By Princess Eugene Majuru
HARARE — The ongoing fraud and misrepresentation case involving the estate of the late Brian James Rhodes, a direct descendant of Cecil John Rhodes, has once again thrust into the national spotlight a far deeper and unresolved issue: the continued private control of land and properties whose original acquisition was rooted in colonial conquest, deception, and dispossession.
While the courts are currently seized with allegations that company documents were forged to unlawfully seize control of Karoi Properties (Pvt) Ltd including prime stands along Mutare Road the broader question Zimbabweans must ask is not merely who forged what, but who should rightfully own Rhodes-linked properties in the first place.
A Case About Paperwork — Or a Case About History?
The State alleges that in October 2016, a CR14 form was fraudulently submitted to the Registrar of Companies, falsely altering the date of death of Brian James Rhodes and misrepresenting the status of company directorship. One accused, Brian Murphy, now stands required to defend himself, while the other, Adam Wood, has been acquitted.
Yet even if the courts ultimately determine criminal liability or innocence, the litigation itself exposes a deeper irony: Zimbabwe’s judiciary is being asked to adjudicate ownership disputes over assets whose legitimacy traces back to one of the most controversial colonial agreements in Southern African history — the Lippert Concession.
Understanding the Lippert Concession
The Lippert Concession of 1894 was a pivotal and deeply flawed colonial instrument through which mineral and land rights in Mashonaland and Matabeleland were transferred to Cecil John Rhodes and his British South Africa Company (BSAC). Crucially:
The concession was negotiated without the informed consent of indigenous African communities.
It relied on intermediaries, coercion, and misrepresentation of authority.
It purported to convert communal African land into alienable private property under colonial law.
In essence, the Lippert Concession did not purchase land from its rightful owners; it expropriated it. The Shona and Ndebele peoples — including royal houses, clans, and spirit territories — were never legitimate parties to the agreement.
From Cecil Rhodes to Brian Rhodes: Inherited Injustice
The properties now at the center of the Karoi Properties dispute are part of a long chain of inherited colonial privilege. They exist not because of productive enterprise by the Rhodes family in Zimbabwe, but because of a concession that extinguished indigenous title and replaced it with settler law.
Brian James Rhodes, as a grandson of Cecil John Rhodes, did not personally negotiate the Lippert Concession — but he benefited from it. The wealth, landholdings, and corporate vehicles associated with the Rhodes name are fruits of that original dispossession. Under principles of restorative justice, decolonial land reform, and even international customary law, inherited benefits from unlawful conquest do not become legitimate simply through the passage of time.
Why Indigenous Communities Are the True Entitled Owners
Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle was fundamentally about land — not paperwork. While post-independence land reform addressed large-scale commercial farms, many urban and peri-urban properties linked to colonial estates quietly remained under settler or descendant control.
Properties tied to the Rhodes estate should, by moral, historical, and decolonial logic:
Be transferred to indigenous communities displaced by colonial expansion.
Be placed under community trusts, traditional leadership custodianship, or national heritage authorities.
Serve public, cultural, educational, or reparative economic purposes.
The Lippert Concession cannot be selectively ignored when convenient and upheld when profitable. If its injustices are acknowledged — as history overwhelmingly confirms — then its downstream property claims must also fall.
A Message to the Courts in Zimbabwe and the Nation
Zimbabwean courts are duty-bound to apply the law, but they are also institutions operating within a historical continuum. When courts adjudicate disputes over colonial-era properties without acknowledging their origins, they risk legitimising historical theft through procedural neutrality.
This case should prompt:
Judicial reflection on the colonial roots of property law.
Legislative review of urban land still held under colonial titles.
National dialogue on restitution beyond agricultural land.
The question before Zimbabwe is larger than CR14 forms and corporate directorships.
It is this: Can a nation truly be free while the material legacy of conquest remains privately inherited by the descendants of conquerors?
The Karoi Properties case is not just about alleged forgery. It is about unfinished decolonisation. It is about whether Zimbabwe will continue to treat colonial expropriation as a settled matter, or whether it will finally confront the legal fictions that allowed Cecil John Rhodes — and his heirs — to own what was never theirs.
Until properties rooted in the Lippert Concession are returned to indigenous custodians, every dispute over such assets will remain a quarrel over stolen goods — no matter how perfect the paperwork.
The land remembers. And so should the law.
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