Colonial Title on Trial: A Constitutional, Customary, and Judicial Address on Rhodes-Linked Properties
A Structured Address to Traditional Leaders, Spirit Mediums, Parliament, and the Bench
By Princess Eugene Majuru, Princess of Harare
HARARE — The criminal proceedings concerning Karoi Properties (Pvt) Ltd and the estate of the late Brian James Rhodes have been presented before the courts as a matter of forged CR14 forms, misrepresentation, and corporate control. Yet beneath this procedural surface lies a constitutional and customary question of far greater magnitude: whether property rooted in colonial conquest and concessionary fraud can continue to enjoy legal protection in post-colonial Zimbabwe.
This paper situates the matter within Zimbabwe’s Constitution, customary law, and the transformative role of the judiciary, with specific reference to land, culture, and historical injustice.
- Address to Traditional Leaders and Spirit Mediums: The Land Was Never Sold
Under customary law, land is not a commodity. It is sacred, spiritual, and ancestral. Chiefs are custodians, not owners; spirit mediums are guardians of territorial memory; and communities are beneficiaries across generations.
The Lippert Concession of 1894 did not involve chiefs, spirit mediums, or ancestral authorities. No dare was convened. No mhiko was sworn. No ancestral consent was sought. By customary standards, the concession was null ab initio.
Constitutional Recognition of Traditional Authority
Section 280(1) of the Constitution recognises traditional leaders as custodians of Zimbabwe’s culture and traditions.
Section 281(1)(a) obliges them to preserve cultural values and practices.
Section 282 vests authority over communal land in traditional institutions in accordance with customary law.
From this perspective, land acquired under the Lippert Concession — and inherited by the Rhodes family — remains ancestral land under unlawful occupation, regardless of subsequent registration or corporate structuring.
Traditional leaders and spirit mediums therefore have both a customary and constitutional mandate to speak, pronounce, and demand restitution where ancestral land remains alienated.
- Address to Parliament: Sections 72 and 85 — The Constitutional Duty to Redress Historical Injustice
The Constitution of Zimbabwe is explicit that independence was not merely political, but restorative.
Land and Historical Injustice
Section 72 recognises land reform as a response to colonial dispossession and historical injustice.
Section 85(1)(b) empowers any person acting in the public interest to demand enforcement of constitutional rights, including redress of historical wrongs.
Section 298 requires public resources, including land, to be administered equitably and in the national interest.
Yet colonial-era urban and peri-urban land — especially property held under estates and companies linked to colonial families — has largely escaped reform.
The Karoi Properties matter demonstrates the danger of inaction: colonial land circulates indefinitely through private inheritance, defended by company law rather than constitutional morality.
Parliament is therefore urged to:
Enact legislation addressing urban land restitution rooted in colonial concessions.
Establish a National Restitution and Redress Framework beyond agriculture.
Provide statutory mechanisms for reversion of concessionary land to the State or indigenous communities.
Without legislative clarity, courts are left to resolve colonial questions using colonial tools.
III. Direct Address to the Bench: Transformative Constitutional Interpretation
To Judges and Magistrates of the Republic:
You are not merely arbiters of fact; you are custodians of constitutional meaning. While criminal procedure requires focus on evidence and charge sheets, constitutional adjudication demands historical consciousness.
Relevant Constitutional Provisions
Section 2 establishes constitutional supremacy over all law, including inherited colonial law.
Section 46 requires courts, when interpreting rights, to promote the values of an open, just, and democratic society based on human dignity and equality.
Section 56 guarantees equality, a principal irreconcilable with inherited colonial privilege.
Section 63 protects cultural rights, including land-based cultural identity.
When courts determine who lawfully controls property such as Karoi Properties based solely on CR14 compliance, they risk converting administrative regularity into moral legitimacy.
The judiciary is respectfully invited to recognise that:
Title derived from colonial conquest is not morally neutral.
Inherited benefits from imperial expropriation do not automatically mature into indefeasible constitutional rights.
Procedural correctness cannot, on its own, cleanse historical injustice.
This is not an invitation to decide political questions, but to interpret law in light of constitutional purpose.
- The Lippert Concession in Constitutional Perspective
The Lippert Concession was a mechanism of empire, not consent. If Zimbabwe accepts — as its liberation history confirms — that colonial dispossession was unlawful and unjust, then properties still traceable to that dispossession remain constitutionally questionable.
To treat such properties as ordinary private assets is to constitutionalise colonial theft.
The Constitution, the Ancestors, and the Law
The Karoi Properties case should awaken national institutions to a shared responsibility:
Traditional leaders must speak for the ancestors and the land.
Parliament must legislate to complete decolonisation.
The judiciary must interpret the law trans formatively, not mechanically.
Until land rooted in the Lippert Concession is restored to indigenous custodians or placed under public trust, Zimbabwe’s constitutional promise remains incomplete. The ancestors did not consent. The Constitution demands redress. The courts must not look away.
Contact Email: harareprinbcess@gmail.com
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