Informality and Governmentality: an Ethnography of Conversion Entrepreneurship in Harare

Informality and Governmentality: An Ethnography of Conversion Entrepreneurship in Harare by Robert Nyakuwa Dissertation presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University Supervisor: Prof C.S. Van der Waal March 2018 Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Declaration By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third-party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it for obtaining any qualification. March 2018 Copyright © 2018 Stellenbosch University All rights reserved i Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Acknowledgements The co-production of this work has taken a very long time and has involved many people. Although I claim authorship by attaching my name on the front cover there are many people, some of whom I shall name below that have helped shape the ideas and generated the intellectual insights outlined in the pages that make up this thesis. The individuals I acknowledge below are not in any hierarchical order but simply outlined according to my recall of their contribution to my work. I am greatly indebted to Bert Helmsing (local economic development and entrepreneurship), Georgina Gomez (informality and alternative currencies), Peter Knoringa (value chains and enterprise development), John Cameron (research epistemologies and visual ethnography), Karin Astrid Siegman (informality, radical epistemologies and development economics) and Des Gasper (discourse analysis). All were staff members at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University in 2010-2011, with whom I had intensive interaction when I was a MA student at the institute. I give this otherwise disparate team great credit for introducing me to various sets of literature relevant for this study, sharing their ideas, sharpening the way I engage with ideas on subjects (indicated in brackets above) we had intimate deliberations on. I am also indebted to part of this group for being my referees on my PhD applications to seven different universities where I submitted my research proposals. Research ethics rules constrain me from revealing the co-authors of this work who generated the visuals and the narratives I have manipulated to produce this write up. I would want to express my sincere gratitude for the richness, openness and intelligent reflections each one of you gave me in our long conversations about this study. Your embrace, enthusiasm, support and your persistent checks on my progress on this dissertation, is simply humbling. Somehow, the same research ethics rules allow me to reveal some co-authors. A crucial part of any PhD is the study supervisor. On the first day I came to the fourth floor of the Arts building, a staff member asked me who my supervisor was, ‘Kees van Der Waal’ I answered. He retorted, ‘you are in good hands, he is a complete supervisor. He cares about his students, count your blessings,’ before walking away. I was not surprised, because Professor Kees had already paid me a visit a day after I arrived in Stellenbosch to check where I was living and how I was settling down in this new place. Every fellow I share this anecdote with agrees that I was in good hands. In Zimbabwe, to show the depth of our gratitude, we clap with clasped hands and say mwari vakuitirei zvakanaka – may God bless you. ii Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za After struggling for several years to get Ph.D. funding, I am full of gratitude to the Graduate School at Stellenbosch University and the Wallenberg Foundation in cooperation with STIAS for providing me and other social science students the funding at a time when social sciences are being regarded less important to the development of humanity compared to the so called ‘STEM’ (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics). Special mention also goes to Elizabeth Hector, Genay Dhelminie and the rest of the Sociology and Social Anthropology team who work behind the scenes in making sure one sails through the administrative hoops. I am sure the faculty librarian, Lucinda Raath, already knows a good number of my references as she kept getting early morning emails for inter library loan requests or problems with downloading some journal articles. I consider Lucinda one of the few friends I made at Stellenbosch. I am grateful for the patience and support Lucinda and the SU library staff give to students like me. In the same breath, my sincere gratitude goes to Barbara Nussbaum for editing this work. Unusually, I prefer working at night in total silence as I easily get distracted by such things as the sound of the keyboard from colleagues. I would want to thank the SU management for the decisions to make the university buildings accessible 24 hours every day of the calendar including holidays. The evening shuttle ensures students safely get home at no extra cost is a deeply responsible and amazing service, especially to disadvantaged students at SU. Such services suited my style and profoundly enhanced my productivity. Studying fulltime when you have a family can never be easy on anyone. My two children, Ryan Tinevimbo (10) and Celeste Matipa (6) lived through the formative parts of their lives with an absent dad. Celeste was born in December 2010 when I was a student in The Netherlands and she started school when I was studying for this Ph.D. This space is not enough for a narration of the many hurdles my partner, Shamiso, had to jump to keep the family together while pursuing her professional career in the male dominated space she was in. Similar burdens fell on my sisters, Monica and Lisiwe who have always been supportive. If describing your own, words do fail sometimes to capture true feelings, Mwari vakuitirei zvakanaka. I equally thank the rest of my family and friends whom I cannot individually mention because of the economics of space. Lastly, my gratitude goes to my parents, although at a distance, I am aware they remain very supportive of my efforts and proud of their son! iii Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Dedication To my sister Monica Nyakuwa, without whose emotional, motherly, spiritual and material support I could not have progressed this far And To my wife Shamiso, son Ryan Tinevimbo and daughter Celeste Matipa Belva whose presence in my life has been a profound source of purpose, discipline and inspiration. iv Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Abstract From its empirical and theoretical genealogy, informality has been proximate to poverty and illegality, hence it is associated with descriptions such as lumpenproletariat, (Neuwirth, 2011) ‘survivalist’, or ‘necessity’ (Berner et al., 2012) economy. By using largely a priori coded notions deployed on the poorer sections of the (mostly) urban population, most researchers miss emergent practices and some of the dynamism in other sections of the urban population where formality and informality are intentional. By means of an experimental visual ethnography using smart phones in Harare - Zimbabwe, this study documents informal entrepreneurship. It develops the concept of conversion entrepreneurship to illustrate agency by informal entrepreneurs in a dead economy through structuring innovative entrepreneurial activities in both formal and informal economic spheres. This concept reclaims and extends the economic anthropological notions drawn from Paul Bohannan (1955) and Fredrick Barth (1967) on spheres of exchange. It illustrates how ‘conversions’ are economic transactions by entrepreneurs targeted at areas of institutional incongruence. It affirms profit as a strong motivation for informal entrepreneurs to be innovative. The study observes that innovation is facilitated through processes of social embeddedness, which include forming entrepreneurial groups, deploying mobile phone payment systems and social networking applications as well as participating in church ‘cell’ groups. Churches can serve as business incubators, the study argues. Deploying a structuration epistemology, the study connects conversion entrepreneurs to governmentalities - technologies of governance. It shows how the indigenization governmentality is a morally coloured instrument of social exclusion. By deploying James Scott's (1985) ‘Weapons of the Weak’, the study shows how enterprises have become frontiers for political resistance against the kleptocratic Zimbabwean state. Through observing the embeddedness of conversion entrepreneurs within #ThisFlag social media mediated rebellion against the state in 2016, the study proves that structures can be altered out of the exercise of power by agents. Keywords: Entrepreneurship, Informal economy, Informal entrepreneurship, Conversion entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial groups, Visual ethnography, Dead economy, Indigenization, Institutional intermediation, Hidden dissent, Governmentality, Zombie Incubation, Everydayness. v Stellenbosch University https://scholar.sun.ac.za Opsomming Vanuit sy empiriese en teoretiese genealogie is informaliteit naby armoede en illegaliteit geplaas en daarom geassosieer met beskrywings soos lumpenproletariat (Neuwirth, 2011) en die ‘oorlewings’- , of ‘noodsaak’-ekonomie (Berner et al., 2012). Omdat navorsers

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