New Pentecostal urbanities in Harare: landscapes of everyday life and visions of the future

ABSTRACT

At the height of Zimbabwe’s multi-layered crisis, emerged several Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches (PCCs). Led by youthful charismatic ‘prophets’, these PCCs gained significant traction in many urban spaces, especially in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, where they have sought to ‘Pentecostalise’ the cityscape. Public spaces in Harare have become saturated with Pentecostal aesthetics, which include, but are not limited to, church-branded stickers on vehicles, huge religious billboards at strategic spaces, impressive megachurch buildings, and spectacular public displays. This remarkable growth of PCCs saw them venturing into huge real estate projects that have dramatically reshaped the urban landscape. Through these projects, PCCs are creating ‘cities within cities.’ Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Harare, I examine how two PCCs have reconfigured urban landscapes through their projects, activities, and rituals. In addition to a focus on the quotidian dimension of urban life, I also focus on how these projects enable congregants and residents to reimagine the possibilities of a different kind of future and life in the city. Interestingly, the power of the ascendant PCCs is such that they are becoming de facto urban planners themselves and thus their vision for the urban future is creating new ways of relating to the present in the growing city.

KEYWORDS:

• Pentecostalism
• Harare
• architecture
• urbanism
• place-making

Introduction

This article examines the ways in which new Pentecostal Charismatic Churches in Harare are transforming cityscapes and everyday life thereof. Although there is a huge body of literature on urbanisation and urban planning in Zimbabwe, there are few studies that have focused on Pentecostal urbanisation and architecture. As such, little is known about the anthropology and sociology of Pentecostal urbanity and architecture in Zimbabwe. This is the knowledge gap that this article attempts to address through a qualitative study of Pentecostal urban projects in Harare. As such, this article makes an important contribution to the broader scholarship on Pentecostalism and architecture. I do this by showing how Pentecostalism configures and reconfigures Harare’s cityscapes through large scale real estate and related infrastructural projects. For some scholars, this Pentecostal infrastructure or architecture represents some form of both spiritual and or symbolic and material hegemony of Pentecostal religiosity in Africa’s urban spaces (Katsaura, 2023, p. 269; Lawanson, 2021, p. 221).

Background

It is a chilly Sunday morning and Richard, my key informant, and I enter the City Sports Centre, a municipality-owned 20,000-seater venue used by the United Family International Church (UFIC) for its services. Although I have been at this venue several times, I notice something strikingly different that day. At the main entrance, smartly dressed ushers clad in sharp and pencil slim suits direct us towards areas with vacant seats. The service starts in an hour, but the main auditorium is almost full. As we made our way to the few vacant spaces, I am particularly struck by the main stage and the pulpit, colourfully decorated with an approximately 3-m-high brick wall and a window. The wall is flanked by two wheelbarrows, each containing two bags of cement. Richard tells me that these decorations were purposefully made for today’s sermon, which focuses on the theme of building, not only the building of houses but also the ‘Kingdom of God.’ The large screen in front of the stage shows a message written in large bold letters; ‘OPERATION NEHEMIAH, YES YOU CAN!’ Prophet Makandiwa, the leader of UFIC, then enters the stage explaining that he had a dream, a vision that God instructed him to rebuild the cities of the country and to deliver people from the ‘demon of lodging’. ‘If you have been working for the last 10 years and are still a tenant, then you are the person I want to deliver today, you cannot go back the same. You cannot hear these teachings and continue to be a tenant. That is the demon we want to cast out today in the name of Jesus’, declares the prophet. Prophet Makandiwa’s declarations resonated strongly with what another renowned Pentecostal figure – prophet Magaya – asserted during the inauguration of a housing project in Harare: ‘God does not want you to be a lodger (tenant) for the rest of your life, you cannot be a tenant for the rest of your life-that is caused by a demon.’¹ Both prophets Magaya and Makandiwa in fact claim that they were sent by God to deliver people from the demons of poverty, tenancy, and homelessness. In 2015, UFIC organised a month-long training on real estate business opportunities and investments, encouraging attendees to make the transition from the status of a tenant to that of a landlord. At these huge conferences, businessmen, and investors in respective sectors of the economyin this case, real estate, are often invited to share their experience and conceptions of real estate ownership. However, attending these glamorous conferences and workshops is not always cheap. Members are often required to pay more than USD 100 per day. Scholars have shown how new PCCs often operate like huge corporations amassing wealth at the expense of their congregants (van Wyk, 2014). Similarly, PCCs’ claim of expanding the kingdom of God is often refuted. For example, a huge body of work asserts that new PCCs follow neoliberal economic practices and logic rather than the ‘expansion of God’ influence’ (see Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000; Dreher, 2020; Gukurume, 2017; Whyte & Wiegratz, 2016). Following this, scholars have asserted that the rapid growth and growing influence of Pentecostalism even in supposedly secular spaces is not only a response to neoliberal capitalism but also an extension of millennial neoliberal capitalism (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000; Gukurume, 2022; Lewison, 2011).

Review of literature

This section serves to critically review and engage relevant literature that informs this study. In doing so, I try to put my study in conversation with existing scholarship and locate my point of entry into broader debates about Pentecostalism, everyday urbanism, and transformation of cityscapes. I start by showing how and why Pentecostalism attracts thousands of people in the context of crisis-ridden spaces within and beyond the African continent. One of the allures of Pentecostalism resides in its potential to provide real and perceived direction and supportive spaces for congregants to reinvent their everyday lives for the better (Gukurume, 2024a, 2024b; Lewison, 2011). In fact, several scholars have also shown how Pentecostalism provides material and imaginative resources for individuals to efficaciously re-imagine one’s place in the midst of contemporary processes of globalization (Droogers, 2001; Gukurume, 2018; Hunt, 2000; Robbins, 2004). Part of this relates to what van Wyk (2014) referred to as spiritual technologies, which articulates with the ontological situatedness of PCC believers and enable them to make discursive sense of the exigencies of everyday lives under millennial capitalist order (Comaroff & Comaroff, 2000; Lewison, 2011). In PCCs, such spiritual technologies include exorcism or deliverance, spiritual warfare, and positive confession. In Pentecostal landscapes, declarations, and positive confessions are believed to have powerful symbolism. For many strong believers, these spiritual technologies catalyse the flow of God’s blessings, including ownership of property and successful businesses, wealth, and health (Gukurume & Taru, 2020; Hunt, 2000). The real estate projects mentioned above are part of a plethora of the ways through which new PCCs self-organise to improve the material personhood and subjectivity of their membership (Taru, 2020). Similarly, Marshall reminds us that Pentecostalism provide powerful metaphors of new types of practice and material resources that help to create autonomous spaces and strategies to create, exercise, and legitimise new power relations and new opportunities for survival. This was also echoed by Taru (2020) who noted that the success of new PCCs in attracting thousands of congregants in Africa is due to its ability to proffer pragmatic solutions to structural challenges that members face (see also Gukurume, 2020; Maxwell, 2000). Although the work discussed above provide insightful discussions on Pentecostalism, it hardly explored the ways in which the city’s morphology and socio-material architecture is transformed through Pentecostal activities.

Drawing from ethnographic research on two Pentecostal churches UFIC, and PHD, I suggest that the battle or spiritual warfare against the ‘demons of poverty’ which are perceived to trap people to perpetual tenancy is increasingly becoming a key theme in the discursive Pentecostal landscape of Zimbabwe. Spiritual warfare is imagined as the prophesied epic end times battle with the demonic, as highlighted in the book of Ephesians (6: 12), and that born-again Christians are wrestling against the principalities, powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places (Gukurume, 2020; Gukurume & Taru, 2020). Thus, the imaginary of becoming ‘landlord’, radically opposed to being a ‘tenant,’ contributes to the creation of a new kind of urge among members of these churches to support the urban infrastructural transformation projects initiated by the church. This article explores the complex spatial (re)configurations of Pentecostal-inspired real estate projects. Focus is paid to the ways in which such projects have reconfigured the urban infrastructural landscape of the everyday in the city of Harare. Taking as case studies, two Pentecostal mega-churches in Harare, I examine Pentecostalism’s influence in (re)shaping the everyday socio-economic, spiritual, and political lives in Harare. In doing so, I focus on the spatial (re)configurations of two different Pentecostal communities in the city. The article contributes to a growing scholarship on religious urbanisation (Katsaura, 2017; Lawanson, 2021; Nyuke, 2016; Osinulu, 2013; Ukah, 2018) and religious self-organising (Gukurume, 2020; Taru, 2020) by exploring the Pentecostal transformative projects of spatial appropriation and re-enchantment of the cityscape. Indeed, in the last two decades, Pentecostalism has made a dramatic entry into the supposedly secular public spheres globally and the ‘Pentecostalization’ of public urban landscapes has been particularly pronounced and visible in sub-Saharan African contexts (Gukurume, 2018; Katsaura, 2017; Meyer, 2011; Togarasei, 2005; Ukah, 2018). As such, PCCs imagine that by dominating the public space and supposedly secular spaces including conversion of offices and repurposing cinemas and industrial building into spaces and places of worship, they are demonstrating the dominion of God over satanic and demonic forces. Consequently, I read the active transformation of cityscapes by PCCs as a form of symbolic spiritual warfare.

Lawanson (2021) noted that the most salient and dramatic reconfiguration of African urban landscapes has been driven by religion, with Pentecostalism spurring new urban practices of visuality and space making (see also Katsaura, 2023; Ukah, 2018). Interestingly, in Harare, some PCCs alter the urban industrial landscape by converting industrial buildings into churches and spaces of prayer while the city’s mountains have also become prayer camps. Through these activities, PCCs transform the urban morphology and architecture by actively repurposing supposedly secular architecture for religious and spiritual activities. This is not unique to Harare. For instance, Adeboye (2012) and Katsaura (2023) also noted that in Nigeria, Pentecostal churches are appropriating public cinema halls, nightclubs, sports stadiums, and hotels for religious activities. Consequently, scholars have argued that PCCs have had a huge impact on African cityscapes, politics, and the public sphere (Van Wyk, 2020). For Van Wyk (2020), this impact is often conceptualised in terms of the ‘Pentecostalisation’ of the public sphere, a phenomenon that I will discuss later in the paper.

In most of sub-Saharan Africa, religion-inspired urban spatial transformation is not in any way new. It has a long history that can be traced back to the early years of colonial rule. For example, Lawanson (2021) reminds us that the colonial ‘modernisation’ project and colonial conquest were mediatized by and through Christian missionaries. Missionaries and colonialists had similar vested interests. They all had an expansionist agenda which saw them bequeath extensive pieces of land for establishing mission stations and capitalist ventures, respectively. Indeed, in Zimbabwe traditional churches such as the Catholic, Anglican, and the Reformed Church own large pieces of land and properties acquired during the colonial era. Initially, religious and civil society groups sought to address the urban housing crisis in the country (Kamete, 2006; Muchadenyika, 2020).

Like many other large Pentecostal churches in Africa (see Katsaura, 2019, Ukah, 2018, 2014), PHD and UFIC have ventured into real estate and constructed huge mega-churches, prayer camps, and other worship spaces in and around Harare. For example, in addition to its state-of-the-art five-star hotel in the Waterfalls suburbs in Harare which accommodates approximately 2100 guests,² PHD constructed more than guesthouses and housing estate projects such as Yadah Village apartments. Apart from Zimbabwe, similar and even more spectacular trends have been observed elsewhere. For example, Ukah (2018) examines religious faith in redemption, prosperity theology, and the (sub)urban infrastructure managed by the Redeemed Christian Church of God (RCCG) camp in Nigeria. Over the years, this camp has reconfigured itself into a full-fledged city, the Redemption city with its well-functioning public services and infrastructures (Coleman & Maier, 2013; Ukah, 2018). Ukah (2008) asserts that Pentecostals are establishing modern urban aesthetic practices and placemaking in Lagos, Nigeria, marked by impressive religiously owned real estate and urban renewal projects. Given the diversity of its inhabitants, the Redemption city in Lagos, represents a template for a cosmopolitan redeemed global cityscape (Coleman & Maier, 2013). Similarly, Katsaura (2019) asserts that Pentecostalism is in itself a cosmopolitan and cosmopolitanising religion.

Likewise, in the Mozambique’s capital city, Maputo where people are busy claiming political, cultural, and economic space, new Pentecostal churches of Brazilian origin have conquered the city’s urban terrains spiritually (de Kamp, 2012). de Kamp (2012) underscored the adaptability of Pentecostalism to large cities. Similarly, Katsaura (2017, p. 13) has highlighted the complex intersections and affinities between Pentecostalism and urbanity. Beyond the African continent, Garbin (2013) showed the ways in which Pentecostal churches engage in urban projects of spatial transformation, and renewal of the urban landscapes in Europe.

For scholars such as Ukah (2018), the construction of such urban Pentecostal spaces is a deliberate attempt to mark the religious presence and power within the physical, social, and cultural ecology of the city. In this article, I argue that these megaprojects represent an attempt to ‘Pentecostalise’ cityscapes and that this process of Pentecostalisation should be understood within the context of the broader Pentecostal discourse of prosperity and spiritual warfare. Numerous scholars have explored Christianity as a public religion in Africa (de Witte, 2011; Meyer, 2011). For instance, Meyer (2011) documents the growing influence, visibility, and public role of religion in West Africa. She argues that the growing influence of PCCs is in part, a consequence of people’s growing disappointment with African governments’ inability to deliver ‘development’ and ‘progress.’ As such, some of the churches sought an active public role to develop a generation of ‘righteous’ leaders. This led to an increase in scholarship on religion and politics. For instance, several scholars began to examine the complex nexus between Christianity and politics (Chitando, 2005; Frahm-Arp, 2018; Marshall, 1991; Maxwell, 2000; Obadare, 2006). Obadare (2006) argues that the ‘Pentecostalisation’ of governance has triggered a serious struggle to define the Nigerian public sphere between the Christian and Muslim theocratic classes. Apart from literature on religion and politics, there is also a huge body of work on Christianity as a public religion which focuses largely on the mass media and popular culture (Armanios & Amstutz, 2013; Gordon, 2005; Meyer & Moors, 2006, Oosterbaan, 2006; Pype, 2012). In their study in Egypt, Armanios and Amstutz (2013) showed the gendered nature of Christian mass media content, especially within Coptic Orthodox video films. They argued that the films foreground women’s physical modesty, submissiveness, and obedience to male figureheads, which reveals the modern church’s anxieties about women’s increasing autonomy and the burgeoning call for equality within the church. In Nigeria, Hackett (1998) postulates that Pentecostal visibility in the country was enhanced by PCCs’ aggressive utilization of media and information technologies for proselytization.

Literature on the public role of religion has also focused on religious civil society organisations and their active role in socio-economic development (Bornstein, 2004; Burchardt, 2013; Clarke, 2006; Hearn, 2002; Lunn, 2009). Although there is rich and insightful scholarship on Christianity as a public religion and the diverse role it plays in the public sphere, insufficient scholarly attention has been paid to the interface between religion and urban transformation. The few studies that have examined this nexus have mainly focused on West African countries such as Nigeria (see Lawanson, 2021; Osinulu, 2013), Ghana (Cobbinah & Prosper Korah, 2016) and East Africa (De Boek, 2013; Ukah, 2018). Consequently, very little is known about the ways in which new PCCs are actively transforming Southern African cityscapes. Similarly, much of what is known about Pentecostalism as a public religion pertains to a focus on the mass media (Asamoah-Gyadu, 2005; Meyer & Moors, 2006), as well as popular culture and politics, as discussed above. This study builds on this body of work and unpacks the burgeoning Pentecostal influence in the ongoing transformation of Zimbabwean cityscapes and everyday urban life.

Materials methods: fieldwork in PCCs

This study is purely qualitative and ethnographic and the data that I use in this study was collected through a variety of data collections methods between 2015 and 20,218. Primary data was collected through in-depth interviews with a myriad of participants from members of new Pentecostal churches, urbanites, city council officials and urban planners. In addition, I also collected primary data through participant observation at two mega Pentecostal churches based in Harare which is Zimbabwe’s capital city. Participant observation involved regularly attending church activities, including services and social as well as business events. New mega PCCs that I focused on regularly organised activities such as real estate and business workshops where members are taught business principles in property and real estate among other potential businesses. I conducted 26 in-depth interviews in Harare and four key informant interviews with church officials and city planners. Interviews focused particularly on the ways in which new Pentecostal churches texture the cityscape and everyday life in the city of Harare. I also augmented primary data with secondary sources of data such as newspaper articles on Pentecostal infrastructural projects, church publications and academic public on Pentecostal architecturations (Katsaura, 2023) in the city of Harare. The qualitative data used in this article are drawn from my ethnographic fieldwork within the new PCCs in Harare. For this article, I especially used material from interviews with congregants of two new PCCs based in Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital city. My ethnographic fieldwork which included participant observation through regular church service attendance, in-depth interviews, conversations, and meticulous analysis of secondary sources of data started in 2015. From August 2015, I regularly attended church services and other activities in these two PCCs. I also conducted numerous informal conversations with congregants and church pastors on a wide range of issues related to the study. I also attended several business workshops and conferences organised by the two PCCs. This is augmented with secondary data drawn from various sources, including church paraphernalia, reports, published documents, and newspaper articles, among other relevant materials.

Protracted economic crisis and urban decay

UFIC and PHD were established during Zimbabwe’s post-2000 protracted socio-economic crisis, which was marked by rising levels of poverty, unemployment and urban decay (Gukurume, 2015, 2018, 2019). As such, the temporalities of PCC inspired urban change and territorialisation in Zimbabwe and Africa in general should be understood within the context of the enduring postcolonial crisis. In Zimbabwe, like in many other African countries, the post-colonial era brought a myriad of new socio-economic and political challenges. The adoption of the economic structural adjustment measures in the early 1990s exacerbated this crisis. These challenges are particularly pronounced and visible in urban spaces across the country. The liberalisation of population mobility after the attainment of independence in 1980 further compounded the crisis. The liberalisation of population mobility allowed many blacks to move without restrictions. In turn, this accelerated an unprecedented rural-to-urban migration which created a massive housing crisis and overcrowding in many metropolitan cities like Harare.

Worse still, the adoption of neoliberal structural adjustment programmes by the government exacerbated urban poverty and general suffering and people’s lives became wore off than it was before the adoption of the neoliberal restructuring measures (Gibbon, 1995). In addition, the country’s economic isolation and sanctions after a controversial fast track land reform programme and subsequent worsening of human rights violations also accelerated the country’ economic decay. At the peak of this protracted economic crisis (Gukurume, 2015), decaying urban infrastructure, derelict buildings, disused industries, and massive unemployment became an intractable part of everyday urban life in the country. Public service delivery in many of the country’s urban areas significantly declined or completely disappeared (Gukurume, 2011). City councils struggled to provide basic urban services such as refuse collection, road maintenance and the provision of clean piped water, among other things. While the affluent urbanites in suburban areas were able to make a plan (Morreira, 2015) to cope with disappearing basic services and amenities, many in poor neighbourhoods suffered. It is against this background that new Pentecostal churches like PHD and UFIC emerged as alternative socio-spiritual institutions that provide socio-economic support, which enables some urbanites to negotiate and navigate the unpredictability and socio-economic uncertainties and precarities of the post-colonial state (Taru, 2020). This is often done through PCC’s charity arms which provide various forms of socioeconomic support to vulnerable people within and beyond the confines of the church (see Gukurume, 2022; Muchadenyika, 2020). However, I underscore that these programmes cover only a small fraction of the vulnerable population, while the targeting of beneficiaries exclusionary politics. Consequently, not all PCCs and their members are able to navigate existential uncertainties equally. Ironically, some of the PCC led urban infrastructural and housing projects have also been marred by scandals and allegations of scamming.³ Such scandals are also prevalent in more secular urban housing projects including cooperatives driven by politically connected land barons in Harare (see Bhanye et al., 2023; Matamanda, 2020; Muchadenyika, 2020).

New PCCs in Harare: PHD and UFIC

The United Family International Church (UFIC) and Prophetic Healing and Deliverance (PHD) are relatively new Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches established in 2008 and 2010 respectively (Gukurume, 2018). UFIC emerged at the peak of the country’s economic crisis when many people struggled to survive, while PHD was established after the dollarization of the economy when the country started using the United States dollars to arrest the worsening hyperinflation. As such, both the economic crisis and subsequent dollarization mediated the two churches’ theology. These two PCCs promote the gospel of prosperity in both health and wealth and organize a range of workshops and activities that promote the realization of prosperity in all aspects of life. The prosperity messages resonate closely with the dominion theology (Asamoah-Gyadu, 2014; Gifford, 2004). Because of the lure of prosperity gospel in the country, UFIC and PHD are arguably the fastest-growing new PCCs in the country’s urban religious landscape. During their Sunday services, they attract more than 15.000 congregants both local and international. In fact, these churches are spreading their tentacles beyond the country and the geopolitical borders of the continent. They have also become powerful and influential social and political actors in the country making political pronouncements and inviting political elites to their podiums (Gukurume, 2018). Although these two PCCs attract people from all walks of life and all age groups, most of their congregants are conspicuously youthful.

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted with PCCs in Harare, this article examines how two new PCCs (The Prophetic Healing and Deliverance Ministries and the United Family International Church) have reconfigured urban landscapes and everyday life through their various projects, activities, and rituals. Through their teachings, constructions, and rituals, these two new PCCs in Harare are remaking urban landscapes and everyday life in urban spaces and significantly reshaping city futures. These churches’ infrastructural projects allow congregants and residents to reimagine the possibilities of a different kind of future and life in the city. This renovates with arguments made by several scholars that Pentecostal movements have radically refashioned urban spaces, popular cultures, and other urban forms. The Pentecostal boom’ in African cities continue to redefine and reorder the cityscapes, infrastructure/and or landscapes as well as everyday life. For example, some Pentecostal churches have occupied the leisure parks, praying over lunch in the city, turning leisure hours into prayers/preaching, an issue which has formerly been relegated to the peripheries of the city.

PHD’s infrastructural projects in Harare

The Yadah Village

In September 2016, Prophet Magaya, the founder of PHD Ministries, officially opened his impressive Yadah village real estate project in Waterfalls, Harare. This US $ 8 million real estate project is not meant to accommodate everyone, instead, it is only for church members and particularly church partners. Church partners are members of the church who regularly pay certain amounts of money to the church for its various projects. Some partners directly invest in certain church projects and become shareholders. Similarly, his guest houses in Harare are open only to Christians who want to have one-on-one and face-to-face encounter with the prophet. Like the RCCG redemption city in Nigeria (Ukah, 2018), Yadah Village was constructed to accommodate local and international church members and pilgrims during mass events and conferences such as the annual Night of Turnaround. This modern estate reportedly accommodates more than 3000 visitors and offers all the necessary services (Saunyama, 2016). The complex will also have luxurious VIP villas for up to 100 special visitors. Therefore, the spatial strategies implemented by PHD have become an important part of the infrastructural morphology of the city. During church services and in sermons, the prophet often makes reference to these projects as an expansion of God’s kingdom and a signify of material and symbolic dominion over ‘secular’ cityscapes.

In addition, PHD also launched a multimillion-dollar housing construction programme with approximately 90,000 housing units, schools, clinics, shopping centers, and a 20,000-seater sports stadium (Murwira, 2016; Shumba, 2016).⁴ PHD’s Heart stadium in Waterfalls close to the Yadah hotel that belongs to the church is regarded as one of the best stadiums in the capital city Harare and hosts premier league games involving the church’s own team Yadah Football Club and other Harare-based teams. The government and city council facilitated the acquisition of 20% of the land for these large infrastructural projects. Reports in state-owned media revealed that the government was ready to offer more land to PHD for its housing and infrastructural projects (Murwira, 2016; Shumba, 2016).⁵ In fact, the government praised the church for complementing the government’s efforts to provide affordable housing and regenerating decomposing urban landscapes (Gukurume, 2018). According to Prophet Magaya, this housing scheme will spread across the southern African region. Prophet Magaya emphasised in an interview with a local newspaper that he was called to cater for the spiritual as well as the material and social well-being of his church members and the society at large. At the time of fieldwork, Planet Africa Construction Company owned by prophet Magaya had commenced the construction of the project. James, a 28-year-old member of the PHD who was one of the beneficiaries, saw the project as transformative for the beneficiaries. James said;

I am very grateful for the Prophet for introducing this project. I never dreamt that I would have a house in Harare because the land is extremely expensive, but the Prophet has afforded us this opportunity. This is a miracle.

James told me that he was already paying a monthly instalment and will be allowed to move into the house once the construction is complete. James told me that for his house he paid a monthly instalment of USD 400. The instalments that James paid were almost similar with what other secular cooperative members paid in the capital city. A clearly ecstatic James noted that the prophet was sent to deliver people from the spirit of poverty and homelessness. James’ experience was also echoed by Mai Jacob, another PHD member and beneficiary of the project. Mai Jacob was a widow in her early 50s and had been a tenant all her life. She started as a street food vendor after getting a loan from the church and now owns a canteen at the industrial site in Harare. She told me in an interview that she was one of the first people to join the church when it started and had a close relationship with the Prophet’s wife. Mai Jacob expressed her happiness and appreciation for her house by stating;

Our God is faithful, there was a time I was almost homeless and the prophet offered to help pay my rent because I had been a faithful member of the church. When the prophet told us that you will not die a tenant, I believed him and prayed hard about it. Surely God has answered my prayers, I am now a landlord!

James and Mai Jacob’s stories were not unique or unusual. They resonated with several other participants who participated in semi-structured interviews. Some of them had benefited from the church housing projects. Through providing housing, money for rent, and food handouts to some widows and educational scholarships to church members, PHD was attempting to address both the material and spiritual needs of its members. As such, while the church actively transformed the urban landscapes through its housing projects, it simultaneously reconfigured the personhood and everyday lives of its membership through charity work. The experience of Garikai Zindi is illustrative. Garikai lived in the streets of Rusape as a madman for 15 years and terrorised people with his violent behaviour. When Prophet Magaya went to Rusape for a church service, he heard about the madman from his relatives who wanted prophet Magaya to assist Garikayi and deliver him from evil spirits which they believed was behind his mental condition. When prophet Magaya heard about Garikayi, he offered to help him. He managed to exorcise the demons and Garikayi’s mental condition healed. After being delivered, Garikayi converted to PHD. After a few months, prophet Magaya bought Garikayi a house in Rusape.⁶ In an interview, Garikayi said;

I am okay, and grateful to Prophet Magaya for the house and everything he has done, but my request to him has been to sell that house in Rusape and get me a house away from there and closer to the church here in Harare.

Garikayi further explained.

I am recovering from a bad experience, and I do not want to be associated with that past again. Rusape reminds me of that past, yet all I now need is a completely new and better life elsewhere,

Garikayi’s story is fascinating in the way it encapsulates the ‘holistic’ deliverance offered to some church members in new PCCs such as PHD. It shows that the prophetic churches try to minister not only to the spiritual anxieties of congregants but also to their material needs. Although Garikayi’s experience is unique and rare, it is related to some narratives shared by other beneficiaries of the PHD project.

Interestingly, the church creatively forges strategic alliances with corporations and government departments to access resources that help address the challenges that its members face. In the aforementioned projects, the city council works closely with the church and offers technical advice so that infrastructural projects comply with proper planning requirements. For these projects to succeed, political capital is central especially in mega cities such as Harare. Armed with political and social capital new PCCs such as PHD are able to (re) configure the urban landscape through various projects. Interestingly, in Zimbabwe, the power of ascendant PCCs is such that they are simultaneously becoming important players in urban expansion and infrastructural development.

However, it is important to note that these projects are also embroiled in controversy. For example, in 2020, many members of PHD sought to get their money refunded after the church reneged on some of its promises. Reports claimed that some members had not received their stands three years after paying their deposits.⁷ Deposits paid to the church ranged from USD 1000 to USD 4000 and after the payment of the deposit members were expected to pay a monthly subscription. In response to the allegations, church officials blamed the COVID-19 lockdown for the delays in delivering their promises to members.

UFIC Live Havens and the Bassilica

The influence of new PCCs on the architectural landscape of the city is also mirrored by other new Pentecostal churches such as UFIC. Like PHD, UFIC is also heavily involved real estate projects and infrastructural developments in Harare. For example, the church constructed accommodation facilities for its members and visitors. These facilities are called ‘Life Havens.’ Furthermore, UFIC also completed the construction of a mega 30 000-seater church building, the Basilica in Chitungwiza. Chitungwiza is a satellite town 30 km from Harare. The UFIC Basilica covers 16 ha of land. In addition to the Bassilica and Life Havens, the church has also begun constructing a mega-building complex at its headquarters in Mount Hampden. Although UFIC’s Life Havens are scattered throughout the city, they closely mirror and could be imagined as a microcosm of the RCCG’s redemption city in Nigeria. In interviews with some church officials from both UFIC and PHD, it emerged that the two megachurches envision a future and have plans to replicate Nigerian Adeboye’s model city. In keeping with de Boeck’s (2013) observation that some mega-PCCs have the capacity to bypass or even replace the state to achieve their imagined urban futures, the RCCG’s redemption city is said to have emerged out of frustration with Lagos’ excesses and inadequacies, such as poor service delivery. However, the configuration of UFIC and PHD’s projects seem to be intricately linked to the state and indeed complement the state’s quest for the provision of adequate and affordable housing. With regards to this, prophet Magaya noted;

The houses we are constructing will be sold at a much lower price. It will be quite affordable for low-income earners. We are determined to fulfil the government’s economic blueprint, Zim-Asset in providing infrastructure. Our concept is housing for all.

While Prophet Magaya asserted that he is driven by the desire to transform the lives of his congregants and those of Zimbabweans at large, the houses are not for everyone, priority is given to church members. Similarly, the houses are also beyond the reach of many poor members of the church. As such, membership and affordability mediate people’s access to space, creating a very specific politics of inclusion and exclusion. However, these projects are attempts at transforming the aspirational subjectivities of members. From its inception, the Pentecostal movement always emphasised personal transformation where born again Christians are remade anew. In recent times, this transformation has been reconfigured into a spatial one, where cities and urban spaces are also simultaneously remade together with the people who inhabit them. I argue that this spiritual remaking of individual Christians and urban cityscapes should be understood within the broader discourse and politics of spiritual warfare, where supposedly ‘secular’ terrains must be conquered and ‘Pentecostalised’ before the second coming of Christ. This attempt at conquering the public space has seen mega PCCs also attempting to refashion urban everyday life and popular cultures (Meyer & Moors, 2006). In Zimbabwe, the country’s collapsed industries and companies in city centres have become home to a myriad of mega-churches in Harare. Mega PCCs buy and rent warehouses and convert offices and other vacant buildings in the city into church buildings. Religious visibility and materiality including church posters, stickers, billboards inundate the urban terrain.

Urban territorial dominance

Through its Operation Nehemiah, UFIC seeks to assert a specific form of territorial spatial and spiritual dominance within the capital cityscapes. During a cross-over service on New Year’s Eve of 2017, the church leader Prophet Makandiwa declared that 2018 was a year of territorial dominance. Congregants were constantly told in church services and sermons that as God’s children they have dominion over everything, including supposedly ‘secular’ spaces such as the city. As such, the church’s infrastructural projects can in part be read as an attempt at socio-spatial and material domination. For instance, the conversion of non-religious spaces and buildings such as vacated offices and warehouses in Harare into spaces of worship goes beyond a mere need for worship space. For my Pentecostal interlocutors, this progressive conversion or appropriation of spaces hitherto used for secular and profane purposes demonstrates the dominion of Pentecostal Christianity and the inevitable expansion of Godly influence. This is in keeping with Katsaura (2023) who asserted that Pentecostal architecture could be read as both an expression and an apparatus of Pentecostal power. Consequently, it can be argued that church buildings are not just material structures, but also spiritual and symbolic configurations of Godly dominion.

Be that as it may, this claim by my interlocutors is often contested by scholars. For instance, some scholars assert that rather than alleviating poverty and other related existential struggles, PCCs are rather exacerbating them and making congregants impoverished through demanding tithes, offering, and other forms of monetary payments to the church. As such, PCC prophets and some congregants view their projects as the expansion of God’s kingdom, such construction projects tend to be financed by and through congregants’ contributions often at the expense of their own wellbeing.

In some church services that I attended, members who did not tithe, contribute to church construction and other projects were often criticised and sometimes blamed for stealing from God. Interestingly, during funding raising for building projects, members often pledged huge amounts of money and make huge financial sacrifices. For instance, during operation Nehemiah, some church members bought single bricks for more than USD 1000. The prophet emphasised that members who bought these bricks would connect spiritually to God’s anointing and would fast-track their time of transition from being a tenant to a landlord. In addition, those who sacrifice to the church are told that this will increase their prospects of expanding their business empire if they are already homeowners. During church services, the church is transformed into a marketplace for church-branded paraphernalia and products sold by the churches. This resonates with the arguments made by some scholars that new PCCs follow neoliberal economic practices and logic (Lewison 2011; Dreher 2020; Whyte and Wiegratz 2016) which enriches church leaders while simultaneously impoverishing ordinary members.

In this quest for territorial dominance in the country’s cityscapes, UFIC engages in proselytization activities and the construction of megachurches in and around the city. Territorialisation is an integral part of UFIC and is regarded as part of expanding the Kingdom of God by converting space and people to and for Christ. The quest of UFIC for territorial dominance or territorial density is mediated by and through eschatological discourses in which born again Christians have a spiritual duty to conquer territories for Christ (Garbin, 2013; Knibbe, 2009). As such, for UFIC territorial dominance through conquering urban landscapes is part of their spiritual warfare against Satan and his demons. In conversations with some congregants from UFIC and PHD, many of them framed their infrastructural projects in Harare as the workings of God meant to address the problem of decaying city infrastructure. Similarly, in Nigeria Ukah (2018) asserts that the ‘Redemption City’ can no longer be simply viewed as a ritual space; rather it signifies a powerful strategy of …. resource capture.

The UFIC project of territorial dominance in Harare is marked by its ambitious real estate projects in affluent and leafy suburbs like Glen Lorne in the northern part of Harare and Mt. Hampden in the western part of the city. Prophet Makandiwa acquired a 100-acre piece of land in Mt Hampden and plans to construct a 100,000-seater mega-church⁸ and multi-purpose complex. The purchase of land and the location of UFIC’s headquarters in Mount Hampden is strategic. Mount Hampden is touted by the government as the new modern capital city of the country. The Mt Hampden master plans show that the Mt Hampden city will have a modern and luxurious parliament, a presidential palace, the supreme and high court, the new reserve bank building, opulent suburbs, five-star hotels, an international airport, a university and several modern shopping malls among many other monumental buildings in the new city. The construction of a modern government complex including a spectacular new parliament building is in advanced stages. Government officials assert that Mount Hampden will showcase a new form of modern urbanity. Indeed, the government has highlighted that Mount Hampden has been given the status of an administrative capital city (Chara 2019).⁹ Chara (2019) described the new city buildings as painting a picture of both splendour and grandeur. The government’s vision of the new modern city of Mount Hampden resonates strongly with what de Boeck (2013) referred to as the ‘charter city.’ According to de Boeck (2013, p. 534), the charter city is a special urban reorganisation neighbourhood that allows governments in less economically developed countries to appropriate novel systems of guidelines and versions of the city that will not only be a model for other countries but also be the engine that will drive socio-economic prosperity in these countries. The new Mt. Hampden city is expected to cost about US $10 billion and will accommodate more than a million people. Interestingly, the vision of a future city in Mount Hampden has a close affinity with the vision of UFIC for its modern multipurpose megacomplex, which will not only blend with but also transform the landscape of Mount Hampden.

However, through these projects of building a new city, many people, especially former farmworkers living in Mount Hampden, will be displaced. In fact, given the nature of the city envisioned, very few displaced people will be able to afford land or be able to work in the new city. The prices of land and residential stands around Mount Hampden have inevitably skyrocketed beyond the reach of many people who hitherto stayed in and around Mount Hampden. As such, the massive housing and infrastructural transformation that is already taking place will likely exclude many poor people who previously stayed on the farmlands that will house the new city. Colonial city by-laws will be invoked and reproduced as an instrument of mediating access to this space, with clearly defined modes of inclusion and exclusion.

Church housing cooperatives

During my fieldwork, both UFIC and PHD had initiated church-based housing cooperatives that were meant to benefit their members. The formation of these housing cooperatives was part of the churches’ attempt to exorcise their membership from the demons that reproduced homelessness. However, it is important to note that the housing and real estate projects of these two churches were not open to ordinary members of the church. Instead, they were dominated by church ‘partners.’ The partners of the two churches were people who committed to consistent payment of a certain amount of month to the church every month. During fieldwork, gold partners paid a monthly subscription of USD 50 and platinum partners paid USD 100 to the church (Gukurume, 2022). Apart from being beneficiaries of housing cooperatives, partners also enjoyed many privileges such as having one-on-one meetings with the prophet and other senior pastors, as well as attending business and financial literacy workshops. In addition, partners also participate in the entrepreneurship workshops and conferences organized by the church. The well-to-do and connected church partners could also become shareholders in the church’s many projects. In an interview with pastor Ronald,¹⁰ who was the secretary in the housing cooperative project noted;

We bought land for this housing cooperative project so that we can provide affordable housing to our members. We are trying to empower them and deliver them from poverty. This is what the man of God was called to do! To make sure that we help to alleviate poverty.

Pastor Ronald also noted that the housing projects were part of the church’s attempt ‘to expand the kingdom of God’ and also to influence and conquer supposedly secular urban spaces. Prophets Makandiwa and Magaya assisted cooperative members with all the necessary procedures and processes, including approaching the council for land and the construction of housing units. Therefore, through these projects, PCCs helped members to navigate the capricious vagaries of the protracted socio-economic crisis that characterises the post-colonial Zimbabwean state. Indeed, PHD and UFIC’s involvement in activities that have altered the face of Harare shows how PCCs are actively restructuring the role of the church from ‘other-worldly’ practices such as the provision of spiritual and social support services to active participation in ‘this-worldly’ activities such as entrepreneurship, real estate business, and property development. In a conversation with Pastor Ronald, it emerged that the housing cooperatives and other church real estate projects were the brainchild of the Prophet and his wife. Pastor Ronald asserted that their housing schemes were inspired by the biblical Prophet Nehemiah, who rebuilt Jerusalem in the fifth century. Such claims point to the prophetic and spiritual sensibilities behind the projects and the centrality of prophetic temporalities. Interestingly, housing projects in and around Harare are part of the repertoire of proselytizing strategies as more and more people convert and become members so that they could also become beneficiaries.

In addition, UFIC’s transformation of urban landscapes is through its construction of schools and places of worship in and around Harare. For instance, during fieldwork, the church was constructing a state-of-the-art private high school called Ruthdale in the former white-only suburbs of Sunningdale. According to the church, this will not only be the first high school in Sunningdale but the first of its kind in the whole city. During an interview with the Herald, the church’s spokesperson noted that this was part of the church’s attempt to give back to the community and empowering young people. Both PHD and UFIC have also begun to build prayer camp places, which have become popular pilgrimage spaces. At these prayer mountains, both churches provide dormitory accommodation for visitors. Visitors to these places stay for at least 3 days praying and fasting.

Religious spatialities and urban renewal

It should be underscored that these massive modern infrastructural developments have also transformed the urban landscape and changed the outlook of the city. PHD and UFIC’s infrastructural and real estate transformative projects have been marked by very specific forms of spatial appropriation and re-enchantment of urban terrains. Interestingly, these projects are not only texturing the urban landscape but also the moral ecology of the city, everyday life, and livelihoods of many people in the city. In fact, the Ministry of Tourism and consistently lauds the two churches for boosting religious tourism in the city, especially during their huge conferences. During these times, local livelihoods based on street vending have also been boosted. In fact, during my fieldwork, the then Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) chief executive Karikoga Kaseke praised UFIC and PHD for transforming the country’s tourism landscape. He noted that tourism could potentially benefit nearly USD 4 million from local and transnational tourists and pilgrimage guests for the mega events of these churches. Speaking on the eve of UFIC’s Judgement Night, an annual mega event held at the giant 60,000-seater national sports stadium, Kaseke noted;

Our hotels in and around Harare are fully booked as we speak and we are saying this is the impact of religious tourism on the economy. When hotels are full like this, it keeps people busy, it creates employment, and we generate wealth. We have estimated that tourism impact during these events could be plus or minus USD 4 million.

Interestingly, PHD and UFIC have begun to construct accommodation facilities to house thousands of their congregants in Harare. For instance, PHD constructed a state-of-the-art Yadah hotel in Waterfalls Harare.¹¹ This hotel is part of the larger infrastructural complex called Yadah Village. This hotel employs more than 200 employees. Prophet Magaya’s hotel, construction projects have also generated employment for the locals. For instance, all his projects are constructed by his construction company Planet Africa, which employs more than 3000 local workers. As such, apart from being socio-spiritual spaces, PHD and UFIC have also become spaces of employment and economic opportunities.

However, in Zimbabwe, these emerging infrastructural developments driven by PCCs have not been free from controversy. For instance, prophet Magaya has been accused of fraudulently acquiring more than 1000 ha of land and displaced youth who were supposed to be beneficiaries of the land.¹²Similarly, in 2012 Prophet Makandiwa was accused by the ministry of local government of allegedly acquiring a huge piece of land fraudulently in Chitungwiza, a claim that the church refuted. The then minister of local governance, Ignatius Chombo, appointed a special investigation team to investigate the alleged land scandal involving Prophet Makandiwa’s UFIC.¹³ Consequently, UFIC’s infrastructural developments were temporarily halted by the government and city council. The Newsday reported that the probe team came up with a report that showed how the church acquired huge tracts of land fraudulently. As such, friction emerged between the UFIC and the Chitungwiza city councils. Prophet Magaya’s alleged land scandal¹⁴ and Prophet Makandiwa’s stand-off with the Chitungwiza city council and the Environmental Management Agency (EMA) are important illustrative cases. These conflicts arose due to disputes over city planning and building by-laws. In an interview with Mr. Gama, a town planner based in Harare, he acknowledged that the mushrooming of churches is a cause for concern for town planners. He explained;

Churches are now found everywhere. Even in undesignated spaces that are meant for other things in the city masterplan. What is troubling is that some of these churches are building structures that violate zoning permissions and requirements.

This finding resonates with Cobbinah and Korah (Cobbinah & Prosper Korah, 2016) who assert that there is an astronomical growth of places of worship in many African countries that oftentimes violates urban planning bylaws and land use obligations. Similarly, for Hancock and Srinivas (2008) places of worship, both in Asian and African countries, are the brainchild of urban forms that sometimes refute the objectives of urban land use planning because churches are sometimes constructed in undesignated spaces. Similar arguments were also echoed by Lawanson (2021) who noted that the intensifying influence of PCCs, their economic networks, and allegiances are leading to emergent forms of parochial spatial practices, which deviate from extant planning regulations. This also corroborates de Boeck (2013) and Hancock and Srinivas (2008) who observed that religious organisations such as PCCs have morphed and grown into key political actors who often collaborate with, bypass, and sometimes replace city planning agencies in an attempt to attain their future-oriented visions of the idealised urban space.

Similarly, during their annual conferences, public life around these places is affected by serious traffic jams. In fact, during Sunday services and conferences, such as the Night of Turnaround, motorists take hours to pass through the PHD church located along the main Masvingo-Harare road. This finding closely resonates with arguments made by Brighenti (2010, p. 30) who asserted that acts of urban public space appropriation by religious actors and groups such as PCCs are often met with responses such as complaints and contestations. This is in keeping with Obadare’s (2017) observation that during the Pentecostal prayer camp meetings, vehicular disorder, congestion, and chaos emerge on the Nigerian freeway. Furthermore, critics have also noted that the commercialisation of these projects commoditise religiosity and promotes the exploitation of the members by church leaders. For instance, a person pays between USD 300 to USD 1000 for a three-day stay at the PHD guest houses and UFIC’s Live Havens.¹⁵ Therefore, it should be underscored that these projects are not openly accessible to everyone. The commercialisation of these spaces and services means that they often become inaccessible to the poor members of the church.

Religious urban aesthetics and visibility

It is 9 o’clock on a sunny and hot morning in Harare. One of my informants, Thomas, calls me to remind me of the parade in town. We met 30 min later at the city sports centre, about 4 km from the city centre. Thousands of people are already gathered and colourfully dressed in church-branded t-shirts, caps, and clothes. Hundreds of vehicles parked nearby are also engraved with church brands and stickers. The kaleidoscope of colours makes this religious ritual/march a spectacle in the streets of Harare. Interestingly, hundreds of people are also carrying the judge gavel declaring that they are going to make a final judgment on problems afflicting them and the city and, therefore, affirming their territorial dominance. In a few minutes, the thousands of people led by the prophet and his wife with an entourage of expensive vehicles, including the police, people marched into the city centre. In a few minutes, the whole city centre was brought to a standstill as thousands of people flooded the streets to celebrate one of UFIC’s major annual events, ‘Judgement Night’ (Chikova 2014).^16,17 The march ended with a massive clean-up of the streets and a prayer service at the Africa Unity Square, a popular public space at the heart of Harare’s city centre. During the march, UFIC appropriated and territorialised the streets and other public spaces in Harare, transforming them into sacred spaces. Indeed, these regular religious rituals have become temporal-spatial appropriations (Saint-Blancat & Cancellieri, 2014) of Harare’s public spaces. The media highlighted that the human convoy for this march stretched for more than four kilometres into the central business district. In an interview with state media, the UFIC spokesperson Pastor Kufakunesu declared that;

This march has spiritual implications, we are showing the demonic spirits that make you sick, make your business and your city not to work and witchcraft that we are ready for the fight. We are going to judge all our enemies and demons that are fighting us and affirm our territorial dominion.

Pastor Kufakunesu further noted that ‘we are not just marching for nothing, but we know that there is a statement that we are going to make in the spirit.’ Interestingly, some members declared that ending the march with a clean-up campaign was a symbolic and spiritual practice. For them, as they cleaned up the mess on the streets of Harare, they were also exorcising the demons that cause the decomposition of urban spaces in Harare. This cleaning practice was a metaphorical signifier of the city they envision and hope to build. By cleaning the streets of Harare, the congregants believed that they are redeeming the city (Coleman & Maier, 2013; Ukah, 2014) and cleansing it of its sins and excesses.

Throughout my fieldwork, UFIC and PHD regularly organised these spectacular and colourful public events that consistently attracted thousands of people in the streets of Harare. Through these public events and rituals like street crusades, public marches, impressive street billboards, and marches, these two PCCs have (re)configured the aesthetics and architecture of the streets in the city of Harare. For example, before and during mega-events these churches organise such as Judgement Nights and Turnaround and Crossover nights, they engage in colourful and spectacular sacred aesthetics of visibility that attract both local and international media, making these churches hypervisible in the city’s public sphere. For Knott cited in Saint-Blancat and Cancellieri (2014), public religious rituals and related urban spatial transformation through mega-urban projects should not only be viewed as processes of identity-marking or displays of collective forms of space-making, but as a way of asserting conspicuous aesthetics in urban landscapes.

Conclusion

This article examined new Pentecostal urbanities in Harare and focused more particularly on how new Pentecostal churches have become important players driving urban transformation in Harare. I tried to show how new PCCs texture and reconfigure cityscapes and everyday lives in Harare. Indeed, the article revealed that new Pentecostal churches are at the centre of the evolving urban landscapes in Harare. They do so through Pentecostal rituals, practices, aesthetics, and infrastructures which enable them to territorialise and appropriate urban landscapes. It is argued in this article that these practices of space-making and territorialising the city are part of the Pentecostal eschatological discourse of spiritual warfare against Satan and his demons. Through their infrastructural and real estate projects, PHD and UFIC affirm a very specific kind of territorial dominance over urban spaces. The quest for Pentecostal territorial hegemony should be understood within the broader eschatological discourse of Pentecostalising urban spaces before the second coming of Jesus. As such, the major projects of the PCCs are an extension of their spiritual warfare and the signification of dominion theology. Overall, I argue that these new Pentecostal urbanities have significantly reconfigured the urban architectural spaces, everyday life, and visions of urban futures in Harare.

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Notes on contributors

Simbarashe Gukurume

Simbarashe Gukurume is a social scientist working at the intersections of Sociology and Anthropology and lectures at Sol Plaatje University in the department of Social Sciences (Sociology). Simbarashe is interested in asking critical questions about what it means to be young in spatialities and temporalities of protracted socio-economic and political crisis. He is also intersted in issues around informality, displacements, money and religiosities. Simbarashe’s work has been published in African Affairs, Sociology Compass, Political Psychology and the Extractive Industries and Society among other journals.

Notes

1. These quotes are from my PhD fieldnotes and interviews.

2. https://www.sundaymail.co.zw/the-house-that-magaya-built

3. https://www.sundaymail.co.zw/magaya-in-stands-scam

4. https://www.herald.co.zw/magaya-raises-housing-stakes-to-90–000-units/

5. https://www.chronicle.co.zw/walter-magaya-launches-housing-scheme/

6. https://www.bmetro.co.zw/magaya-speaks-on-house-donations/

7. https://www.sundaymail.co.zw/magaya-in-stands-scam

8. https://bulawayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-58567.html

9. www.sundaymail.co.zw/behold-the-new-city-cometh/

10. This is a pseudonym and all the other names used in the article are pseudonyms to anonymise the identity of participants.

11. https://www.herald.co.zw/fire-guts-magaya-hotel/

12. https://www.dailynews.co.zw/articles/2016/09/08/mugabe-grills-kasukuwere-over-magaya-stands

13. https://www.newsday.co.zw/2012/04/2012-04-27-makandiwa-under-probe/

14. https://www.herlad.co.zw/magaya-in-row-over-waterfalls-stand/

15. https://www.sundaymail.co.zw/the-house-that-magaya-built/

16. https://www.chronicle.co.zw/thousands-march-for-judgement-night-2/

17. https://www.newsday.co,zw/2014/04/ufic-members-march-ahead-judgement-night-2/

https://www.herald.co.zw/ufic-in-judgement-night-march/