Custom, Courts, and Colonialism: The Installation of Chief Mvuthu and Gender Equality in Zimbabwe’s Traditional Leadership

Author: Bellinda Chinowawa

October 29, 2025

Princess Silibaziso Mlotshwa was formally installed as Chief Mvuthu on August 15, 2025.

Introduction

On August 15, Princess Silibaziso Mlotshwa was installed as the substantive Chief Mvuthu in Hwange District, the first woman to hold that office in Matabeleland North and one of only a handful nationwide. This is a landmark development that provides an opportunity to critique the relationship between colonialism and the evolution of customary law and constitutional mandates. This article examines how these intersecting frameworks converge and highlight Zimbabwe’s dual legal system. It also covers the broader struggle to reconcile customary law and constitutional imperatives in pursuit of gender justice.

Factual Background and Legal Proceedings

Princess Silibaziso Mlotshwa is the eldest daughter of the late Chief Nyangayezizwe Mvuthu Mlotshwa, who died in 2014. Nguni/Ndebele succession custom is lineal, “a chief begets a chief,” meaning that the eldest child of the Chief succeeds the chief. This system contrasts with the rotational system often found in Shona culture, where chieftainship rotates among families within the clan. However, upon Chief Nyangayezizwe’s death, the District Administrator (DA) seconded Mlotshwa’s uncle, Saunders Mlotshwa, as the candidate for chieftaincy, explicitly bypassing Princess Silibaziso on account of her gender, despite her being the only child directly eligible for succession.³ This overt exclusion triggered a long litigation process before resolution and ultimate installation in 2025.

Colonial Codification and the Reinforcement of Patriarchy

Precolonial Zimbabwean societies maintained complex and flexible models of governance and dispute resolution, where female authority, though circumscribed, was recognized in certain spheres. British colonial rule, from 1890, altered indigenous legal and governance systems, codifying customary law to serve two functions: administrative convenience and the consolidation of patriarchal and racial control.

Through a combination of the Roman-Dutch and English common law, along with the selective recognition of African custom, the colonial government created a dual legal system with a hierarchy that subordinated customary law to common law and embedded patriarchal models as the “authentic” tradition.⁹ Consequently, the appointment, suspension, and removal of chiefs became statutory matters. Native Commissioners became the arbiters of the customary system, bringing in their own Western values and prejudices, thereby supporting male succession while marginalizing or erasing the historical roles of women leaders. Anthropological and historical evidence shows that women in precolonial Africa exercised agency, authority, and political power, as exemplified by Queen Nzinga of Angola, female chiefs among the Mende of Sierra Leone, and Mbuya Nehanda in Zimbabwe. 

Despite this, dominant narratives continue to mischaracterize African cultures as incompatible with women’s rights and interests. As Jaji notes, Western cultures are often described as dynamic and adaptable, while non-Western cultures are stereotyped as rigid and unchanging. This bias tends to depict women as inherently powerless and ignores the ways colonialism distorted and reshaped local cultural systems. 

Colonial legal regimes routinely erased female political power. Colonial courts and administrators interpreted and applied customary law through the lens of conquest, embedding the political economy of subjugation into legal doctrine. In doing so, they froze fluid precolonial norms and ignored the inherent dynamism of indigenous governance. The result was a legal order that systematically erased women’s political authority, casting women leaders as aberrations or nullities and retroactively inventing “male only” chieftaincy traditions that lacked precolonial precedent.

The persistent exclusion of women within traditional leadership structures shows the embeddedness of colonialism and patriarchy in customary governance. Despite constitutional and statutory strides toward gender equality, women remain underrepresented in chieftainship and other hereditary offices. This exclusion is actively reproduced through casting women as inherently ineligible for succession. This underscores the tension between formal commitments to equality and the entrenched customary practices that continue to limit women’s access to power.

Enduring Postcolonial Legacies

Postcolonial Zimbabwe is still struggling to dismantle its colonial patriarchal legacy. Efforts to democratize or “decolonize” traditional leadership have been made, but the persistence of patriarchal succession laws remains. A critical achievement of the 2013 Constitution was the repeal of "claw-back" clauses, provisions under the previous constitutional regime that allowed for discrimination in matters of personal and customary law (e.g., marriage, inheritance, succession). Thus, the Constitution restricts the power of “custom” to override women's constitutional rights.¹⁵

The 2013 Constitution establishes itself as the "supreme law of Zimbabwe," explicitly voiding any law, practice, custom, or conduct inconsistent with its provisions, particularly on fundamental rights and freedoms.¹⁶ Section 2 affirms this supremacy, and section 3(1)(g) entrenches gender equality as a founding value of the state.

Section 17 requires the State to “promote the full participation of women in all spheres of Zimbabwean society based on equality with men.” Section 56(1) guarantees equality before the law, equal protection, and benefit of the law; section 56(3) prohibits discrimination on several grounds, including sex, gender, and custom; and section 80(3) proclaims, in strong language, that "all laws, customs, traditions and cultural practices that infringe the rights of women conferred by this Constitution are void to the extent of the infringement." These provisions embody "substantive equality," requiring not just non-discrimination but active measures to redress past inequalities and guarantee equal opportunities, including in the appointment of traditional leaders.

Decolonial Feminist Jurisprudence

In Zimbabwe and beyond, feminist legal scholars are reclaiming customary law to challenge gender exclusion in chieftainship, land rights, and inheritance, as evidenced by the litigation in this case. Decolonial feminist legal theory insists that decolonization must both “undo” colonial legal epistemologies and empower African communities, especially women, to reconstruct legal norms in accordance with dynamic, relational, and inclusive local knowledge. The evolution of customary law, as in the Mlotshwa case, cannot be frozen at the point of colonially codified “tradition,” but must be open to adaptive, community-driven, and constitutional change aligned with local and international equality norms.¹⁹

Conclusion

Patriarchal attitudes continue to frame female succession as illegitimate or anomalous, but customary law is not a fossilized relic. It is a living, adaptive system that responds to changes in social reality and constitutional imperatives. Women leaders often face tokenism and relegation to “soft” portfolios within traditional and modern governance structures. Recognizing and incorporating the dynamism of indigenous knowledge, women’s histories, and lived experiences is essential to policy and law-making that rejects colonial and patriarchal biases.

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Glossary

• Anomalous: Rare, exceptional.

• Anthropological: Relating to the study of human beings and their ancestors through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental and social relations, and culture.

• Customary Law: Unwritten, legally binding norms, customs, and practices of a particular community that have been followed for generations and are recognized as obligatory by the people themselves. 

• Circumscribed: Limited in size, activity, or range.

• Constitutional: Something allowed by or contained in a constitution, the fundamental law of a polity, organization, or entity.

• District Administrator: An appointed official who acts as the administrative representative of the central government at the district level, responsible for implementing policy and overseeing development efforts within their district. 

• English Common Law: Legal system based on judicial precedent and custom, developed through court decisions rather than statutes and originating in medieval England.

• Epistemologies: Different theories or philosophical approaches that investigate the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge,

• Imperatives: Commands or orders

• Installation: The official, ceremonial appointment of a traditional leader, who holds their position through lineage and serves as a custodian of customary law and cultural heritage, rather than through popular election.

• Intersectionality: A theoretical framework that recognizes how different aspects of a person's identity, such as race, gender, class, sexuality, and disability, can overlap and combine to create unique and sometimes complex experiences of privilege and discrimination.

• Litigation: The act, process, or practice of settling a dispute in a court of law. 

• Lived experiences: The personal knowledge, awareness, and understanding gained from directly and first-hand experiencing a particular event, issue, or condition.

• Native Commissioner: A white colonial government official in the Native Affairs Department, responsible for administering tribal areas, overseeing African welfare, enforcing colonial laws, and exerting judicial power over the Black African population.

• Roman Dutch Law: Mixed civil law legal system that blends Roman law with medieval Dutch customs, which developed in the Netherlands in the 17th and 18th centuries and was spread to its colonies. Today, it is still the foundation of legal systems in countries such as South Africa, Namibia, and Zimbabwe, though often modified by English common law. 

• Tokenism: The practice of making only a symbolic effort to do a particular thing,  in order to give the appearance of equality.