The Sunday Mail
Prof Innocent Chirisa
Cyclone Idai has spewed its venom on the land.
It has induced serious and devastating imprints on human lives, the landscape, infrastructure and generally a whole lot of facets in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi.
Like Queen Elizabeth, asking her British Government during the 2008/9 Global Financial Crisis, “why didn’t we see it coming?”
Put differently, perhaps we heard about the cyclone, but did not fully understand its depth and gravity.
It is sad to note that we are now faced with the consequences of something that we thought we would easily deal with.
We knew about Cyclone Eline, Cyclone Japhet and Cyclone Dineo.
We knew of the trail of destruction they left, but Idai sounded likeable.
Indeed, the forewarning came nearly a fortnight before the cyclone and perhaps most of us did not take it seriously.
After it hit, I have had some sleepless nights, thinking. I have asked myself; what must have been done? Who must have done what? How best must it have been done?
I wish to apply, in retrogression, some systems thinking. As an urban and regional town planner, who also trains others, and an environmental planning and management specialist, let me intimate that there was a lot we could have done. The basic thing was to have asked communities to move out of their usual places of residents or habitats.
I know it was not going to be easy, especially with the knowledge of how our rural folk tend to guard their heritage and ancestors’ remains.
But at least we should have pushed harder to let them know of what danger they faced. When I say we, I mean everyone —politicians, Government, churches, civic society, humanitarian organisations, the list is endless. As we moved in to tell people of the danger, we should have had a proper plan formulated by the State.
Planning is an instrument of the State; the state has monopoly of power to use force, even brute force, to have this happen. I say this taking into account that at one point, Le Cobursier modelled a grand master plan for Algiers — the capital of Algeria. He was asked how such a magnanimous plan could be implemented.
His response was simple: it needs dictatorship. There are times when force has to be used for one’s good.
Resistance was going to be inevitable as some members of communities refuse to leave their livestock and poultry behind.
Thus, planning was supposed to have been an instrument of the State.
Well before that, using various tools including remote sensing and geographic information system, the levels of impact could have been dictated.
Planning works with information and there must always be tools to allow for getting the data, processing and informing decisions. From a meteorological and early warning systems perspective, the precautionary principle so implied.
This precautionary principle is premised on the notion that any indicator of anything (especially ominous) deserves serious interrogation.
This is because there might be danger underneath.
In other words, it is about interrogating that “there is no smoke without fire”.
Someone or a department ‘saw the fire’ using their ‘telescopic’ capacities, intimated it on us, and whether we reacted favourably or not, is an issue of another day.
The Regional Town and Country Planning Act (Chapter 29:12), in its preamble, summarises the objectives of regional, town and country (rural) planning in Zimbabwe.
It states that the whole idea about planning is to create and sustain settlements including circulation (transportation) networks that are sustainable.
This is also in line with the Sustainable Development Goals 11 (2015-2030), which says “Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.” We can localise the meaning of cities to mean any human settlements.
There have been debates about whether or not we meet present day needs for human resettlement.
The one extreme has been of a view that our systems are too rigid, in terms of ensuring the process of plan approval is achieved in a short space of time.
The other view, mainly coming from the officials implementing the provisions of the statute, is that it is good as it is because it is wiser to keep standards higher than water then down.
In light of devastating effects of Cyclone Idai, I am persuaded to agree with the second view. Planning is a futuristic activity that seeks to identify and package challenges and opportunities with a view to ensuring order, amenity, convenience, safety, public health and general human welfare.
Planning learns from the past and present to help make the future. It gets views from a cross-section of stakeholders in order to achieve comprehensiveness and wholeness towards building the future.
The future is always coming, but surely, it must be better than the past and the present.
My first visit of Manicaland province, particularly Chipinge was 26 years ago.
Coming from a nearly flat plain of my home area, it was my first time to see the labyrinth of road network cutting into mountainous area with such craft and ability of humanity to curve an area.
I was not a planner then, but I was moved. As years passed, I have been to the same province for various reasons, but now as an expert, I have had new questions relating to how infrastructure has to be sustained and allow people to pursue their various livelihood activities — farming, non-timber products extraction, bird catching, to name but a few.
If the first road to Melsetter (now Chimanimani) was constructed in the late 1890s, it means much of the road has been there for more than a century.
It was established by the colonial settlers who were advancing their family and commercial activities. But when I saw the level of damage by the cyclone, I asked myself; what else should we have done better.
My important input is that planning, engineering, architecture should have done thorough checks on the new roads and improve on the existing.
The houses and huts in the rural areas require new designs that are resilient to harm induced by climate change including rain downpours, heatwaves and flooding, to the point of being self-regulatory.
In the rural and urban areas, arbitrary setting of settlements in grazing or wetlands is becoming commonplace.
Yes, it is people’s democratic right to find a place to live, but sometimes a ‘wire-brush’ of prescriptions must be used on them.
I think of haphazard settlements in places like Chitungwiza and parts of Hatcliffe in Harare.
I also think of the settlements in the grazing areas of Gokwe.
I say to myself, this is a recipe for ‘another’ disaster.
Haphazard settlement, without approval by technical experts should be avoided.
It is important to seriously demarcate areas for settlement, farming and grazing.
Low-lying areas should be avoided and if used should be supported by building structures that can withstand the terrain.
Issues of the force of wind and heat should be seriously considered when erecting structures.
Regular maintenance checks on the transportation and building infrastructure are required.
When I saw roads turned into deep gullies and bridges completely destroyed, I remembered what I always tell my students in environmental systems and planning that; “it is us creating a built environment on a natural environment; the best way is to mimic nature and respect its diktats.”
Nature-based designs are needed, from this time going forward.
If we can’t beat it, better we join it.
We do not have rural planning in Zimbabwe, but we have rural development planning.
At this point, we do not have any option and a Department of Rural Planning is needed in the Ministry of Local Government.
If creating another department is burdensome, then let us have a section in the Department of Physical Planning that looks into these issues.
Its role should not only be to create and approve plans at business centres and growth points, but to check on individually submitted house and huts plans, in terms of where they are located and the building materials that are used on them.
The context is that the effects and impacts of climate change and variability are real.
Unless we stop thinking these issues are distant to us, we may relax and continue to suffer serious blows.
From a professional point of view, walls and silos have to be hurled down so that the hard and soft issues in infrastructure, superstructure and settlement planning are rigorously thought through and measures put in place collaboratively.
After all, it is about our people, our country and our development together.
Planning, should take the lead.
Continued online
Prof Innocent Chirisa is University of Zimbabwe Faculty of Social Studies deputy dean. He wrote this article for The Sunday Mail.
