This is a study carried out through the partnership of Housing and Land Rights Network - Habitat International Coalition (HIC-HLRN) with the Zimbabwe People’s Land Rights Movement (ZPLRM) through the project Valuing Women’s Human Rights Habitat. HLRN began with a context assessment, with many thanks to Heather Elaydi and Joseph Schechla at HLRN for the resulting literature review.

In consultation with affected communities and partner organizations, two HLRN-organized normative and technical training workshops resulted in a typology of prominent cases of eviction and dispossession, which are also entered into the HLRN Violation Database. ZPLRM then embarked on an in-depth case study on the effects of dispossession, including the all-important quantification of losses in such incidents as forced evictions.

The study selected for its representativity, relevance to policy and potential for remedy focused on the Sokis community who are beneficiaries of the FTLRP at Innezdale Farm, located about 200 km southwest of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. In particular, it looks into the values at stake of the A1 resettlement community of 222 families on the 1,110-hectare Innezdale farm. These families occupied this farm in 2005 during the FTLRP, and are living under threat of forced eviction as their tenure is disputed. Already in March 2018, about 50 of these families had their property and houses destroyed as a consequence.

The ZPLRM, with the help of partners and friends, managed to obtain a High Court order stopping the further evictions, granting the community temporary relief as the tenure security issue is yet to be resolved. This is the plight of hundreds, if not thousands of resettlement communities across the country who are beneficiaries of the land reform programme, with its complex tenure security system.

The primary focus was on female-headed households (single, widowed, divorced, female child-headed). A total of 57 families participated in the in-depth study, while 11 families expressed reservations about participating in the survey, mostly due to fear of being victimised by political, local and national authorities.