Frontiers of urban control: lawlessness on the city edge and forms of clientalist statecraft in Zimbabwe

This article develops the concept of ‘urban frontier’ to explore conflicts over state regularization of city edge informal settlements in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare. It conceptualises the presence of ‘lawless’ urban frontiers and ‘illegal’ territorial authorities in capital cities as expressions of a permissive form of central statecraft. In so doing, the article takes forward debates over the politics shaping the margins of Africa’s rapidly expanding cities, redressing scholars’ tendency to neglect central party-state strategic calculations and party politics in their analyses of unregulated settlements. Dominant interpretations generally hinge on state absence or weakness and emphasise localised influences. The case of Harare’s highly politicized city-edge informal settlements reveals the inadequacy of apolitical approaches particularly clearly, as all were controlled by the ruling ZANUPF party. The conflicts provoked by regularization provide a lens on disputes within the ruling party, which we interpret as disputes over different forms of clientalist statecraft. Analyses of urban frontiers can thus help move away from generic one-size-fits-all explanations of informality and patronage politics in Africa’s expanding cities

The local economic development processes in low-income countries: the case of the metropolis of Chegutu in Zimbabwe

Local authorities are widely regarded as catalysts accelerating localised processes of economic development in industrialised countries but in low-income countries they are perceived as dysfunctional, inefficient and ineffective in meeting and addressing societal demands. This abstract view is however, not grounded in empirical research. As such, utilising the case of the metropolis of Chegutu a survey was designed to empirically explicate the economic processes militating its economic development. The findings are useful to policy-makers, local government authorities and management scholars. The study's unique contribution lies in its examination of the processes of local economic development in a low-income country

Decentralization in Africa and the resilience of traditional authorities: Evaluating Zimbabwe’s track record

Zimbabwe has undergone various phases of institutional reform during colonial and post-colonial times either co-opting, distorting or denying the presence of traditional authorities, but somehow none of these institutional engineering episodes managed to uproot them. What in fact happened is successive waves of political institutions designed and put in place during these reforms withered away. Zimbabwe’s traditional authorities are still there and they continue to play a big role in the daily lives of rural populations.This paper looks at one of the most important endogenous factors influencing the workings of decentralization in Zimbabwe. Successive waves of formal institutional change that took place during Zimbabwe’s colonial and post-colonial history have been unable able to uproot the influence of traditional leaders. Due to their home-grown legitimacy, various traditional authorities continue to play an ever-present role in the lives of people in rural areas. But, as it is the case throughout most of Africa, the powers of traditional leaders have mostly been uncodified under modern law and these power relations tend to be rather informal and culturally inaccessible to most outsiders. Consequently, the scholarly literature has not been able to systematically acknowledge their pervasive influence. The article concludes with a reflection on how the influence of traditional authorities can be translated into the democratic and progressive empowerment of rural populations in the developing world

Climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation in Zimbabwe

This paper reviews impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change in Zimbabwe, with the intention of providing a broad overview of the key issues related to climate change facing this particular country. It draws on a set of background papers that were produced by the Policy and Advocacy for Climate Change in Zimbabwe project funded by the UK Department for International Development (DfID) and implemented by IIED, the Zimbabwe Regional Environment Organisation (ZERO), and Dialogue on Shelter. These papers examine climate trends, scenarios and projections for Zimbabwe and draw upon a variety of case studies on adaptation projects (see Annex 1). This working paper highlights the main themes, findings and conclusions arising from these studies and examines their implications for future research and policy. While its primary relevance is for policymakers, practitioners and researchers in Zimbabwe, it is anticipated that the general lessons are relevant for a broader set of countries that are dealing with similar environmental, demographic and institutional challenges, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa

Partisan citizenship and its discontents: precarious possession and political agency on Harare City’s expanding margins

On the margins of Zimbabwe’s expanding capital Harare, the ruling ZANU–PF party promotes a view of access to urban land, housing and security as ‘gift’, conditional on demonstrations of party loyalty. This article discusses contestation over this form of partisan citizenship, making the following broader arguments. First, it argues that the notion of partisan citizenship draws attention to the role of party political affiliation as a source of differential entitlements in illiberal democracies, countering a tendency to emphasise ethno-regional, racialized or religious communal identities as the primary sources of graduated citizenship in Africa. Second, it casts clientelist subjection as a contextual and contentious domain of ideas and action, rather than presenting it as cultural persistence or reducing it solely to material bargaining. Third, the article uses the Zimbabwean case to caution against a tendency within debates over southern urbanism to celebrate land occupations and informal construction as political resistance and route to full citizenship. In these ways, the article offers partisan citizenship as a means of taking forward debates over re-configurations of citizenship in Africa’s illiberal democracies and the politics of precarious peripheries in the urbanising global South more broadly