender Mainstreaming, Land Tenure, Race, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2009

The Land and Property Rights of Women and Orphans in the Context of HIV/AIDS: Case Studies from Zimbabwe

Citation:

Izumi, Kaori, ed. 2006. The Land and Property Rights of Women and Orphans in the Context of HIV/AIDS: Case Studies from Zimbabwe. Cape Town, Zimbabwe: HSRC Press.

Author: Kaori Izumi

Abstract:

In Zimbabwe, as in many other parts of Africa, agriculture is the principal source of livelihood for widows and orphans. Within this reality, a groundbreaking study was commissioned to investigate the land and property rights of women and orphans in Zimbabwe in the context of HIV/AIDS. It also examines the coping strategies, in terms of land-related livelihoods, adopted by widows and other vulnerable women affected by the pandemic. Providing revealing empirical evidence and new insights based on interviews with key informants, focus group discussions and a semi-structured interview questionnaire, the study is framed around four Zimbabwean sites located in communal, resettlement and urban areas Buhera, Bulawayo, Chimanimani and Seke. The research critically examines Zimbabwe’s land and agriculture policies, and the utilization and efficacy of legal redress. It suggests and develops policy responses to cushion the impact of HIV/AIDS on local communities, especially dispossessed women. While confirming the vulnerability of widows and other categories of poor and vulnerable women and children to property rights violation, the study also analyses the critical roles played by women in establishing and managing urban and rural support initiatives. (Abstract from book description)

Annotation:

  • Workshop (convened by FAO, 2004) found HIV and AIDS had weakened the property rights of women and children, because of the stigma associated with the pandemic. Widows told how they had been accused of causing the death of their husband by witchcraft or by infecting him with HIV and AIDS. In this context, evictions of widows and violations of their land and property rights had been prolific. Despite the legal provisions established in the 1997 Administration of Estates Amendment, women’s property and inheritance rights remain vulnerable. This is partly because of persisting traditional practices and norms pertaining to women’s land and property rights, lack of public knowledge about legal rights (not least among women themselves), an inaccessible judiciary and a dichotomy between statutory and customary laws (Intro)

  • The deteriorating health and economic condition of HIV-positive widows and other women on their own, along with the social stigma associated with the disease, have had the additional effect of eroding their power to defend their property rights against claims made by in-laws

Topics: Economies, Gender, Women, Girls, Boys, Governance, Health, HIV/AIDS, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2006

Gender and Land Reform: The Zimbabwe Experience

Citation:

Goebel, Allison. 2005. Gender and Land Reform: The Zimbabwe Experience. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Author: Allison Goebel

Abstract:

Zimbabwe's nationalist and post-colonial ambitions have been largely defined by land reform. Allison Goebel assesses Zimbabwe's successes and failures in incorporating gender issues into the broader project of land redistribution. Based on fieldwork in the Sengezi resettlement area in east central Zimbabwe in the late 1990s and 2002, Gender and Land Reform situates gender within the larger issues of race, class, and international political economy. Goebel examines the social forces and effects of the resettlement process, including state policy and legislation, customary norms and practices, local institutions, and ideologies and cosmologies. Her study emphasizes the strategic choices women make in new institutional and household contexts and considers the interests of poor women who have been marginalized within the land reform process. (Abstract from book description)

Annotation:

Quotes:

“However, as this article will show, the hotly debated negotiations of women’s status and gender relations are part and parcel of current debates and practices regarding land reform, both at the level of state discourse, laws and policies, and at the level of communities and households in rural areas. Further, negotiations of gender parallel and are linked with other post-colonial negotiations of power along race and class lines.” (146)

“Women, particularly rural peasant women, form another group subject to certain types of exclusion, which have been accompanied by gender-specific discursive justification. This paper attempts to unravel the nature of this exclusion by examining the implications for rural women and gender in the evolving land reform process. I look specifically at (1) the emerging opportunities and constraints for small-scale women farmers of ‘fast track’ and beyond particularly as represented by state policy and practice, (2) the role of traditional authorities and the re-emergence of ‘culture’ in land allocation and administration and (3) the inter-relationships between these two. I apply a feminist materialist perspective, but as informed by post-structuralist feminist analysis to these interrelationships. This analysis interrogates the nature and role of the state as agent of gender transformation, the importance of discourses and flows of power at and between the locations of households, communities and the state and its local agents, while at the same time flagging the crucial material underpinnings of rural women’s position and opportunities, especially as they relate to arable land. Through this analysis, important contours of cultural transformation in a case of post-colonial economic and political change are revealed. First, however, details of the land crisis are outlined.” (147)

“Zimbabwe’s land reform process has so far had contradictory effects for women.” (152)

“The tenuousness of women’s relationship to resettlement land must also be understood through the lens of culture and ritual, particularly through the ways in which ‘tradition’ is being deployed in the resettlement context. Chiefs have no formal authority in the resettlement areas of the 1980s and 1990s and these areas do not have local institutions associated with tradition, such as headmen. Also, resettlement villages are not arranged according to lineage groups. Nevertheless, aspects of traditional culture such as family ancestor appeasement and bringing home the dead (kurova gova) are commonly practised. These practices enact and express a cosmology that understands the environs as populated by and under the care of ancestral spirits. The practices also reinforce patrilineal control of land and hence distance women from the possibility of controlling land in their own right.” (153)

“The promotion of women’s rights to land therefore cannot be only a political project of the state (e.g. a question of resettlement policy and laws), but must incorporate the insight that such a promotion is a profound challenge to a living cultural tradition that understands land and the environment as a key element of hegemonic masculinity and patriarchy. “ (154)

“Regrettably, there is little fieldwork-based evidence to draw on to tell us about the experience of women since 1998.” (156)

“The Zimbabwean experience indicates the centrality of the conflict between African customary practice and a modern rights-based legal framework in relation to women’s land rights. While the Zimbabwean government clearly has not been as committed to the inclusion of equality rights for women as the South African state appears to be, both states face a similar post-colonial challenge. They are both attempting to forge a nationalist land reform process from within a colonial legacy of a dual legal system and historical race-based injustice, in a contemporary context within which ‘tradition’ and ‘culture’ play central roles in how many men struggle for identity and power. Meanwhile, many women demand equal rights and opportunities, utilizing a modern understanding of equality rights.” (159)

Topics: Class, Coloniality/Post-Coloniality, Economies, Poverty, Gender, Women, Governance, Households, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Race, Rights, Land Rights, Property Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2005

Large Scale Land Deals, Global Capital and the Politics of Livelihoods: Experiences of Women Small-Holder Farmers in Chisumbanje, Zimbabwe

Citation:

Mutopo, Patience, and Manase Chiweshe. 2012. “Large Scale Land Deals, Global Capital and the Politics of Livelihoods: Experiences of Women Small-Holder Farmers in Chisumbanje, Zimbabwe.” Paper presented at the International Conference on Global Land Grabbing II, Ithaca, NY, October 17-19.

Authors: Patience Mutopo, Manase Chiweshe

Abstract:

Large scale land acquisitions by foreign conglomerates in Zimbabwe have been a recurrent phenomenon within the last five years. This has led to land deals being negotiated with state, individual and nongovernmental actors, leading to the production of agro fuels. We investigate how the large scale commercial land deals have affected the livelihoods of women small holder farmers, the role of global capital in entrenching discrimination of women and how the politics of resource use and distribution has become a central force in shaping livelihoods in Zimbabwe's communal areas. The paper is based on field work that was conducted in Ndowoyo communal area, in Chisumbanje village, from July 2011 until April 2012. The methods used for collecting data were, in-depth interviews with the women, interviews with officials from Platform for Youth Development a nongovernmental organization, Macdom Pvt Ltd and Ratings Investments, Focus Group Discussions and personal observations that involved interactions with the women. In 2011 Macdom Pvt Ltd and Ratings Investments, bio fuels companies owned by Billy Rautenbauch started green fuel production operations in Chisumbanje and this has led to the altering of the livelihoods systems of women smallholder farmers. Firstly we seek to demonstrate how the company's green fuel production systems have led to the loss of land for women and the redefinition of tenure in a communal area. Secondly we explore how the company has been involved in political issues that undermined the role of development for the women and thirdly we investigate how the women have created and curved livelihood alternatives in an area which has been transformed from a communal rural area to almost an urban area. We conclude by suggesting the need to further give primacy to women centered notions of agency in coping with the negative implications of commercial land deals on women`s livelihoods.

Keywords: large scale, land deals, women livelihood, politics, agency, agro fuels

Topics: Development, Economies, Gender, Women, Land Tenure, Land Grabbing, Livelihoods, NGOs, Rights, Land Rights, Women's Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2012

Gendered Dimensions of Land and Rural Livelihoods: The Case of New Settler Farmer Displacement at Nuanetsi Ranch, Mwenezi District, Zimbabwe

Citation:

Mutopo, Patience. 2011. Gendered Dimensions of Land and Rural Livelihoods: The Case of New Settler Farmer Displacement at Nuanetsi Ranch, Mwenezi District, Zimbabwe. Brighton, UK: Land Deals Politics Initiative.

Author: Patience Mutopo

Abstract:

The bio fuels boom has recently been gaining much currency in Zimbabwe. This revolution has had different impacts on the lives of men and women who occupied land during the fast track land reform programme. A notable hectrage of land that was acquired for resettlement and given to beneficiaries has in recent months, from February 2010 until the present moment, been deemed to be land that was wrongly gazetted for resettlement during the mayhem ( jambanja) phase by the government of Zimbabwe, through its line agencies at national, provincial and district level. The change in policy by the government of Zimbabwe was to pave way for large companies engaged in bio fuel production such as the Mwenezi Development Trust in conjunction with a consortium of former white commercial farmers regaining entry into large scale commercial production of bio fuels, crocodile farming and cattle ranching at Nuanetsi Ranch, in Zimbabwe. Nuanetsi Ranch had been invaded by villagers from different parts of Mwenezi, Chiredzi and Chivi communal areas since 2000. In February 2010 the government announced that the settlers had to be removed and resettled in other “uncontested lands” in the area, compromising their rights to sustainable livelihoods, human development and land acquisition. The perceptions of the men and women resident at Chigwizi has had a bearing on understanding the nature of gendered land and rural livelihoods in the context of bio fuel production in Zimbabwe after fast track land reform.

The events that have happened can be viewed as forced displacement by the government which encouraged the men and women to settle on that land in 2000. The outcomes of the displacement has compromised the right to livelihood, the right to land and the right to sustainable human development of the men and women as they have not been given any voice in the matter, which is being regulated by the government. I conclude by suggesting that the bio politics rooted in the creation of a Zimbabwean bio economy, which has been defined as an economy based on ecological sensitive products and services produced by bio technology and renewable energy sources, (World Biotechnology Report 2008), has had rather negative consequences on the land based livelihoods of the men and women at Chigwizi. This has also compromised the gendered livelihoods of settlers at Chigwizi village, with women being more disadvantaged as they have difficulties in land access and utilization in rural Zimbabwe based on male primogeniture, political and cultural considerations. Policy makers should craft gender transformative policies in agro fuel projects that do not jeopardise the livelihoods of agricultural based communities especially in cases were land reform is justified in terms of distributional justice. A gender analysis of displacement, bio fuels and rural livelihoods increases our understanding of land reforms in light of the political, economic and social forces shaping rural societies.

Topics: Agriculture, Development, Displacement & Migration, Forced Migration, Economies, Environment, Gender, Governance, Land Grabbing, Livelihoods, Political Economies, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2011

Intergenerational Struggles over Urban Housing: The Impact on Livelihoods of the Elderly in Zimbabwe

Citation:

Paradza, Gaynor Gamuchirai. 2009. “Intergenerational Struggles over Urban Housing: The Impact on Livelihoods of the Elderly in Zimbabwe.” Gender & Development 17 (3): 417-26.

Author: Gaynor Gamuchirai Paradza

Abstract:

Legislative and economic changes in Zimbabwe have caused a confrontation between the younger and older generations over resources, with bad consequences for both. This article is based on research into the experiences of families living in both rural and urban areas. Since women normally outlive their husbands, struggles over property are common when husbands die. For elderly women, ownership of urban housing does not necessarily lead to control. Hence, owning property does not in itself ensure they can ensure economic security from it.

Keywords: elderly, Zimbabwe, urban, housing, inheritance, livelihood, tenure

Topics: Age, Gender, Women, Land Tenure, Households, Livelihoods, Rights, Land Rights Regions: Africa, Southern Africa Countries: Zimbabwe

Year: 2009

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