The Politics of Housing in (Post)Colonial Africa
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
The Politics of Housing in (Post)colonial Africa The Politics of Housing in (Post)colonial Africa Accommodating Workers and Urban Residents Edited by Martina Barker-Ciganikova, Kirsten Rüther, Daniela Waldburger, Carl-Philipp Bodenstein This publication was funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), project number P29566-G28, and will be put into open access under Creative Commons License 4.0 CC-BY-NC. ISBN 978-3-11-059827-8 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-060118-3 e-ISBN (EPUP) 978-3-11-059873-5 DOI https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110601183 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details go to: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020930397 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover Image: Carl-Philipp Bodenstein Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com www.africanminds.org.za Contents List of Illustrations VII Martina Barker-Ciganikova 1 Introduction 1 Kirsten Rüther 2 The Rule of Rent: The State, Employers and the Becoming Urban Dweller in Northern Rhodesia Acting Across a Societal Field of Force, c. 1948–1962 31 Sofie Boonen and Johan Lagae 3 Ruashi, a Pessac in Congo? On the Design, Inhabitation, and Transformation of a 1950s Neighborhood in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo 66 Martina Kopf 4 At Home with Nairobi’s Working Poor: Reading Meja Mwangi’s Urban Novels 98 Donatien Dibwe dia Mwembu 5 La problématique de l’habitat dans la ville de Lubumbashi (Elisabethville), province du Katanga, 1910–1960 121 Daniela Waldburger 6 House, Home, Health and Hygiene – Social Engineering of Workers in Elisabethville/ Lubumbashi (1940s to 1960s) Through the Lens of Language Usage 141 Ambe Njoh and Liora Bigon 7 Spatio-physical Power and Social Control Strategies of the Colonial State in Africa: The Case of CDC Workers’ Camps in Cameroon 167 VI Contents Nicholas Sungura and Marlene Wagner in discussion with Martina Barker-Ciganikova and Kirsten Rüther 8 Concrete Does not Cry: Interdisciplinary Reflections on and Beyond Housing 185 Contributors 217 Index 221 List of Illustrations Figure 3.1 Cover of a theme issue of the Belgian architectural journal Rythme, devoted to the work of the Office des Cités Africaines, issue #30, 1960 71 Figure 3.2 “Elisabethville. Emplacement des cites indigènes.” Map showing the spatial organization of Lubumbashi with: in the middle the “European city,” to the south, the two “native town” of Kamalondo and Kenya (the third one, Katuba, not existing then), to the west, along the road to Kipushi, the mining camp of the Union Minière (here indicated as a “cité indigène”) and, to the north-east, the OCA neighborhood of Ruashi 73 Figure 3.3 Building with the Système Grévisse in Lubumbashi 74 Figure 3.4a “Ruashi/Elisabethville. Plan general d’aménagement.” Overall masterplan for the Ruashi-neighborhood, Office des Cités Africaines, 1959 77 Figure 3.4b Scheme of the division of the Ruashi neighborhood, designed for around 32,000 inhabitants, distributed into five sections of about 6,000 inhabitants each 78 Figure 3.5 Fragment of the plan of the Ruashi neighborhood, indicating the public facilities and the main road infrastructure with the characteristic dead end streets 78 Figure 3.6 The central market of Ruashi, designed by OCA architect J. Castel-Branco, ca. 1959 79 Figure 3.7 Aerial photograph of the Ruashi neighborhood anno 2010, with an overlay of those fragments of the original masterplan, indicating those parts which were executed according to the initial design 81 Figure 3.8a Plan of the ground floor of the maison extensible-type, with living unit, kitchen, one bedroom and sanitary facilities 83 Figure 3.8b Plan of the first floor of the maison extensible-type with two double bedrooms and two single bedrooms 83 Figure 3.9 Two-story OCA houses erected in the “experimental site” in the Kamalondo neighborhood, situation anno 2010 84 Figure 3.10 Architectural drawing of a single-story OCA house for Elisabethville/ Lubumbashi, type B, 1954 86 Figure 3.11a Two-story housing with shops for commercial activities on the ground floor. Notice the informal infrastructure for selling food in the front, situation late 1950s 87 Figure 3.11b Two-story housing with shops for commercial activities on the ground floor and some storage facilities in the back. Notice the graffiti-like inscription fantôme (“ghost”) on the side façade on the right, situation late 1950s 87 Figure 3.12 Enclosures in various materials in front of two-story houses with commercial shops on the ground floor, situation anno 2006 88 Figure 3.13 Transformation of an OCA house with an extra room added to the front, situation anno 2010 90 Open Access. © 2020 Martina Barker-Ciganikova et al., published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110601183-203 VIII List of Illustrations Figure 3.14 Transformation of an OCA house with an additional facility added to the back side 90 Figure 5.1 Carte de la ville d’Elisabethville (Lubumbashi) en 1960 122 Figure 7.1 A new CDC camp under construction: laborer camps. Notice the well-aligned buildings. 174 Figure 7.2 Typical housing unit for a ranking low-income employee, Moliwe 174 Figure 7.3 Intermediate Staff Quarters, Moliwe 175 Figure 7.4 Typical house for a senior level employee at CDC 175 Figure 7.5 Communal bucket toilet, CDC Camp, Moliwe (notice the bucket-holding compartments at the base of the building) 176 Figure 7.6 CDC Manager’s House atop a hill, Moliwe 177 Figure 7.7 Moliwe Camp exemplifies spatial isolation 178 Martina Barker-Ciganikova 1 Introduction Housing matters. That, however, is not the only – although the simplest – answer to the question of why a volume of collected contributions on housing in colonial and postcolonial Africa is of imminent importance. Housing matters because, as a multifaceted process in itself, it helps us understand and analyze more complex developments and transformation processes that make societies reflect about themselves. Using housing as a lens, an endeavor we undertake in this volume, means achieving insights into how seemingly insignificant everyday struggles and experiences influenced and shaped such large questions as the reformulation of policies and ideologies. Housing initiatives and shifts in housing programs have always been embedded in broader colonial and postcolonial approaches to labor, health, and urban planning, which themselves have been entrenched in the all- embracing (post)colonial ideology of trusteeship and later modernity. We, the editors of this volume, conceive of housing not only as a physical space but also as a network of social, cultural, and legal relationships, a series of interactions and activities between various players each of whom cultivates their respective interests. Housing is construed of as an arena of contestation, used by all involved players as a means to put forward their particular views and have them challenge each other. The outcomes of these confrontations vary and encompass transfigurations, adaptations, hybridizations, appropriations or the re-imagining of proposed plans and policies.1 After the Second World War, the colonial state, wished to legitimate its rule by showing that it would stress aspects of welfare and development, and controlled “emancipation” and involvement of colonial subjects in the exercise of rule. For urban settings, this entailed specific consequences. Employers – a crucial group of players in housing provision – in many countries wished to discipline laborers and their families and to tie an emerging “labor aris- tocracy” to paternalistically structured capitalism. Workers, in turn, had to decide whether they preferred to live in an environment where access to the infrastructures and commodities of modernity was offered through housing or whether they wished to take up residence in less circumscribed but materially disadvantaged township settings. Housing thus unfolds in its multiplicity. It refers to a complex living environ- ment encompassing a series of varying aspects, such as kinship and community 1 See, for instance, Jennifer Robinson, “Global and World Cities: A View from off the Map,” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26 (2002). Open Access. © 2020 Martina Barker-Ciganikova, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110601183-001 2 Martina Barker-Ciganikova networking, provision of social services amongst neighbors, a site of production of informal sector goods, services, and income-generation activities more generally.2 Housing, in some instances, incorporates a service (in creating a shelter) while in others it amounts to a socioeconomic asset generating wealth and improved live- lihoods.3 What housing means and how one conceives of housing is highly con- text-specific and changes not only within a given time and space setting but also depending on composition and on the set of involved players. As a result, the (met- ropolitan) planners’ ideas and intentions of regulating people’s lives often clashed with residents’ preferences and understandings of housing as a place of belonging, community cohesion and identity or as a space that provides social benefits.4 On some occasions, everyday realities determined how housing policies were re- shaped; on others, policies changed but realities remained the same.5 Housing as an everyday practice often collided not only with the imposed policies but also with the lack of financial means at the disposal of those who resided and dwelled and those who searched for houses, homes, and accommodation.