‘All my hopes and dreams are shattered’: Urbanization and migrancy in an imploding African economy – the case of Zimbabwe

Abstract

During the 1990s, urban livelihoods in Zimbabwe began to suffer a series of economic stresses, which accelerated in 1997 and then accelerated again, with the inception of fast-track land reform, from 2000. This has reduced urban living standards significantly and devastated real urban income levels. After a discussion of the economic and political parameters of this period, this paper links these to empirical changes in the urban livelihoods and perceptions of urban living standards of recent in-migrants to Harare. This draws on a longitudinal database of four surveys of recent migrants to the city conducted in 1985, 1988, 1994 and 2001. Among a range of qualitative issues explored in these surveys has been the question of migrants’ future plans in relation to their intended length of stay in town. It is shown that migrants have been feeling increasingly negative or unsure about their urban experience since structural adjustment began in the early 1990s, and that these perceptions had greatly strengthened by 2001. By the last survey only a small minority felt they would remain permanently in town and most of the migrants from rural areas felt that their living standards in Harare were either worse than rural living standards, or no better. While Zimbabwe’s current political and economic crisis is exceptional, serious urban poverty is a feature across sub-Saharan African countries and it is argued that this has had a depressing effect on net rural–urban migration rates.