The Sunday Mail
Prof Innocent Chirisa
Now that the Second Biennial Symposium — held between 13 to15 June 2018 at the University of Zimbabwe — has come and gone, what is left is not just a gamut of words nicely pieced together to gather dust, unexplored, but a contract to work, and work together, each player making their contribution to the sustainable development of our human settlements in Zimbabwe.
Everyone who was at the symposium seems to agree to the idea that sustainability is the core of all our efforts, wherever we are stationed.
The three-day event, running under the theme ‘Urbanity in Zimbabwe: Emerging Policies, Paradigms and Practices and their Implications for Sustainability’, was more than an eye opener.
Many issues were raised and many solutions were suggested.
Which contribution I should put first then?
Let me provide a snapshot of the message from the contributor.
The Dean of the Faculty of Social Studies, which houses the Department of Rural and Urban Planning at the University of Zimbabwe, Professor Charity Manyeruke, challenged planners not to stop dreaming about urban and regional planning solutions, which is their area of professional calling.
She signalled out negotiation as the hallmark of the whole process: once you have an idea, a model and a packaged dream, take it to the responsible constituency and convince them you have a solution that works and needs implementation.
She intimated that everyone was aware of our urban challenges, but not everyone knows how to climb out of them.
As such, being a planner is one such pointer that solutions can be found.
One of the founding fathers of the Department of Rural and Urban Planning at the University of Zimbabwe, and now the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Business Development), Professor Kadmiel Wekwete, stressed that unless we do a retro-diction (re-imagining the past), we may fumble for answers and may still not get them.
He took the audience to the history of the establishment of the first planning school in the land — the Department of Rural and Urban Planning.
It is his belief that there is no place for Africans in the making of the cities and towns that colonialists had created for themselves.
The African was meant to be born a villager, work for the whites temporarily in town, and retire, die and be buried in the village.
So there was no place for the black man in the city, let alone his wife and his children.
Then in 1980, something dramatic happened, a black Government came into power.
This was the time Government had to think of the need for engaging physical planning into the pronounced rural growth points, which were to become hubs for economic growth and centres for development.
There were 155 African councils. Government, by a process of rationalisation, reduced them to 55 rural districts, of which each had to have a centre from which development would begin and spread, thus bring opportunities.
The idea was for each district to have a trained physical planner.
About 400 planners were needed in these district areas, urban centres and the private sector, which demand could not be met by the Master of Science in Urban and Regional Planning — first housed in the Department of Geography and then the Department of Rural and Urban Planning when it was established in 1984.
However, in those initial days, the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands was instrumental in the establishment of a Diploma in Rural Development, before the Bachelor’s degree began in 1986.
The presentation by Professor Wekwete was a compelling case insofar as to explain why a revisit to the original plan and thinking about physical planning in the country after independence in 1980 was important.
Just like in South Africa, where separatist development created Bantustans, so was the white supremacist thinking about the growth points they had in mind for black Africans.
Post-independence growth points were a shift from those that the whites had envisaged, especially as enclaves for blacks who were unwanted in urban centres.
President of the Zimbabwe Institute for Urban and Regional Planners (ZIRUP), Mr Phineas Dohwe, noted that urbanisation had put a whole lot of demand on the skills of planning in its broad spectrum — social, political, economic and technical.
Planner registration, he stressed, was an important primary step in ensuring that sound planning is achieved. Planning registration ought not to be voluntary, but mandatory, so that planners are accountable for the products they produce.
Most notably, the presentation by Mr Tungamirai Fambirai, chairperson of the Integrated Planners’ Network, a budding association of predominantly early career planners, was not only disruptive to the existing thinking of planning and the profession, but was an emphatic call for transformation within the profession as well.
“The cities we have are not even our cities; ours are hidden somewhere deep there and we have to search and find them,” he said.
Seasoned professionals, he reasoned, needed to create space for those that are being churned out from colleges.
And the views from Dr Emmaculate Ingwani, a lecturer at the University of Venda (South Africa), were quite noteworthy.
She was able to make a compelling case on why planning education needs to be so structured in a way that makes room for a reporting system.
In South Africa, planning schools have their curricula constantly peer-reviewed, with the professional body, the South African Council of Planners (SACPLAN), at the centre of the process.
It is believed that SACPLAN has been able to harmonise land laws that previously did not speak to each other.
However, most importantly, she reasoned that as long as different pieces of legislation such as the Traditional Leaders Act, the Environmental Management Act and the Regional, Town and Country Planning Act did not exist in a symbiotic ecosystem, the work of the planner will always be a tall order.
She, therefore, encouraged ZIRUP to spearhead the process of whipping planning schools and negotiating for harmonised laws that create sustainable settlements.
On the second day of the symposium, the Pro-Vice Chancellor (Academic Affairs and Research) at the University of Zimbabwe, Professor Pedzisai Mashiri made a rigorous conceptualisation of urbanity and the city and called for serious collaborative and multidisciplinary approach to the concept and the realities about it (urbanity/city).
He cited the chaos characterising the city, especially with the informal becoming the new normal.
Such reality had much to do with the social-economic and political context of the city.
From a Shona literature point of view, one can see that the colonial literature could show glaring dichotomies between the rural and urban.
Rural was also pictured variously — a place of simplicity, innocence and high moral values; the urban, a melting pot, though touted for its so-called modernity.
He also indicated that from time immemorial, one can see that the city was never a purely democratic space, but there was always social stratification (check with the Great Zimbabwe, Mapungubwe, Munhumutapa cities, Jewish cities and classical Greek and Roman cities).
I was taken back when I visited Beijing in July last year.
Our itinerary included a stop at the Forbidden City (built in 1420 AD and abandoned in 1911AD), which was the last place of the last dynasty in China.
The palace is now a museum, but it depicts a clear character of stratification. Within it, it has a whole lot of stories to tell. Its location, in historical times, far away from the generality of the people (the governed and the hoipolloi).
Religion and spiritualism, as well as political power, were ever the factors defining the structuring and designing the city.
Philosophers always battle with the idea of a city as a place of leisure and pleasure.
Some of the battles that planners find themselves in with society in the city is perhaps because they have never consulted with the psychologists and sociologists or even literary artists to find out how people think about space, hence contestations.
All such dimensions have to be thought through.
Those in power think about security seriously and this may partly explain why President Ibrahim Babangida had to move the Nigerian capital from Lagos to Abuja in 1991, though discussion about moving the city had begun as far back as the 1950s.
Whether moving cities is the best thing for Zimbabwe, that is subject to further research as well as something that urban and regional planners should collaborate to think through.
>To be continued
