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ABSTRACT
On the margins of Zimbabwe’s expanding capital Harare, the ruling ZANU–PF party promotes a view of access to urban land, housing and security as ‘gift’, conditional on demonstrations of party loyalty. This article discusses contestation over this form of partisan citizenship, making the following broader arguments. First, it argues that the notion of partisan citizenship draws attention to the role of party political affiliation as a source of differential entitlements in illiberal democracies, countering a tendency to emphasise ethno-regional, racialized or religious communal identities as the primary sources of graduated citizenship in Africa. Second, it casts clientelist subjection as a contextual and contentious domain of ideas and action, rather than presenting it as cultural persistence or reducing it solely to material bargaining. Third, the article uses the Zimbabwean case to caution against a tendency within debates over southern urbanism to celebrate land occupations and informal construction as political resistance and route to full citizenship. In these ways, the article offers partisan citizenship as a means of taking forward debates over re-configurations of citizenship in Africa’s illiberal democracies and the politics of precarious peripheries in the urbanising global South more broadly.
Acknowledgement
The authors would like to extend thanks to Dialogue on Shelter and the Federation of Homeless People, Zimbabwe, who were collaborators in this research, and whose insights were invaluable. We are extremely grateful to the research participants who shared their experiences with us. We would also like to thank the Ministry of Local Government, National Works and Public Housing for permission to conduct the research, and the anonymous reviewers and editors of this journal for their helpful feedback on earlier drafts.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. The MDC split in 2005, with the biggest grouping MDC-T taking the initial of party leader, Morgan Tsvangirai. Following Tsvangirai’s death, there was further fragmentation with the largest grouping for the 2018 elections being the MDC-Alliance, MDC-A.
2. Interview, Mfundo Mlilo, CEO, Combined Harare Residents Association 13/4/2017, interview Dialogue on Shelter 14/4/2017. These policies were interpreted as allowing ZANU–PF to increase its share of councillors in Harare City from 1 to 7 (out of 46) between 2008 and 2013. The impact of the settlements on urban votes is, however, greatly reduced because political boundaries are fixed until 2023, such that some informal settlements are in rural constituencies.
3. Oral history interviews and the survey were undertaken by a team of researchers, enumerators and transcribers from DEGI and Dialogue on Shelter. Kudzai Chatiza led the focus groups and governance interviews were conducted jointly with JoAnn McGregor.
4. Mfundo Mlilo, CEO CHRA, interview 13/4/2017.
5. Precious Shumba, Director, HRT, interview 12/4/2017.
6. Interview 2, Epworth, 12/10/2017.
7. Interview 6, Hopley, 19/10/2017.
8. Interview 12, Hopley, 10/11/2017.
9. Differences across the settlements were insignificant.
10. Interview 9, Hopley, 31/10/2017.
11. Interview 9, Hopley, 31/10/2017.
12. Interview 11, Hopley, 10/11/2017; see also Interview 6, Hatcliffe Extension, 26/10/2017 .
13. Interview 6, Hatcliffe Extension, 26/10/2017.
14. On expectations in South Africa, see Benit-Gbaffou (Citation2012), Benit-Gbaffou and Oldfield (Citation2011), compared to Angolan slum residents’ low expectations of the state and lacked a comparable sense of themselves as possessing rights (Gastrow Citation2017, 235).
15. Factionalism was about the party’s internal succession and in the period leading to the military ‘coup’ of November 2017 when President Mugabe was replaced with Emerson Mnangagwa. The informal settlements of the Harare periphery had been controlled by patrons from unsuccessful factions of ZANU–PF that were successively expelled from the party, with knock-on effects for their activist clients inside the settlements. Initially, MPs acting as patrons of the Harare periphery were aligned to the faction within ZANU–PF led by Joyce Mujuru. In 2013, when the Mujuru faction was expelled from the party, there was retaliation against local clients of this faction, particularly leaders of the youth militia known as Chipangano. Thereafter, MPs on the Harare periphery were aligned to the ZANU–PF faction known as G40, which was loyal to Mugabe. But in 2018, G40 politicians were expelled from ZANU–PF following the ‘coup’, and some were absorbed into the MDC alliance.
16. Interview, district MDC chairman, youth chair and transport secretary, [X location], 23/11/2016.
17. MDC structure members, [X location], 23/11/2016.
18. Interview 11, 10/11/2017.
19. Conversations during fieldwork 2017.
20. Interview 2, Hopley, 13/09/2018.
21. Interview 2, Hopley, 13/09/2018.
22. Interviews, MLGNWPH, 6 and 7/4/2017.
23. Interviews, MLGNWPH, 4 and 7/04/2017.
24. Focus group, Hopley, 18/11/2016.
25. Focus group, Epworth, 7/11/2016; interviews Epworth Local Board 7/4/2017, Epworth Ward 7 Councillor, 9/4/2017; MLGNWPH 7/4/2017.
26. ERDA, interview, 11/4/2017; interview, MDC officers, Epworth ward 7, 2/11/2016.
27. Interview 11, Epworth ward 7, 10/11/2017.
28. Interview 2, Epworth ward 7, 10/10/2017.
29. Interview 5, former Hopley resident and occupier, Churu Farm, 17/10/2017.
30. Interview 5, Churu Farm, 17/10/2017.
31. Interview 1, Epworth, 12/10/2017.
32. Interview 3, Epworth, 10/10/2017.
33. Interview 1, Hatcliffe Extension, 12/1/2017 .
34. Interview 4, Epworth Ward 7, 17/10/2017.
35. Focus group, Epworth, 17/11/2016.
36. Interview 11, Hatcliffe Extension, 26/10/2017.
37. Interview 1, Hopley, 13/09/2017.
38. Interview 13, Hopley, 8/11/2017.
39. Interview 6, Hopley, 19/10/2017.
40. Interview 2, Hopley, 13/09/2017.
41. Focus group, Hatcliffe Extension, 17/11/2016.
42. Interview, MDC committee members, 23/11/2016.
43. Interview 11, Hopley, 14/09/17.
44. Interview 9, Hopley, 31/10/2017.