By Princess Eugene Majuru
One of the most significant yet under-examined dimensions of Zimbabwe’s 2013 Constitution is its conception of human rights. At its core, the Constitution adopts a liberal, individual-centred framework of rights—reflecting a Western philosophical tradition that prioritises the individual as the primary unit of legal and moral concern.
This is most clearly expressed in the Constitution itself. Section 44 provides that:
“The State and every person, including juristic persons, and every institution and agency of the government at every level must respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights and freedoms set out in this Chapter.”
Similarly, Section 51 states:
“Every person has inherent dignity in their private and public life, and the right to have that dignity respected and protected.”
These provisions are powerful in their language and intention. They affirm dignity, equality, and protection under the law. However, they also reveal a deeper philosophical orientation: rights are framed primarily as attributes of the individual person, enforceable against the state.
This model of rights is rooted in liberal constitutionalism, where the individual is the fundamental bearer of legal entitlements. It is a framework that emerged from European Enlightenment thought and was later globalised through colonial and post-colonial legal systems. While it has undoubtedly contributed to important protections against state abuse, it is not the only way of conceptualising human existence and social responsibility. In many indigenous Zimbabwean worldviews, personhood is not purely individualistic. It is relational. A person exists through community, ancestry, and spiritual belonging. Identity is not isolated but embedded in a network of obligations—to family, clan, ancestors, and land.
Yet the Constitution, in its current form, does not fully reflect this relational ontology. Rights are largely framed as entitlements held by individuals against the state, rather than as responsibilities embedded within a broader social and spiritual ecosystem. For example, while the Constitution strongly protects individual freedoms—such as freedom of expression, assembly, and movement—it does not equally foreground communal rights as foundational. Section 33 does acknowledge cultural rights:
“Every person has the right to participate in the cultural life of their choice…”
However, this remains framed as an individual choice (“of their choice”), rather than a collective inheritance or obligation tied to community continuity and ancestral identity.
The tension here is not that individual rights are unnecessary—they are essential. The issue is the imbalance in how personhood itself is defined. When law recognises only the individual as the primary rights-holder, it risks marginalising other forms of social existence that are central to African epistemologies.
This has practical implications. Land, for instance, is often treated through the lens of individual or state allocation rather than communal custodianship. Social conflict resolution is formalised through courts rather than community-based restorative mechanisms. Even cultural participation becomes a matter of personal preference rather than collective continuity.
Decolonisation, in this context, is not about rejecting rights. It is about expanding the philosophical foundation upon which rights are built. It asks whether Zimbabwe’s constitutional order can move beyond a purely individualistic model and begin to incorporate relational understandings of personhood—where rights are balanced with duties to community, ancestry, and place. Such a shift would not dismantle constitutional protections. Rather, it would deepen them by grounding them in the lived realities of the society they are meant to serve. It would recognise that dignity is not only an individual attribute, but also a communal inheritance. Until then, the Constitution remains anchored in a framework where the individual stands at the centre of legal meaning. And while this has provided important protections in the post-colonial era, it also reflects a worldview that is not entirely our own.
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