City Versus State in Zimbabwe: Colonial Antecedents of the Current Crisis

Abstract

There is currently a major urban crisis in Zimbabwe. This expresses itself in failures of provision of water, electricity, medicines, transport, housing etc. Descriptions of conditions in the high density townships of Harare and Bulawayo today are strikingly reminiscent of the last great urban crisis – in the late 1940s of colonial Rhodesia. Two other features are common to both crises. One is the problem of governance. The other is the relation between the city and the state. In both periods there was a great debate about what consituted urban ‘citizenship’, with the great majority of African residents in the cities believing themselves to be unrepresented by illegimitate institutions of local government. In both periods, too, there was deep tension between the city and the state. In the Rhodesian as well as in the Zimbabwean period there was debate between the two over who was responsible for the urban crisis and over who should take what steps to resolve it. To many Zimbabweans the present crisis, and the contemporary clashes between the government and the cities, seem unprecedented. This article seeks to explore its colonial antecedents.