RUNNING OUR CITIES to FILL the FOOD GAP by Leonie Joubert with the Consuming Urban Poverty Team Photographs by Samantha Reinders, with Masixole Feni

TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS RUNNING OUR CITIES TO FILL THE FOOD GAP BY LEONIE JOUBERT WITH THE CONSUMING URBAN POVERTY TEAM PHOTOGRAPHS BY SAMANTHA REINDERS, WITH MASIXOLE FENI i TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS ii 1 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS RUNNING OUR CITIES TO FILL THE FOOD GAP First published in 2018 by Authors the African Centre for Cities, Leonie Joubert, with Jane Battersby University of Cape Town and Vanessa Watson All rights reserved TOMATOES & ISBN 978-0-620-80698-5 Contributing authors Paul Opiyo, Percy Toriro, Fadzai African Centre for Cities Muramba, Robyn Bowden, Robyn School of Architecture, Planning and Park-Ross, Alison Pulker, Jo Hunter Geomatics Adams and Fridah Siyanga-Tembo TAXI RANKS Room 2.11, Level 2, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building Photographs Upper Campus, University of Cape by Samantha Reinders, all except for Town, Rondebosch, 7701 those by Masixole Feni (pages 4, 16, 81- South Africa 98, 134, 139- bottom image, 142- bottom Tel: +27 650 5903 centre image, 157), Jane Battersby www.africancentreforcities.net (pages 58, 121- top right image), RUNNING OUR CITIES Fadzai Muramba (page 53- top left, top This book is based on research right and bottom left image) and undertaken by the Consuming Urban Robyn Park-Ross (pages 92, 130-131) TO FILL THE FOOD GAP Poverty project (formally named Governing Food Systems to Alleviate Production Coordination Poverty in Secondary Cities in Africa) Robyn Park-Ross and Alma Viviers based at the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. This project Design is funded under the ESRC-DFID Joint Idea in a Forest Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research (Poverty in Urban Spaces theme). Proofreading Linda Martindale Print & Binding Hansa Digital & Litho Printing (Pty) Ltd, GraphiCraft (Pty) Ltd by Leonie Joubert with the Consuming Urban Poverty team Photographs by Samantha Reinders Consuming Urban Poverty with Masixole Feni 2 3 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS CONTENTS Foreword By Professor Edgar Pieterse 7 Introduction 9 Chapter 1 The Hungry Season Hunger feeds poverty, and poverty feeds hunger: the many faces of urban struggle. 15 Chapter 2 Big is Beautiful Staying trim and healthy in an African city is about more than just making good food and lifestyle choices: why city living leaves many heavy, hungry, and sick. 37 Chapter 3 Cinderella Markets Supermarkets and shopping malls are often seen as the poster children of the modern African city, but the informal economy brings food and jobs to our cities. 57 Chapter 4 Chicken Pieces Chicken is one of South Africa’s most popular proteins, and the pathways along which poultry travels to a city like Cape Town are complex: a series of photo essays. 81 Chapter 5 Kapenta Road No city is an island, surviving as a self-contained economy that meets all its own needs: the story of fish reveals the complex global and regional trade routes that feed into our cities’ food markets. 99 Feathered friends Chicken is a favourite Chapter 6 White Elephant protein in many African Where is local government in terms of shaping cities so that people cities, and there’s a are not just free from hunger, but properly nourished, too? 123 thriving informal economy that feeds Chapter 7 Myth Busting for a Better Food System poultry meat into our shops and roadside What the evidence on the ground tells us about cities’ food gaps, stalls. and how we can plan for well-fed, well-nourished communities. 137 4 5 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS FOREWORD African societies and economies are caught up in the intersection of at least five megatrends: population growth, urbanisation, climate change, migration, and the knot of food, water and energy insecurity. Mainstream economists are often celebratory about the fact that Africa demonstrates the fastest rate of urbanisation because it supposedly signals good economic fortune. It is premised on the evidence that sustained economic growth has never taken place in the absence of urbanisation. However, this narrative fails to account for the specificities of African urbanisation. Urbanisation processes in most African con- drive much of these processes. It reveals urban By PROFESSOR texts are marked predominantly by informality living as marked by ‘convenience’, but is ulti- EDGAR PIETERSE, in terms of how people live, secure their liveli- mately soulless. For example, urban dwellers hoods, and experience governance. One conse- are forced to forego access to nutritional sta- Director of the quence of this is that most urban areas are poor- ples in favour of processed foods that fuel our African Centre ly planned, unevenly regulated, and marked by obesity epidemic. for Cities (ACC), urban management practices that favour elites This publication also demonstrates how the University of Cape and undermine urban majorities who struggle logic of convenience not only leads to a change to put food on the table, and access a decent job, in diet, but also promotes the ‘supermarketi- Town healthcare, and education. It is in this context sation’ of food consumption, with dire conse- that we need grounded insights into how real quences for local economies, diets, social net- African cities actually operate and how people works, and cultural dynamism. Yet, so often, the navigate repressive dynamics. forms of urban life and living, such as the drive The work of the urban food system scholars for ever more shopping malls, are projected as in the ACC provides invaluable evidence and unavoidable and unstoppable. perspective on the specificities of urbanisation This publication challenges this and pro- in three secondary African cities – the kind of vides an agenda for public debate. It suggests context where the majority of urban Africans that we can, and must, connect international find themselves. Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks is a trade policy with local regulations if we want to lively publication that seeks to extend that re- alter the course of urban livelihoods and wellbe- search into a larger public domain. It epitomises ing for the urban poor. It offers a series of prac- the commitment of the ACC to conduct excel- tical ideas on how to rethink food and eating as Hand-made cities lent academic research and simultaneously en- part of a system and not simply matters of indi- rich the commons through user-friendly publi- vidual consumption or cultural preference. In- Most urban African cations that speak to the public at large. stead, Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks challenges all of life is shaped by Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks provides an inti- us to consume reflectively and act justly. It de- ‘informality’, but city mate account of what poor urban Africans eat; mands a fundamental remaking of governance, management often where they source their food; how their diets and calls for new forms of urban citizenship that favours the elites and and nutritional intake changes with urbani- are rooted in more healthy, pleasurable and in- forgets the experience of sation; and the corrosive capitalist logics that clusive patterns of living and movement. the urban majority. 6 7 TOMATOES & TAXI RANKS INTRODUction This is not a book about food, even though it in Zambia, the University of Zimbabwe, and the may look that way. Rather, it is about the cities Kisumu Local Interaction Platform (KLIP), a we live in and how they shape the food we eat. research and policy knowledge hub facilitating Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks looks beyond the fresh urban research in Kisumu, Kenya. produce that leaves farmers’ gates, and consid- Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks is based on the team’s ers how that food gets from the farm and onto main findings, following three years of immers- our plates. It looks at the many forces and agents ing themselves in three southern and east Afri- that shape how much that food eventually costs, can cities: Kitwe, a mining town in the Zambian and what form it takes once it gets to our plates. Copperbelt, about 350 kilometres north of the And it explores whether this food leaves us feel- capital, Lusaka; the inland port city of Kisumu, ing full or hungry, and if it nourishes us in the on the banks of Lake Victoria in Kenya; and Ep- long term. worth, an informal settlement on the edge of the On its journey from farm to fork, food may Zimbabwean capital of Harare. The book also lo- stay in its original form – say, as a bundle of cal- cates itself in Cape Town, South Africa, where the ories and nutrients in the shape of a fresh, ripe team has done additional supporting research. tomato. Or, through some industrial wizardry, it may get repurposed into something that’s more food-like, and less food – such as a handful of Surrounded by food, awash maize kernels that have been transformed into with hunger a cheese-flavoured crisp snack. There is an ocean of invisible undercurrents When it comes to food, cities can be deceptive that tugs us this way and that in today’s urban places. We appear to be surrounded by food, yet food system; forces that nudge us subtly as we hunger, overnutrition and undernutrition haunt decide what type of food we’ll lift from the food millions of sub-Saharan Africans daily. Making seller’s shelf: will we choose the tomato over the sure our fellow citizens are food secure – mean- maize snack, and why do we make our decision? ing that they have consistent access within Will it satisfy our hunger, and will we be well their communities to wholesome, healthy, af- nourished over time? fordable and culturally appropriate food that is Most specifically, this book is about the many safe to eat – needs more than just making sure factors that shape a poorer person’s life in an that our farmers are shipping enough food from African city, and how those express themselves their farms.

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