Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-skm99 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T08:27:36.693Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Urban Displacement and Resettlement in Zimbabwe: The Paradoxes of Propertied Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2017

Amanda Hammar
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article examines what urban displacement and resettlement can reveal about the nature of, and co-constitutive relationships among, property, authority, and citizenship. It focuses on an unusual case in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, where long-term illegal squatters living under constant threat of violent displacement by various local and national authorities were formally resettled by the Bulawayo City Council on peri-urban plots with houses. What surfaces are some of the paradoxes of propertied citizenship and of attaining seemingly “proper” lives in conditions of sustained marginality, a result that is not entirely unexpected when impoverished squatters are resettled far outside the frame of the city and its possibilities.

Résumé:

Cet article examine ce que les déplacements urbains et la réinstallation peuvent révéler sur la nature et les relations co-constitutives entre, la propriété, l’autorité et la citoyenneté. Il se concentre sur un cas inhabituel à Bulawayo, au Zimbabwe, où des Squatters illégaux à long terme, vivant sous la menace constante de déplacements violents par diverses autorités locales et nationales, ont été officiellement réinstallés par le conseil municipal de Bulawayo dans des maisons sur des parcelles périurbaines. L’article explore certains paradoxes de la citoyenneté basée sur la propriété et la réalisation de vies apparemment « appropriées» dans des conditions de marginalité durable lorsque les Squatters appauvris sont réinstallés loin du cadre de la ville et de ses possibilités.

Keywords

Urban displacementresettlementpropertyauthoritycitizenshipZimbabwe
Type
ASR FORUM: Land Disputes and Displacement in Postconflict Africa
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 60 , Issue 3 , December 2017 , pp. 81 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berry, Sara. 2009. “Property, Authority and Citizenship: Land Claims, Politics and the Dynamics of Social Division in West Africa.” Development and Change 40 (1): 23–45.Google Scholar
Bezabeh, Samson A. 2011. “Citizenship and the Logic of Sovereignty in Djibouti.” African Affairs 110 (441): 587–606.Google Scholar
Bratton, Michael, and Masunungure, Eldred. 2007. “Popular Reactions to State Repression: Operation Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe.” African Affairs 106 (422): 21–45.Google Scholar
Cavalcanti, Mariana. 2015. “Waiting in the Ruins: The Aesthetics and Politics of Favela Urbanization in ‘PACification’ Rio de Janeiro.” In Infrastructural Lives: Urban Infrastructure in Context, edited by Graham, Stephen and McFarlane, Colin, 86–113. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Chinobva, Linda. 2014. “The Agony of Being a Squatter in Byo.” Southern Eye, June 15. www.southerneye.co.zw.Google Scholar
Clarke, John, et al. 2014. Disputing Citizenship. Bristol, U.K.: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Collins, Erin. 2016. “Postsocialist Informality: The Making of Owners, Squatters and State Rule in Phnom Penh, Cambodia (1989–1993).” Environment and Planning A 48 (12): 2367–382Google Scholar
Dorman, Sara Rich. 2016. “‘We Have Not Made Anybody Homeless’: Regulation and Control of Urban Life in Zimbabwe.” Citizenship Studies 20 (1): 84–98.Google Scholar
Doshi, Sapana. 2013. “The Politics of Eviction: Redevelopment, Subjectivity, and Difference in Mumbai’s Slum Frontier.” Antipode 45 (4): 844–65.Google Scholar
Dzobo, Factmore. 2013. “Mazwi Community Faces Starvation.” The Chronicle, September 13.Google Scholar
Falola, Toyin, and Okpeh, Ochayi, eds. 2008. Population Movements, Conflicts, and Displacements in Nigeria. Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press.Google Scholar
Gastrow, Claudia. 2017. “Cement Citizens: Housing, Demolition and Political Belonging in Luanda, Angola.” Citizenship Studies 21 (2): 224–39.Google Scholar
Gordillo, Gaston. 2006. “The Crucible of Citizenship: ID-Paper Fetishism in the Argentinean Chaco.” American Ethnologist 33 (2): 162–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Groebner, Valentin. 2001. “Describing the Person, Reading the Signs in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Identity Papers, Vested Interests, and the Limits of Identification, 1400–1600.” In Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World, edited by Torpey, John and Caplan, Jane, 15–27. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hammar, Amanda. 2007. “‘The Day of Burning’: Land, Authority and Belonging in Zimbabwe’s Agrarian Margins in the 1990s.” Ph.D. diss., Roskilde University.Google Scholar
Hammar, Amanda. 2008. “In the Name of Sovereignty: Displacement and State Making in Post-Independence Zimbabwe.” Journal of Contemporary African Studies 26 (4): 417–34.Google Scholar
Hammar, Amanda. 2014. “Introduction: Displacement Economies in Africa.” In Displacement Economies in Africa: Paradoxes of Crisis and Creativity, edited by Hammar, Amanda, 3–32. London: Zed Press.Google Scholar
Hammar, Amanda, and Raftopoulos, Brian. 2003. “Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation.” In Zimbabwe’s Unfinished Business: Rethinking Land, State and Nation in the Context of Crisis, edited by Hammar, Amanda, Raftopoulos, Brian, and Jensen, Stig, 1–47. Harare: Weaver Press.Google Scholar
Hammar, Amanda, McGregor, JoAnn, and Landau, Loren. 2010. “Introduction: Displacing Zimbabwe: Crisis and Construction in Southern Africa.” Journal of Southern African Studies 36 (2): 263–83.Google Scholar
Harms, Erik. 2013. “Eviction Time in the New Saigon: Temporalities of Displacement in the Rubble of Development.” Cultural Anthropology 28 (2): 344–68.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. 2003. “The Right to the City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 27 (4): 939–41.Google Scholar
Holston, James, and Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. “Cities and Citizenship.” Public Culture 8: 187–204.Google Scholar
Huchzermeyer, Marie. 2010. “Pounding at the Tip of the Iceberg: The Dominant Politics of Informal Settlement Eradication in South Africa.” Politikon 37 (1): 129–48.Google Scholar
Huchzermeyer, Marie. 2011. Cities with “Slums”: From Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right to the City in Africa. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press.Google Scholar
Kamete, Amin Y. 2009. “In the Service of Tyranny: Debating the Role of Planning in Zimbabwe’s Urban ‘Clean-Up’ Operation.” Urban Studies 46 (4): 897–922.Google Scholar
Kolling, Marie. 2016. New Homes, New Lives? Slum Upgrading, Consumption Dreams and Debt in Brazil. Ph.D. diss., Copenhagen University.Google Scholar
Lemanski, Charlotte. 2011. “Moving up the Ladder or Stuck on the Bottom Rung? Homeownership as a Solution to Poverty in Urban South Africa.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35 (1): 57–77.Google Scholar
Lund, Christian. 2003. “‘Bawku Is Still Volatile’: Ethno-Political Conflict and State Recognition in Northern Ghana.” Journal of Modern African Studies 41 (4): 587–610 Google Scholar
Makhulu, Anne-Maria. 2010. “The “Dialectics of Toil”: Reflections on the Politics of Space after Apartheid.” Anthropological Quarterly 83 (3): 551–80.Google Scholar
Mawowa, Showers, and Matongo, Alois. 2010. “Inside Zimbabwe’s Roadside Currency Trade: The ‘World Bank’ of Bulawayo.” Journal of Southern African Studies 36 (2): 319–37.Google Scholar
Mlambo, Alois S. 2008. “From the Second World War to UDI, 1940–1965.” In Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-colonial Period to 2008, edited by Raftopoulos, Brian and Mlambo, Alois S., 75–114. Harare: Weaver Press.Google Scholar
Myers, Garth. 2011. African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice. London: Zed Books.Google Scholar
Potts, Debbie. 2006. “Restoring Order? Operation Murambatsvina and the Urban Crisis in Zimbabwe.” Journal of Southern African Studies 21 (2): 273–91.Google Scholar
Raftopoulos, Brian. 2007. “Nation, Race and History in Zimbabwe Politics.” In Making Nations, Creating Strangers: State and Citizenship in Africa, edited by Dorman, Sarah, Hammett, Daniel, and Nugent, Paul, 181–96. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Ranger, Terence. 2003. “Introduction.” In The Historical Dimensions of Democracy and Human Rights, Volume 2: Nationalism, Democracy and Human Rights, edited by Ranger, Terence, 1–34. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Press.Google Scholar
Ranger, Terence. 2004. “Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe.” Journal of Southern African Studies 30 (2): 215–34.Google Scholar
Ranger, Terence. 2010. Bulawayo Burning: The Social History of a Southern African City 1893–1960. Woodbridge, U.K.: James Currey.Google Scholar
Robinson, Jennifer. 2002. “Global and World Cities: A View from off the Map.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26 (3): 531–54.Google Scholar
Robinson, Jennifer. 2006. Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Roy, Ananya. 2003. “Paradigms of Propertied Citizenship: Transnational Techniques of Analysis.” Urban Affairs Review 38 (4): 463–91.Google Scholar
Roy, Ananya. 2006. “Praxis in the Time of Empire.” Planning Theory 5 (1): 7–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roy, Ananya. 2013. “Shifting the Territory of Politics.” Territory, Politics, Governance 1 (2): 113–17.Google Scholar
Sachikonye, Lloyd M. 2006. The Impact of Operation Murambatsvina/Clean Up on the Working People of Zimbabwe. Report prepared for the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ). Harare: LEDRIZ.Google Scholar
Sikor, Thomas, and Lund, Christian. 2009. “Access and Property: A Question of Power and Authority.” Development and Change 40 (1): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solidarity Peace Trust. 2005. Discarding the Filth: Operation Murambatsvina. Port Shepstone, S.A.: Solidarity Peace Trust.Google Scholar
Tibaijuka, Anna K. 2005. Report of the Fact-Finding Mission to Zimbabwe to Assess the Scope and Impact of Operation Murambatsvina. Harare: United Nations.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna L. 1993. In the Realm of the Diamond Queen: Marginality in an Out-of-the-Way Place. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ukuthula Trust and Solidarity Peace Trust. 2015. Hoping without Hope: Murambatsvina–Ten Years On. Durban: Solidarity Peace Trust.Google Scholar
Vambe, Maurice. 2008. The Hidden Dimensions of Operation Murambatsvina in Zimbabwe. Harare: Weaver Press.Google Scholar
Verheul, Susanne. 2016. “‘Zimbabweans are Foolishly Litigious’: Exploring the Logic of Appeals to a Politicized Legal System.” Africa 86 (1): 78–97.Google Scholar
Watson, Vanessa. 2013 “African Urban Fantasies: Dreams or Nightmares?” Environment & Urbanization 26 (1): 1–17.Google Scholar
Yiftachel, Oren. 2009. “Theoretical Notes on ‘Gray Cities’: The Coming of Urban Apartheid.” Planning Theory 8 (1): 88–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar