Home Where the Law Doesn’t Reach": Uncovering Inheritance, Belonging and Survival in Zimbabwe’s Rough Neighbourhoods
Published in Social Sciences, Research Data, and Sustainability
The Story Behind the Research
I was born and raised in Zimbabwe, a country where land has always been more than soil, it is power, memory, identity, and trauma. Yet, as an urban and migration studies scholar, I noticed something missing in our discussions: What happens to land when both law and kinship fail? What happens when migrants, stripped of citizenship and clan, must still pass on their piece of earth?
Lydiate is not just a research site, it mirrors the paradoxes of Zimbabwe’s urban and agrarian past. Once a farm compound, now a squatter settlement, it became a compelling site to explore statelessness, spatial entrapment, and intergenerational resilience.
Listening to Voices from the Margins
My participants were not just informants, they were teachers. I spoke to ageing farmworkers, widowed grandmothers, undocumented youth, and exhausted caregivers. They told stories that blurred the lines between kin and stranger, legality and morality. In Lydiate, the law was largely absent, but that didn’t mean rules didn’t exist. The community had its own codes of belonging: you inherited land not because you were a “legal heir,” but because you stayed, you cared, and you buried the dead.
Theoretical Lenses and Conceptual Innovations
I coined the term agile inheritance to capture this reality. It describes a mode of land succession that is relational, adaptive, and negotiated. It’s not based on patriarchal lineage or legal deed, but on vernacular governance, community recognition, symbolic acts, and moral legitimacy.
Lydiate is what I call a rough neighbourhood, a space marked by systemic exclusion but brimming with informal institutions. These are zones where state law falters, but social order persists.
Challenges in the Field
Working in a stateless, impoverished community came with serious ethical and emotional dilemmas. Some participants feared reprisal or eviction if they spoke out. Others had experienced deep loss of land, of family, of recognition.
I often found myself wrestling with questions of privilege. How do you write about people who have no legal identity, without erasing or sensationalising their existence? How do you represent their reality with dignity, not pity?
Key Findings
I found that inheritance in Lydiate didn’t follow any traditional or legal pattern. People inherited land:
- From children to parents (as gratitude or support)
- From sisters to siblings (especially after caregiving during illness)
- From in-laws (as solidarity or recognition)
- From grandchildren to grandparents (as reversal of care)
Importantly, inheritance happened not just after death, but during sickness, upon relocation, or as a reward for loyalty and care. This fluid, emotionally-driven system allowed a stateless community to maintain stability, continuity, and a sense of home, without paperwork or legal recognition.
Why It Matters
These findings disrupt many assumptions in urban planning and migration policy. They show that people can govern land effectively without formal institutions, and that sustainable development must recognise these informal systems, not override them. Agile inheritance speaks directly to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs):
- SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities): by promoting inclusive, context-sensitive urban planning
- SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities): by revealing exclusion based on legal status
- SDG 16 (Peace & Justice): by showing how legitimacy and justice can be community-driven
Reflections and Hopes
I hope readers come away with a deeper respect for the ingenuity and dignity of marginalised communities. The Lydiatians are not lawless, they are lawful in their own way. They are planners, custodians, and caregivers of land, even in a world that denies them citizenship. Their story urges policymakers to listen, not just regulate; to recognise, not just formalise; and to support, not just survey.
A Note to Fellow Researcher
To those working in politically sensitive or emotionally heavy spaces, go gently. Honour your participants. Share tea before data. Listen more than you write. The best theories are built from trust, not just transcripts. And remember: the margins are not empty, they are full of wisdom waiting to be respected.
I am an interdisciplinary researcher and critical urban scholar whose research revolves around four key themes: (a) urban informality, (b) geographies of urban inclusion and exclusion, and (c) urban transformation and (d) cities, space and power. My goal is to contribute to knowledge, public debate, policy discussions and practice around these themes. I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the African Climate and Development Initiative (ACDI), University of Cape Town. My current research is on Urban water adaptation: Exploring practices of adaptive governance for building urban water resilience in Cape Town’s informal settlements. I hold a Ph.D. in Social Sciences (Migration and Land Settlement), an M.Sc. in Social Ecology, and a B.Sc. in Urban and Regional Planning both from the University of Zimbabwe. I am also affiliated with the African Center for Cities (ACC) where I teach the module - Climate Change and the City for the Masters in Sustainable Urban Practice program. I am also a former Research Fellow at the University of the Free State, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Centre for Applied Social Sciences (CASS) at the University of Zimbabwe. I have published extensively in High Impact International Journals like Urban Forum, Sustainable Development, Land Use Policy, Anthropology Southern Africa, Pan-African Conversations, Journal of Asian and African Studies, Town and Regional Planning, African Identities, and International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, among others. My recent BOOK: “COVID-19 Lockdowns and the Urban Poor in Harare, Zimbabwe: Emerging Perspectives and the Morphing of a Sustainable Urban Future, published by Springer, Cham is available at: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-41669-9. Outside academia, I have more than 7 years experience in applied policy and development research, undertaking commissioned research and program evaluations and baseline studies on issues such as affordable housing, urban innovation, local economic development and inclusive urban economies, urban economic resilience, urban poverty and inequality (urban social geography), climate justice for marginalized populations, immigrants and racialized people’s experiences for national and local government agencies, civil society and international organizations such as USAID, FAO, CESVI Zimbabwe, Center for Affordable Housing Finance (CAHF), and Homeless International, among others. My research and professional experience spans across countries such as Zimbabwe, Senegal, Zambia, China, Germany, South Africa, Lesotho, Morocco, Belgium, Ghana, and Switzerland, among others.
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