Brick by brick Transforming relations between local government and the urban poor in Zimbabwe Beth Chitekwe-Biti Working Paper Urban Keywords: April 2014 Human Settlements, urban poverty, local organisations, local government, partnerships, SDI About the authors Beth Chitekwe-Biti: Executive Director at Dialogue on Shelter. The Dialogue on Shelter Trust is a Zimbabwe NGO that supports the initiatives of the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation, an autonomous network of community organisations, on issues securing tenure and services in slum communities in the country. Dialogue on Shelter is affiliated to the global network of slum dwellers Slum Dwellers International, the two organisations working in alliance over 13 years to engage cities to work with the urban poor to build more inclusive cities in Zimbabwe, where the urban poor are seen as key partners and contributors to current urban challenges. Dialogue on Shelter works in over 55 local authorities in the country. Produced by IIED’s Human Settlements group The Human Settlements Group works to reduce poverty and improve health and housing conditions in the urban centres of Africa, Asia and Latin America. It seeks to combine this with promoting good governance and more ecologically sustainable patterns of urban development and rural-urban linkages. Published by IIED, April 2014 Beth Chitekwe-Biti. 2014. Brick by brick: transforming relations between local government and the urban poor in Zimbabwe. IIED Working Paper. IIED, London. http://pubs.iied.org/10702IIED ISBN 978-1-78431-054-7 International Institute for Environment and Development 80-86 Gray’s Inn Road, London WC1X 8NH, UK Tel: +44 (0)20 3463 7399 Fax: +44 (0)20 3514 9055 email: [email protected] www.iied.org @iied www.facebook.com/theIIED Download more publications at www.iied.org/pubs IIED WORKING PAPER This paper explores how the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation has built a working partnership with the City of Harare that has led to more inclusive, pro-poor, urban development. It considers how precedent-setting initiatives around community-led settlement upgrading and innovative funding mechanisms for upgrading have not only leveraged practical gains, in the form of improved housing and basic service provision, but have also been instrumental in the strengthening of this collaborative partnership. ZHPF have also pursued city-wide profiling and an alternative incremental approach to development in order to achieve strategic gains such as pro-poor policy and legal reforms. Contents Summary 4 5 Federation funding strategies for addressing resource asymmetries 13 1 Introduction: Citizen engagement with the state at the local level 6 6 From dialogue to action: Informing policy through practice 17 2 The Federation: Organising the poor in informal settlements 7 7 An incremental approach to development 19 3 The potential in pilot projects 9 8 Conclusion 21 4 Federation rituals: Creating platforms and processes for engagement 10 www.iied.org 3 BRICK BY BRICK | TRANSFORMING RELATIONS BETWEEN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE URBAN POOR IN ZIMBABWE Summary This paper is part of a collection of papers that considers how partnerships between local governments and urban poor groups can be used to underpin more inclusive, pro- poor, urban development. It specifically examines the work of the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation (ZHPF) in Harare, Zimbabwe. The Federation is one of 33 in the Shack/ slum Dwellers International (SDI) network. The findings, it is hoped, hold lessons for the work of organised urban poor communities and urban authorities throughout the Global South. The paper sets out the development of ZHPF from the The Federation in Zimbabwe has drawn on SDI late 1990s and the processes by which they galvanised procedures to create platforms by which urban poor their community-based organisations and savings groups can engage with local government, and groups through exchanges with SDI partners such community savings have been at the centre of this as the South African Homeless People’s Federation. approach. The Federation’s Gungano Fund, valued Through these interactions they also learnt that seeking at US$1million in 2014, has been used for more than to develop partnerships with local governments to household loans; the Federation has been instrumental persuade them to consider settlement upgrading in convincing local governments that federations have could be more effective than demanding rights or the capacity to transform neighbourhoods and has been protesting against evictions. In order to develop these used to engage strategically with government at various partnerships, the communities must first convince local levels. They have used savings to build resource centres governments that they are more than squatters, and that are models for household upgrading in settlement that they have the scope to participate in city planning communities, and have often invited city officials to cut and development processes. ZHPF began trying to the ribbon to open the centres in order to showcase convince local governments through pilot projects that their approach and designs for slum upgrading. were underpinned using local community savings. Pilot Gestures such as these are useful in demonstrating projects whereby local governments have provided the capacity of the communities, and can lead to resources in the form of land and finance have been communities being invited to engage with more formal instrumental in the development of relationships city planning processes. In Harare this collaboration between local government and urban poor groups. has broken new ground; the Federation are working with the local authority on the Harare Slum Upgrading In Zimbabwe, the unsettled political and economic Programme, which has been funded by the Bill and climate of recent years has provided challenges Melinda Gates Foundation. This five-year programme and opportunities for the Federation. In Harare, the is set up on the understanding that the Federation economic crisis period following 2000 paradoxically and local authority work in partnerships to undertake created an environment where the city council was open participatory profiling and incremental slum upgrading; to new ideas, as their capacity to generate solutions it marks a significant shift away from the evictions of was severely undermined. This paper documents one the past. significant breakthrough in 2002, where the Federation of Harare was able to thwart a planned eviction and secure land for the urban poor by presenting community savings records and community enumerations. 4 www.iied.org IIED WORKING PAPER With the support of the NGO Dialogue on Shelter, the Federation have been working not only to improve access to housing and basic services, but also to reform policies that undermine the scope of the urban poor to be able to pursue community-led upgrading. Over time, the Federation has been able to leverage and encourage significant pro-poor policy reforms. As a consequence of their lobbying, building regulations have been amended to be more accommodating of the upgrading approaches adopted by urban poor groups, while the alliance’s promotion of incremental slum upgrading as a more affordable and manageable approach to slum upgrading for urban poor groups has been captured in the National Housing Strategy as a pro-poor services delivery strategy. www.iied.org 5 BRICK BY BRICK | TRANSFORMING RELATIONS BETWEEN LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND THE URBAN POOR IN ZIMBABWE 1 Introduction: Citizen engagement with the state at the local level The genesis of community organising in Zimbabwe At Independence (in 1980) the manner of citizen towns and cities can be traced to the early days of mobilisation within cities continued to be workplace- urbanisation as migrant labourers sought to recreate based deriving from the trade union origins of communities based to a large extend on their tribal organising. As most of the colonial influx control links. Many of these early organisations were created regulations were repealed, urban black residents could to help with crises such as death or illnesses. Burial for the first time own land and housing within cities. societies were a common feature of how migrant Workplace cooperatives began to emerge whose labourer communities in mining and administrative urban objective was collective support in the acquisition of centres in Zimbabwe maintained contact with each land and housing within cities. The first such groups other as well as attempting to build a community in a emerged around the textile manufacturing industries ‘foreign’ land. In Harare in the early 1900s for instance, in Bulawayo, the most successful of which was the in the settlement of Mbare, people of Malawi origin Cotton Printers Cooperative established in 1984. The created societies they called ‘chigwirizano’.1 These new majority government encouraged cooperatives as were open only to people of Malawi origin and descent they were seen as a viable way to encourage citizen and acted both as an organisation through which they involvement in the development of the country. However, socialised but more significantly, given the importance the interaction between housing cooperatives and local the community placed on a decent burial, as a burial government was largely around land allocations. As society. Burial societies were very popular in the early the movement grew they began to organise amongst Zimbabwe urban areas; it is also possible that the early themselves, sharing experiences as