The Sunday Mail
Professor Innocent Chirisa
Regularisation has been found to be a panacea to informal (and sometimes illegal) land development.
Informal land development involves building on a piece of land (stand/lot/plot) without the requisite planning or permission to do so.
It may also mean that one builds a structure in a zone or area which normally outlaws such a development. In the process, or after completion, they then apply for to responsible authorities for the regularisation of the structure.
Regularisation is much about bringing a disallowed product to the table for discussion in quest for ultimate permission or recognition. But, it is exactly like applying lipstick to a frog? It is sanitising the insanity.
The Regional, Town and Country Planning Act (Chapter 29:12) of 1976 (revised 1996) speaks to regularisation of buildings, uses or operations.
It reads, “Where any development has been carried out in contravention of Section 24, an application may be made in terms of Section 26 in respect of that development and the local planning authority shall deal with that application in terms of that section, but any permit granted thereunder shall take effect from the date on which the buildings were constructed, the operations were carried out or the use was instituted, as the case may be.”
Section 24 is about development control and Section 26 provides for application for a permit or preliminary planning permission.
The import of the two sections is that all development must be legitimate development. When one looks into the period prior to Operation Murambatsvina in May/June 2005, it is easy to see that a good number of urban dwellers had taken the law into their own hands by allocating themselves tracts of land which became housing developments.
They were also allocating themselves spaces for commercial use. It was anarchic.
They had to, in turn, get services like electricity and water by illegal connections.
In terms of businesses, one can see that the situation up to 2005 has seriously set in again, specifically in Harare.
After settling people on land without permission, many housing cooperatives are knocking at doors of the Department of Physical Planning and local authorities.
However, these offices, being loyal to the book of the law are not giving in.
As such, few, if not none, of the plans seeking blessing of the offices are being tolerated.
The result is the losses of property and investments by many households.
One question that remains is: why are settlements like Epworth in Harare still stand after Operation Murambatsvina?
The answer is that: all animals are equal but some are more equal than others.
Epworth initiated a process of regularisation as far back as 1986. Operation Murambatsvina only came 19 years into its process of legitimation.
The regularisation process of Epworth had, not only the blessing of Government but also funding from some multilateral organisations including the World Bank.
A local planning authority called a “local board” was even established in 1986, headed by a Commissioner, being a Government-appointed overseer of the whole place development and processes.
Although new settlers were getting into the place, there were measures set to recognise them.
Regularisation involves in situ upgrading as well as relocation of some settlers.
One may know of places like Overspill in Epworth. The name comes from the fact that those settlers who were being relocated were put in a place originally unoccupied but created to take of the excess populations.
Relocating settlers has some other costs including social uprooting.
Of course, after sometime, one can familiarise with the new neighbour but old ties and networks (what we refer to as “social capital”) are disturbed.
The affected household has to go again into a process of building trust with the new neighbours. Trust capital is a virtue in a functional community.
In Latin America, studies have indicated that the major cost of regularisation is that it propels further informal settlements.
This is in the frame of Aaron Wildvasky’s 1979 book “The Art and Craft of Policy Analysis” in which he argues of policy as its own cause.
Wildvasky poses a litany of seemingly rhetoric questions: Why do we feel that public policy problems never seem to be solved? As knowledge and skill grow in society, why do efforts to control public policies lag behind their ability to surprise us?
Why don’t organisations that promote public policies seem to learn from experience? If they do try, why do their actions lead to ever larger numbers of unanticipated consequences?
These questions can apply as well to the regularisation rhetoric. Regularisation is a solution. However, most solutions have their own side effects that can be equally costly.
Like any solution, regularisation has its own challenges. In Latin America, it was found to spur further land invasions as people said let’s invade this land; they will come to regularise it and we go again to invade the next piece of land.
In the end, huge numbers of slumlords (equivalence of Zimbabwean land barons) emerged. Slumlords were a nuisance in an urban economy; they created value getting into their pockets instead of the public coffers.
Another finding from studies in Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s was that regularisation costs three times compared to a situation where a “green development” would have occurred. This is because there are so many “damages” on the part of Government when it moves people. This is called compensation.
Re-planning the sites is not an easy tasks. When there are so many bents and twists on a plan, that means many manholes, that could have been avoided, have to be created.
The sign of a costly plan is the existence of so many connectors in a sewerage reticulation (called manholes).
Besides, in the case of populations being relocated, the planning of a new area comes with its own costs.
Now there will be so many mouths all wanting a share from a small cake; resources are always scarce.
To regulate or not to regulate, that is the question. It is on record that Sam Levy’s Village started as an illegal development.
Today, the place has been further developed and houses various modern day commercial uses which attract hordes of customers especially of the well-to-do classes daily.
When the Long Chen shopping mall began, there was a public outcry with the Environmental Management Agency raising issues of wetland protection and refusing to approve the papers. Today, the place attracts various classes of people shopping, negotiating business deals and seeking leisure facilities.
The place has been spruced up such that it is highly aesthetic and attractive.
If regularisation is to be applied, it must ensure that wrong lessons are not reproduced in space.
The question of amenity must be central so that there is much of the maximisation of positive externalities and minimisation of negative externalities.
Regularisation can have serious pathological effects on urban land if misapplied.
Professor Innocent Chirisa in a town planning expert. He wrote this article for The Sunday Mail
