Amin Y. Kamete

Interlocking livelihoods: farm and small town in Zimbabwe

This paper describes the nature of the relationship between two settlement types in Zimbabwe. It explores the links between the often neglected and underestimated farm and the ever-popular town in north-western Zimbabwe. Two interactive channels and their associated sub-channels are identified and analyzed. The nature of these interactions shows that the links between the two settlement types are by no means simple and cannot be narrowed down to the traditional rural-urban divide. The paper concludes by discussing the question of benefits and intervention in the light of the identified livelihood channels.

The Return of the Jettisoned: ZANU-PF's Crack at ‘Re-Urbanising’ in Harare

After Zimbabwes ruling party, ZANU-PF, lost the cities to the opposition in 2000, it mounted a spirited comeback bid. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Harare, the capital city, whose residents had overwhelmingly rejected the party in the parliamentary elections – a trend that was to be repeated with chilling regularity during the next four years. The partys attempt to ‘re-urbanise’ consisted of two strategies, namely, regaining control of institutions of local governance and getting re-elected into council and parliament. The former has been hugely successful while so far the latter has not yielded much. This article revisits the partys comeback bid and assesses its strategies in order to explain their contrasting fortunes. The discussion argues that the attempt to win elections failed because, in the first place, the party did not address the reasons for the hostility of the citys voters, and in some cases even exacerbated its alienation from the majority of these voters.

Cold-Hearted, Negligent and Spineless? Planning, Planners and the (R)Ejection of “Filth” in Urban Zimbabwe

Abstract The state bureaucracy played a prominent role in Zimbabwes “Operation Murambatsvina/Restore Order”, the world-(in)famous urban “clean-up” operation. The planning system was in the forefront of the operation, conspicuously sharing the limelight with the security and law enforcement agencies. The paper examines how planners provided the operations techno-legal articulation, which was liberally deployed by the state to explain, rationalize, and glorify the operation. The discussion critically analyses some of the most scathing criticism against planning, namely that planners were cold-hearted, negligent and spineless. Based on an interrogation of the evidence in light of the viewpoints of a cross-section of practitioners, victims and activists, the paper argues that it is difficult for the planning profession to dodge these accusations.

The Politics of ‘Non-Planning’ Interventions in African Cities: Unravelling the International and Local Dimensions in Harare and Maputo

Urban planning bases its interventionist strategies on the reasoning that change has to be rationally managed and that control is necessary in the ‘public interest’. In Africa, for various bureaucratic and political reasons, urban planning has often been notoriously lax. In the face of uncontrolled urban development, many urban governments have abandoned comprehensive planning and increasingly resort to ad-hoc ‘sanitising’ measures of various kinds. This paper explores the forces and rationales that lie behind the intensified use of such ‘non-planning’ strategies. It draws on examples from Harare and Maputo, where urban authorities applied forceful measures to remove unplanned settlements and market places. In these cases the forces at work behind the scenes included the political strategies of elites seeking to maintain and strengthen political control over urban areas, rationalising and legitimising such unpopular interventions by appealing to ongoing efforts at ‘city marketing’ through international events, and referring to the imperative of upholding a modern city image. We discuss the tensions that arose from these decisions and the subsequent political processes among the intended ‘victims’, and between them and the authorities. In comparing and contrasting the cases of Harare and Maputo, we bring out the dilemmas of planning resorting to ‘non-planning’ and the complex politics triggered by such interventions.

When livelihoods take a battering… Mapping the 'New Gold Rush' in Zimbabwe's Angwa-Pote Basin

The paper analyses the gold panning saga in Zimbabwe’s mineral-rich Mashonaland West Province. It focuses on the Angwa-Pote Basin in the wake of the deteriorating economy and the land redistribution programme. Of particular interest are the ramifications of massive job losses in mining, commercial farming and urban areas on alluvial gold panning, which in many instances is the only resort for scores of embattled households. It is argued that traditional methods of checking the negative outcomes of gold panning have been rendered impotent. The discussion examines this fast evolving gold rush by positioning it within the wider national and local contexts. The contributing factors to the rise and persistence of this phenomenon are explained at length. Finally, the conclusion is made that if deeper insights into the new gold rush are to be gained more research is necessary.

In Defence of National Sovereignty? Urban Governance and Democracy in Zimbabwe

Elections are usually regarded as an important measure of democracy as they constitute a “general indicator of the relationship between state power and different groups in society” (Laakso 1999:9). Democracy – however it is defined (Joseph 1999) – is in turn an indicator of urban governance. Using this framework of liberal democracy, pre-independence Zimbabwe can be judged as having been very undemocratic (Swilling 1997) and therefore badly governed (Global Development Research Centre (GDRC) 2000). The black majority did not have the vote in either national or local government elections. They were excluded through the adoption and application of several restrictive qualification criteria that included race, land tenure, income and property ownership. During the 1960s and 1970s, liberation movements waged a long struggle of independence, one of whose major aims was the extension of the vote to the black majority. Following independence and the triumph of the Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), one of the two liberation movements, the urbanites who had been given the national vote through the promulgation of universal adult suffrage were not immediately granted the local vote. Understandably, the former liberation movement sought first to address pressing national issues before turning attention to local issues such as municipal council elections.

Interrogating planning's power in an African city: Time for reorientation?

As part of modern government, planning is concerned with ‘acting on others’ actions’ in spatial practices. This necessarily entails the exercise of power. This paper (re)frames planning’s power in the context of particular systems of governance and how this power is exercised in the relationship between planning systems and (ab)users of urban spaces. Using material from field research in Zimbabwe, the paper examines three forms of power exercised through planning in specific socio-economic contexts. The discussion interrogates planning’s handling of violations of spatial controls by two socio-economic groups: the privileged affluent and the marginalized poor. The paper demonstrates that planning exercises direct sovereign power and cruder and more overtly violent forms of disciplinary power in less privileged context while exercising pastoral power and subtler forms of disciplinary power in affluent contexts. The paper argues that planning’s continued affinity to and unbending deployment of sovereign and crude and overtly violent disciplinary techniques in its dealings with marginalized townspeople is counterproductive and ineffective. The paper proposes the cautious appropriation of pastoral power – especially as it relates to the co-opting of individual and group agency – into planning’s operations in less privileged contexts.

Restrictive Control of Urban High-density Housing in Zimbabwe: Deregulation, Challenges and Implications for Urban Design

The urban land use planning system in Zimbabwe thrives on controls and restrictions. Over the decades these controls have been moulded into laws that prior to 1994 managed to outlaw all non-residential activities from residential areas. The built environment professions have been used to ensure that residential areas are designed exclusively as living environments. Statutory Instrument 216 of 1994 partially deregulated industrial activities in residential areas. It recognized what had been known all the time, namely, that housing is not simply ?reproductive space?. This legal recognition of a home as both shelter and workplace has some fundamental design implications. This poses a new challenge to urban design, in terms of layout and building design, to satisfy the important aspects of health, safety and convenience, as well as function, economy, efficiency, compatibility and aesthetics. This paper reviews Zimbabwes urban land use controls and the role of the built environment professions. It examines th...

Not Exactly like the Phoenix—But Rising all the Same: Reconstructing Displaced Livelihoods in Post-Cleanup Harare

Studies of displacement often emphasise massive physical dislocation. In this paper, based on a study of displaced youth in Harare, Zimbabwe, I argue for the freeing of the concept from ‘physical uprooting’ and build a case for focusing on in situ displacement and displaced livelihoods. I consider attempts by youth to reconstitute displaced livelihoods in the wake of ‘cleansing’ by the state. I scrutinise evolving recovery tactics in the face of determined efforts by the authorities to repress the ‘filth’, demonstrating that the youths resistance comprises a myriad of spatialised recovery strategies for dealing with spatialised repression. I argue that it is the mutation of the youths modes of operation that have enabled them to (re)contaminate and (re)subvert the ‘purified’ spaces.

US AID’s private sector housing programme in urban Zimbabwe: examining the terrain from the terraces

This paper discusses the role of the United States government’s Agency for International Development (US AID) in housing provision in Zimbabwe. While emphasizing that much of the Agency’s support has helped expand and improve housing for low-income urban groups, it also describes how a US AID-funded project in Harare contradicted the Agency’s own principles of good governance since it was developed without the approval of the local authorities and used a steel-frame technology that had not been approved. This technology subsequently proved to have many disadvantages and the participants in the project find themselves with mortgage repayments that they have difficulty meeting, and poor quality houses within a neighbourhood that the city authorities will not recognize as a legal development.