a b s t r a c tThe story of the urban poor in Harare and Zimbabwean cities in general is a story of evictions, fear and misery. In May 2005, at the behest of the Government of Zimbabwe the infamous Operation Restore Order, a house demolition campaign left more than 700 thousand people homeless. Nearly a decade later, there are increased opportunities for improvement and change in the lives of the urban poor in Harare, Zimbabwe's capital city. The purpose of the paper is to present how the Harare Slum Upgrading Programme is creating and strengthening municipal and community partnerships to tackle city challenges in an inclusive manner. This research indicates the housing struggles of the urban poor and the emerging City-community engagement in urban services provision (water, sanitation, tenure security and roads) and changing municipal attitudes towards the urban poor. In particular, the article presents participatory urban planning and development, slum upgrading institutional structure, profiling and enumeration, and slum upgrading impacts (resilience of the urban poor, living in slums without fear, expansive pool of beneficiaries, review of planning regulations and land ownership) as major issues promoting inclusive municipal governance. Inclusivity is implemented through incremental development, which is allowing people to settle on land first and access municipal services gradually over time. Two main factors explain such positive steps towards inclusive governance in Harare. First are indications of gradual institutional change in which the City of Harare's governance culture is changing through 'opening up' and embracing the urban poor. Second, over the years, the urban poor have built a strong and vibrant alliance which is acting as a medium of participation in City governance. The paper concludes that slum upgrading sustainability at city-wide level requires active City participation and institutionalisation as opposed to a project based approach. Lastly, addressing concerns of the urban poor is susceptible to political contestations, requiring strong impartiality to counter such forces.

The aim of the paper is to present a story about the 2015 to early 2017 Windhoek drought in the context of climate change while using the narrative approach. The story that is presented here is derived from the engagement of participants in a transdisciplinary, co-productive workshop, the Windhoek Learning Lab 1 (March 2017), as part of the FRACTAL Research Programme. The results show that the story starts with the ‘complication’ where the drought had reached crisis levels where the water demand increasingly exceeded the supply in the face of the drought. The City of Windhoek (CoW) was unable to address the problem, particularly the recharging of the Windhoek aquifer due to lack of funding. Phase 2 then shows four reactions to the drought: water conservation by water demand management; a Water Saving campaign; the Windhoek Managed Aquifer Recharge Scheme; and, the setting up of the Cabinet Technical Committee of Supply Security. The resolution of the story, Phase 4, is when the national government instructs NamWater to provide the funds for CoW to complete the recharging of the aquifer, which supplied water to the city at the last minute at the end of 2016. The final situation of the story is that ongoing collaborative work by CoW with FRACTAL on the city’s burning issues is planned to integrate climate change into future decision making for the longer term. The main actors in the story are the Ministry of Agriculture and NamWater as hero and villain, and CoW a hero, with the victims of the story, the residents of informal settlements. The main learnings from this story are that the lack of decentralization of power and resources serve to exacerbate water crises at the local level and hamper climate adaptation, despite a proactive and innovative local municipality. The paper also shows that the narrative approach provides the thread of the story to simplify a very complex set of arrangements and contradictions.

Slum upgrading is one of the preferred options in dealing with ubiquitous informality in cities across the world. Drawing on experiences in two African cities namely Harare and Kampala; the article focuses on the role of policy, politics and leadership in slum upgrading. This paper is based on interviews conducted with urban leaders and managers, politicians, slum dwellers federation members and government officials. With regards to slum upgrading, the paper makes three arguments. First, policies guiding upgrading should evolve gradually over time, taking into consideration lessons learned. Second, tensions in party-politics tend to undermine slum upgrading programmes. This is mainly because of the vulnerability of informal settlers who are often used as sources and resources for political agency. Third, leadership at the city level plays a fundamental role in diffusing party-politics and championing inclusive municipal governance, and development.

When the Zimbabwean government launched the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in 1999, an international outcry followed, with Zimbabwe described as an international pariah state. Zimbabwe entered a prolonged socio-economic and political crisis. While conventional opposition attacks the FTLRP for its negative impacts on agriculture, food security and economic growth, this article argues that the programme has also had widespread impacts on access to housing land. Over the years, the main political tool used by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (Patriotic Front) (ZANU [PF]) was land, especially in rural areas. Later, especially in urban and peri-urban areas, ZANU(PF) used peri-urban farms to bolster its waning support in the urban constituencies. Through ZANU(PF)-aligned co-operatives and land barons, the party became a major player in deciding who had access to land for housing. On the other hand, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) tried to use its majority control of urban areas to give its supporters land for housing, albeit with limited success. MDC-controlled urban administrations were incapacitated, as most urban land was under a de facto ZANU(PF) administration. This article focuses in particular on the allocation of housing land between 2000 and 2012 in Zimbabwe's major cities. The ZANU(PF) approach to housing bypassed urban planning regulations, with catastrophic effects on urban infrastructure planning. Further, the article explains developments in council-led housing and the role of non-council actors in housing provision. The Zimbabwean experience shows that it is not enough for a political party to be voted into power; rather, controlling resources such as land is a vital consideration in urban governance and development.

No abstract