By Takura Zhangazha*
Zimbabwe’s urban landscape is changing form quite rapidly. Particularly where one considers new modern
urban developments such as shopping malls away from city centres or new residential
housing in the form of either ‘flats’ or ‘cluster’ residential compounds and new
low-income suburbs.
This is also in tandem with the expansion of privatized social
service buildings or amenities such as private clinics, schools, fast food
outlets and fuel service stations.
One colleague who had not travelled as much around for example
the city of Harare’s high density areas was astounded by these new
developments.
So would anyone who has not been around the capital city for
a while since the Covid 19 pandemic or if one is not keen on seeing the new
real estate regime in its geographical physicality.
For many who have studied urban development academically or
otherwise, this is an age of the rapid expansion of at least Harare. And a modernist
and somewhat ‘post-colonial’ one for that matter.
I use the term post-colonial here because to call it
neo-colonial would be slightly off the mark based on either the passage of time.
Or the fact that the Harare city urban masterplan is still officially the one
adopted by the colonial Salisbury city council.
The key point however is that Harare is not physically the
same anymore.
If one was in the Diaspora for at least three years and came
back to the capital, landscapes one would remember have structurally changed. Not only from the road that comes from the Robert
Mugabe International Airport but also from the southern approach of the
Harare-Masvingo-Beitbridge highway. Or in any other direction from Harare’s dysfunctional
Central Post Office.
In any one direction, we will witness multiple housing
developments, expanded road networks, service stations and awkwardly placed
fast food outlets.
In fact it could be classified as witnessing a mimicry of
assumed urban modernization of countries’ in which one is domiciled in the Diaspora. Or if you are coming from a long-duree stay
in the rural areas.
So it is now relatively easy to get awestruck by the
changing Harare infrastructure. Until
you veer off a main road and into the internals of high density, middle or low
density older suburbs only to see the dilapidation of still existent council buildings,
roads, two-roomed housing and tower-lights.
In such instances you get the sense of the new infrastructural
developments being somewhat of a veneer of progress amidst a continual rubble
of administrative decay.
Or to make matters slightly more depressing, a re-ordering
of a former minority white capital into being a black elite capital based on
either individual wealth or proximity to financialised or fast tracked land (reform)
capital in the city or its immediate outskirts.
And this is where the contradictions begin and continually
show themselves.
With the first key point being that new privatised infrastructure
does not mean a new city. It means one
that papers over the colonial legacy poverty cracks that are evident if you move
from the shopping mall to the middle of a high density area.
Or even a middle or
low density one where the more prevalent narratives of residents therein are unfortunately
usually about how Salisbury or Smith was better! One which tends to be followed up by the
undemocratic assertion that our local government councilors are not educated
enough to run a city even with full-time city council professional employees.
The second key contradiction is that of lifestyle
aspirations of Zimbabweans. I have
written on this before but for this analysis I will limit it to the fact of the
following outline.
A majority of us were either born in a rural area or have strong
migratory links to the same. The city or
any urban area, colonially induced, was always viewed as where the ‘good life’
could eventually be lived. Fair enough for
an historical point and reality.
Upon arrival in the city (mainly by African males) to either
search for work or be forced into work, the aspiration was some sort of urban
housing in the designated African quarter or suburb.
Upon attaining national independence the general aspiration was
to leave the previous African quarters/residential area to either the former ‘coloured’
or ‘white’ residential areas. All as
emblems of individual success derived from a limited understanding of the colonial
legacy and structure that is currently the city of Harare.
Or where we cannot follow this trajectory, we will re-create
it in areas where residentialised poverty and wealth can co-exist side by side
(pick any high density area of your choice for examples- I just know that some
cdes are building double-storey houses where others still live in two rooms
with outside toilets).
The third contradiction is that of what I consider to be ‘ vulture
urban capitalism’. Given the colonial
legacy city that is Harare and the above outline of how I think we have
responded to it as residents this is probably the most crippling in how we
envision a new Harare.
As argued prior, privatized infrastructure development does
not change the culture of a city. It generally
reinforces a repressive one as of colonial old.
Making the differences between the rich and the poor more glaring. With the again added contradiction of the
poor wanting to mimic the rich. Except that the corporates (aka the rich) also
now know they made a mistake in assuming shopping mall and fast food outlets
were about niche markets and not about numbers markets.
So Harare is in an historical existential crisis as a city
(as I am sure so are other cities across the country). One in which there is elitist and
privatisation of various infrastructural facilities such as main roads,
expansion of private schools and private clinics. All against the backdrop of a colonially
designed planning system that never envisioned generic equality of access to
water/sanitation, health, transport, education and ease of urban living for the
majority of its residents.
As for the vulture corporates circling around Harare’s
poorer neighbourhoods, they are lucky, who doesn’t want the convenience of a
two piecer and chips over running water and fixed inner roads in their residential
area?
*Takura Zhangazha writes here in his personal capacity
(takurazhangazha.com) takura-zhangazha.blogspot.com)
