In both countries, land ownership has always been highly political. In South Africa, as well as seizing vast tracts of arable land from blacks to give to whites, the apartheid government handed out huge subsidies to the Afrikaner farmers who made up the heart of the ruling National party. Most black workers were treated like dirt but those on the farms were invariably the most abused. Ditto in Zimbabwe. Attachment to land is visceral and highly emotional.
Tribal religions embrace ancestor worship.
Ancestral graves are usually in tribal homelands and are sacred. Afrikaners, the white tribe of South Africa, also tend to be rural people, with a fanatical attachment to the land. But there are differences between the whites of Zimbabwe and their southern neighbours which make the latter more secure. Zimbabwean farmers form a small, discrete, racially homogenous group who generate envy by their comparative wealth. Many identified with the black struggle against white supremacists and fought alongside their black countrymen.