Paper short abstract:

The paper shows how colonial inheritance laws undermined the power of chiefs and diviners, resulting in serious distortions of African traditional dispute resolution mechanisms.

Paper long abstract:

The paper uses the Mashonaland Central districts in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) at the start of white occupation in 1890s, to investigate the role of chiefs and diviners in mediating conflicts arising from the misappropriation of deceased estates. It demonstrates the importance of spirit beliefs in the practice of law, peace and security. Archival evidence in the form of “native civil cases” enables an examination of how chiefs and diviners participation in the colonial legal system created conflict, clashing with the emergent colonial system that was based on the Romano-Dutch practices. Disputes over the estate of the deceased—outstanding bride wealth payments, livestock, clothing and rights over children and the widows —were common. It further interrogates competing notions of what the wishes of the deceased meant and how this fed into competing discourses of what misappropriating a deceased person's estate meant. It examines perceived cultural/traditional methods of redressing the poor management of the deceased person’s estate—be they physical, spiritual based calamity and other means. As such these remedies locates the multiple agencies of the deceased (who may not have left a will) but supposedly had the power to influence the management of their estates. These methods were in conflict with colonial inheritance laws as encapsulated in the Estate Ordinance Acts legislated, which distorted both traditional inheritance laws and the power of these functionaries. The paper shows how colonial inheritance laws undermined the power of chiefs and diviners, resulting in serious distortions of African traditional dispute resolution mechanisms.

Keywords: Estate, Deceased, Inheritance, Disputes