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Fighting over property: the articulation of dominant and subordinate legal systems governing the inheritance of immovable property among Blacks in Zimbabwe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2011

A. P. Cheater
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Extract

Law, particularly the law of property, may indeed be an instrument of the ruling class for the reproduction of any given social and economic formation, but few anthropologists have pursued this line of argument. Instead of examining how law was actually generated within particular political and economic contexts, anthropologists concerned with property law in colonial Africa tended to take for granted its existence at a particular point in time, and either to emphasise the institutional duality of colonial and indigenous assumptions and procedures concerning property or to stress the universal elements of legal behaviour despite these institutional differences.

Résumé

Lutte pour la propriété: l'articulation des systèmes légaux dominants et subordonnés gouvernant l'héritage de biens immobiliers parmi les Noirs au Zimbabwe

Cet article examine certaines des pratiques selon lesquelles les lois coutumières et statutaires sur l'héritage étaient manipulées par les administrateurs de la Rhodésie du Sud qui cherchaient à réduire la propriété foncière libre parmi les Noirs. La relation de la loi coutumière (souvent créée de nouveau par ces administrateurs) par rapport à la loi statutaire est examinée à travers trois cas précédents d'héritage contesté de terres arables qui appartenaient aux Noirs de la région libre du Msengezi. Chaque étude de cas révèle diffèrentes facettes de l'articulation des systèmes légaux indigènes et importés, située sur un fond politique de capitalisme colonial avec différenciation de races. Enfin, certains des problèmes posés par la continuité de ce dualisme légal au Zimbabwe indépendant sont brièvement identifiés.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 57 , Issue 2 , April 1987 , pp. 173 - 195
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1987

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