Women’s Access to Land and Security of Tenure post 2013 Constitution in Zimbabwe

Authors

  • Sandra Bhatasara University of Zimbabwe Sociology Department, Mt Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe; Rhodes University Sociology Department, Grahamstown South Africa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.48346/IMIST.PRSM/ajlp-gs.v3i1.18321

Keywords:

Women, land rights, tenure security, land laws, Constitution, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Rural women’s livelihoods in Africa are dependent on their rights and entitlement to land as well as security of tenure. Equally important is how land laws and land governance systems shape and reshape women’s access to land and tenure security. As such, this paper focuses on women’s access to land and tenure security after the adoption of a new Constitution in 2013 and Statutory Instrument 53 of 2014 in Zimbabwe. Whereas both legal instruments are progressive and guarantee women’s rights to property, their realization is shrouded in complexities and contradictions. Customary practices still insist on male privileges to own and allocate land whilst women have fragile usufruct rights and limited sole or joint ownership. State land administrators are also complicit in violating women’s rights. Overall, there is need to uphold both the Constitution and related laws to promote gender justice when it comes to women’s land rights and tenure security.

Author Biography

Sandra Bhatasara, University of Zimbabwe Sociology Department, Mt Pleasant, Harare, Zimbabwe; Rhodes University Sociology Department, Grahamstown South Africa

Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of Zimbabwe and Research Associate at Rhodes University.

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Published

31-01-2020

How to Cite

Bhatasara, S. (2020). Women’s Access to Land and Security of Tenure post 2013 Constitution in Zimbabwe. African Journal on Land Policy and Geospatial Sciences, 3(1), 186–194. https://doi.org/10.48346/IMIST.PRSM/ajlp-gs.v3i1.18321

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1: January 2020, Special Issue 1 on Land Policy in Africa

Section

Land Policy and Regulatory Framework

License

The African Journal on Land Policy and Geospatial Sciences (AJLP&GS) is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/. Authors with free access retain the copyright of their manuscripts. All open access manuscripts are published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc. in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that applicable laws and regulations do not protect these names. Even though the advice and information in this journal are true and accurate as of the date of its publication, neither the authors, the editor, nor the publisher can assume any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions.

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