What is Vadzimu

Two claims were defended in this chapter. Firstly, the chapter argued that, whilst old people's homes (OPHs) were critical in caring for the destitute elderly in postcolonial Zimbabwe, inadvertently, they were undermining intergenerational cultural transfer. Secondly, OPHs were presented as concomitant with dysfunctional family institutions in Zimbabwe. Accordingly, this chapter interrogated the role of OPHs to establish the extent to which these institutions contribute to the discontinuity of intergenerational cultural transfer in Zimbabwe, especially among the Shona people. The interrogation was located within Gade's (2011) theoretical framework of ‘narratives of return'. On that basis, a case was made for Zimbabwean society in general and the family in particular, to seriously reconsider its traditional and fundamental role of caring for the elderly without recourse to OPHs as an exigency.