Politics and Policies - CORE · Julie Berg, Rufus Akinyele, Laurent Fourchard, Kees van der Waal and Michellene Williams. Contributors 189 Index 191 . Governing cities.indd 3 2013/03/14

Edited by Simon Bekker and Laurent Fourchard

Politics and Policies

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Published by HSRC PressPrivate Bag X9182, Cape Town, 8000, South Africawww.hsrcpress.ac.za

First published 2013

ISBN (soft cover) 978-0-7969-2416-2ISBN (pdf) 978-0-7969-2417-9ISBN (epub) 978-0-7969-2418-6© 2013 Human Sciences Research Council

This book has undergone a double-blind independent peer review process overseen by the HSRC Press Editorial Board.

The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Human Sciences Research Council (‘the Council’) or indicate that the Council endorses the views of the authors. In quoting from this publication, readers are advised to attribute the source of the information to the individual author concerned and not to the Council.

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Contents

Boxes ivAbbreviations and acronyms vPreface viiCity profiles ix

1 Introduction 1 SimonBekkerandLaurentFourchard

PART 1 Party politics and the politics of identity 13 Editors’ introduction 15

2 Exploring the role of party politics in the governance of African cities 17 ClaireBénit-Gbaffou,AlainDubresson,LaurentFourchard,KarineGinisty,Sylvy

Jaglin,AyodejiOlukoju,SamOwuorandJeanneVivet

3 Urban planning, housing and the making of ‘responsible citizens’ in the late colonial period: Dakar, Nairobi and Conakry 43

SéverineAwenengoDalberto,HélèneChartonandOdileGoerg

4 Changing minority identities in urban Africa: Cotonou, Kano, Lomé and Maputo 67

JeanneVivet,DeniseBrégand,RasheedOlaniyiandAmandineSpire

PART 2 Urban public policies: Problematising informality 85 Editors’ introduction 87

5 Breaking down the binary: Meanings of informal settlement in southern African cities 93

LielaGroenewald,MarieHuchzermeyer,KristenKornienko,MariusTredoux,MargotRubinandIsabelRaposo

6 The politics of solid-waste management in Accra, Addis Ababa, Maputo and Ouagadougou: Different cities, similar issues 117

JeremyGrest,AxelBaudouin,CamillaBjerkliandHélèneQuénot-Suarez

7 Informality, public space and urban governance: An approach through street trading (Abidjan, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lomé and Nairobi) 145

Jean-FabienSteck,SophieDidier,MarianneMorangeandMargotRubin

8 Contested social orders: Negotiating urban security in Nigeria and South Africa 169

JulieBerg,RufusAkinyele,LaurentFourchard,KeesvanderWaalandMichellene Williams

Contributors 189Index 191


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Boxes

Box 2.1 Rescaling urban governance: A challenge on its own – the case of Cape Town 22

Box 2.2 Party politics as central in explaining urban policies and governability: The case of Lagos 22

Box 2.3 The politics of local government: The centre undermining local tiers of urban governance 23

Box 2.4 How a small community garden is drawn into a three-layered political game: The case of Thinasonke Garden, Midvaal (South Africa) 24

Box 2.5 How party politics undermines road construction and maintenance in Lagos 25

Box 2.6 Contrasting fates of intergovernmental cooperation in urban projects in Cape Town 26

Box 2.7 Gerrymandering as a fiscal strategy to undermine the opposition: The case of Dschang municipality, Cameroon 27

Box 2.8 Legacy and recapturing liberation movements’ mass-party local structures: Johannesburg and Maputo 31

Box 2.9 An opposition MP takes sides in a local conflict over land: Nairobi 33

Box 2.10 The fate of a community soccer field in Johannesburg 34Box 2.11 Decentralisation and multiplication of clientelist opportunities:

The case of basic service provision in informal settlements in Maputo 35

Box 4.1 The certificate of indigeneity in Nigeria 71Box 5.1 Country contexts: Angola, Mozambique and South Africa 96Box 7.1 JuaKali, a national priority in Kenya? 150Box 7.2 Street traders in would-be global Cape Town 154Box 7.3 Informal trade and urban planning: Shrinking space, increasing

formalisation and a neocolonial order? 157Box 7.4 The contrasting figures of participation 160Box 7.5 Greenmarket Square, Cape Town: An emblem of neoliberal spatial

reordering 161Box 7.6 The ambiguous meanings of consultation in Nairobi 162


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Abbreviations and acronyms

ANC African National CongressANS Archives Nationales du SénégalARD Archives Régionales de DakarBNETD Bureaunationald’étudestechniquesetdedéveloppementCID city improvement districtCODESRIA Council for the Development of Social Science Research in AfricaDA Democratic AllianceFIDES FondsD’InvestissementetdeDéveloppementÉconomiqueetSocialFRELIMO FrentedeLibertaçãodeMoçambique (Mozambique Liberation

Front)FWA French West AfricaGDP gross domestic productICO International Labour OrganizationIMF International Monetary FundKNA Kenyan National ArchivesNCBDA Nairobi Central Business District AssociationNGO non-governmental organisationNURTW National Union of Road Transport WorkersOPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting CountriesRENAMO ResistênciaNacionalMoçambicana (Mozambican National

Resistance)SICAP SociétéImmobilièreduCap-VertUN United NationsUNDP United Nations Development Programme


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Preface

This volume has been produced by teams of researchers from different disciplinary and language backgrounds and from different countries and continents. Since the editors believe that it is not only its substantial contribution but also the methods used to produce this volume that are of value, we have decided to discuss the process of its production in some detail in the introductory chapter.

The editors would like to thank all the contributors for their hard work and patience and stimulating ideas. Intellectual stimulation was also provided by a substantial number of conference participants whom we wish to list here by name: Susan Baller, Catherine Boudet , Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, Scarlett Cornelissen, Michel Cahen, Dominique Darbon, Rehana Ebrahim-Vally, Andreas Eckert, Bill Freund, Philippe Gervais Lambony, Norbert Kersting, Mary Njeri Kinyanjui, Anne Leildé, Alan Mabin, Denis Constant Martin, Cédric Mayrargue, Luzuko Mdunyelwa, Robert Mongwe, Colman Msoka, Fulu Godfrey Netswera, Gabriel Nyassogbo, René Otayek, Sam Owuor, Edgar Pieterse, Steven Robins, Jennifer Robinson, Aurélia Wa Kabwe Segatti, Abdoumaliq Simone, Göran Therborn, Izak van der Merwe, Elrena van der Spuy, and Jantjie Xaba.

We would also like to thank Charlotte Imani at the HSRC Press and Mark Ronan for their technical aid and support.

Without financial backing from the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the National Research Foundation in South Africa for the duration of 2006–2009, this collaborative project could not have been launched. Financial support was also obtained from French Institutes on the African continent – IFAS, Johannesburg; IFRA Ibadan and IFRA, Nairobi – as well as from a number of universities in France and South Africa: Les Afriques dans le monde LAM (previously Centred’Etude d’Afrique Noire), Bordeaux; the Universities of Paris 1, Paris 7 and Paris Ouest as well as the Universities of Cape Town, KwaZulu-Natal, Stellenbosch and the Witwatersrand. Our gratitude for these resources is shared by all the researchers involved in the project. The normal qualifications regarding opinions expressed in this book apply, and we, the editors, remain responsible for errors and omissions.

Simon Bekker and Laurent Fourchard


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ix

City profilesCompiled and edited by Margot Rubin and Sophie Didier

Since the thematic chapters in this volume all draw comparisons between a number of cities, these city profiles are intended to provide readers with relevant background information about each. Each profile has been written by an author familiar with the specific city (or peri-urban settlement, in the case of Lanquedoc) and offers a historical overview, a demographic outline, a sense of the politics and government of the city as well as pertinent socio-economic, cultural and linguistic information.

Maps locating the cities accompany the profiles.

The 18 profiles and their authors are tabulated below.

City Author

Abidjan Jean-Fabien Steck

Accra Yvette Ussher

Addis Ababa Axel Baudouin

Cape Town Julie Berg

Conakry Odile Goerg

Cotonou Denise Brégand

Dakar Séverine Awenengo Dalberto

Ekurhuleni Philippe Gervais-Lambony

eThekwini Margot Rubin

Johannesburg Liela Groenewald

Kano Racheed Olaniyi

Lagos Rufus Akinyele

Lanquedoc Kees van der Waal

Lomé Amandine Spire

Luanda Isabel Raposo

Maputo Jeremy Grest

Nairobi Sam Owuor

Ouagadougou Hélène Quénot-Suarez


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Abidjan

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

At the end of the 19th century, Abidjan was selected by France as its primary port on the Gulf of Guinea. During the colonial period, it was designated the capital of the Ivory Coast (1931–1960), and retained this status after independence (1960) until 1983. All national authorities and embassies are still based in Abidjan, although these activities were to be transferred to the new capital city of Yamoussoukro in 1983. Abidjan was an important symbol of the ‘Ivory Coast miracle’ of the 1960s and 1970s, and central districts such as Le Plateau, Yopougon and Cocody are characterised by a modernist urbanism. Since the 1980s, however, Abidjan has been negatively affected by a combination of economic crisis, the effects of structural adjustment programmes and political upheaval.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

Abidjan’s population is about 4 million. The city has grown at a consistent rate of 4 per cent per year since the 1990s, mainly due to large-scale migration from the rest of the country, especially the north, and other countries in West Africa. As a result, Abidjan is a sprawling city, with nearly 50 per cent of the population living in the outlying suburban municipalities of Yopougon and Abobo. There is a shortage of housing, and unemployment is a major problem.

POLITICS AND CITY GOVERNMENT

Since 2001 the city has had 10 municipalities, each with its own mayor and municipal council, and three new sub-prefectures (Anyama, Songon and Bingerville), which, together with three other cities, comprise a District Autonome, which acts as a metropolitan authority. The district authority is not efficient, and the municipalities are more active, as is the national state, which exerts a strong influence on urban policy and strategies. Politically, Abidjan’s 10 (plus three) municipalities are


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divided between the major national political parties: the Front Populaire Ivoirien (FPI); the Parti Démocratique de la Côte d’Ivoire–Rassemblement Démocratique Africain (PDCI-RDA); and the Rassemblement des Républicains de Côte d’Ivoire (RDR). These three parties have contended for the presidency for the last 15 years, and each rules at least two of Abidjan’s municipalities.

SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND LINGUISTIC INFORMATION

Abidjan is the economic hub of the Ivory Coast, with a strong claim to be the leading metropolis in West Africa. Industry is very significant in the harbour area and Yopougon. Services and administrative activities are dominant, but approximately two-thirds of workers in Le Plateau are in the so-called informal sector. As a metropolis, Abidjan is attractive to foreigners looking for work in the formal and informal sectors, and foreigners, mainly from Burkina Faso, Mali and Senegal constitute 29 per cent of the city’s inhabitants. Although French is used as the lingua franca, Abidjan is a multilingual environment.

Accra

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

The city of Accra was found by the Ga people in the late 1600s. The word ‘Accra’ is derived from the Akan word nkran, meaning ants, referring to the numerous anthills found in the countryside around the city. By the end of the 17th century, settlements in Accra had been established by the Portuguese, Swedish, British, Danish, Dutch and French, who had all built forts in the town as protection for their slave-trade activities. In 1877 Accra became the capital of the then Gold Coast, replacing the Cape Coast at the end of Anglo-Asante War. In 1957 Accra became the capital of the independent state of Ghana. It is the largest city in Ghana, and is bounded by the Gulf of Guinea to the South, by the Korle Lagoon to the West and by Tema to the East, where Ghana’s major port is located.


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DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

Though Accra is the smallest of the 10 administrative regions in Ghana, it has the second largest population – 3.9 million in 2010 – which accounts for 16 per cent of the total population of 24 million. The city’s population is very young, with some 56 per cent under the age of 24.

The major ethnic groups in Accra are the Akan (39.8 per cent), the Ga-Adangme (29.7 per cent) and the Ewe (18 per cent). The indigenous group, the Ga, make up 19 per cent of the population. Christians constitute the largest faith community (83 per cent), followed by Muslims (10.2 per cent) and adherents of traditional religion (1.4 per cent); people who profess no religion form 4.6 per cent.


The residents of Accra are governed by an elected body named the Accra Metropolitan Assembly, which carries out both legislative and executive functions. For administrative purposes, the city is subdivided into 11 administrative entities, known as sub-metropolitan district councils, commonly referred to as sub-metros. Accra is the seat of the national democratic government, which is located in Osu Castle. The main political parties in Ghana are the National Democratic Congress and the National Patriotic Party, both of which have strong representation in Accra, given the city’s cosmopolitan nature.


The rapid growth of the city of Accra is due in large measure to its metropolitan character – attractive to internal and cross-border migrants – and to its coastal location. As an urban economic hub, Accra has a large service sector with the informal sector absorbing the largest proportion of the urban labour force. It is a major centre for manufacturing, marketing, finance, insurance, transportation and tourism. Over 70 per cent of Ghana’s manufacturing activities are located in Accra. It is also Ghana’s cultural and tourist hub, and has a wide variety of hotels, monuments, museums and nightclubs. The two languages most commonly spoken in Accra are English and Twi.

Addis Ababa

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

In 1896 Emperor Menelik decided to move the seat of his court from the top of the escarpment, at Mount Entoto, to the lower plateau – called Finfine by the Oromo people – which developed into the city known as Addis Ababa. The structure of the city is still influenced by its origins, as settlements located at various distances from Menelik’s palace were originally allocated to high-ranking officials and warlords. These settlements have gradually merged to form the modern city. Rivers flowing north–south through the city provide natural boundaries between the urban areas.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

Addis Ababa has a population of about 4 million (3.6 million, according to the last preliminary survey in 2007, whose figures are contested) and is still growing rapidly (3.8 per cent per year), mainly due to immigration from rural areas, as birth rates are diminishing in the city. Women are more numerous (92 men:100 women). Life expectancy for men is lower than for women (62.8 and 66.5 years, respectively), and more than a third of the population live below the poverty line. All of Ethiopia’s 80 ethnic/linguistic groups are represented in Addis Ababa, with the largest being Amhara (48 per cent), Oromo (19 per cent), Gurage (17.5 per cent) and Tigrean (7.6 per cent). Around 82 per cent of the population are members of the Orthodox Coptic Church.


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The administrative structure of Addis Ababa was reshaped in 2001. The municipality was divided into 10 sub-cities and 99 kebeles, the basic administrative units, all of which are supposed to be autonomous. However, the country’s government and the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) have a considerable influence on all decisions, even though a city council and an elected mayor officially administrate the city.


As the seat of the African Union, Addis Ababa is the diplomatic capital of Africa, and most international organisations have their regional offices here. The eastern part of the city is more residential; the western part is dominated by business activities. Addis Ababa has undergone major upgrades, including a new ring road, new avenues and bridges; some central areas with older crowded settlements have been cleared, and modern skyscrapers have taken their place. In several parts of the city, low-cost housing blocks have been built, although proper infrastructure is lacking. There are still numerous informal settlements. The central areas of the city need upgrading, but the infrastructure cannot cope with the pace of development, and a new or upgraded sewerage system is urgently required.


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Cape Town

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

The primary inhabitants of Cape Town before European settlement were the San and Khoi-Khoi tribes. In the mid-17th century, Cape Town was settled by the Dutch East India Company as a supply station for ships travelling to the east. Cape Town developed as an economic and political hub during British occupation in the 1800s. In 1948 apartheid, strategies of racial segregation and forced removals were initiated in Cape Town. In 1994 South Africa’s new democratic dispensation resulted in the repeal of discriminatory laws and a new system of inclusive governance.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

The current population of Cape Town is estimated to be about 3.5 million, consisting of a diversity of cultures and languages. Females comprise 51.6 per cent of the total population, males 48.4 per cent. About 44 per cent of the population are classified as coloured, 35 per cent as black African, over 19 per cent as white and just under 2 per cent as Asian. Cape Town also has a high proportion of people under the age of 35; over 30 per cent of its population are between the ages of 18 and 34; and over 30 per cent are 17 years and younger.


Cape Town is the seat of South Africa’s Parliament. A city council, consisting of 210 members, governs the Cape Town metropolitan area. This area consists of 23 sub-councils and 105 electoral wards, each represented by an elected councillor. The area comprises 163 suburbs. The city has been the site of political changeovers between the dominant ANC party and the main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA). The DA currently holds 135 of the 221 seats on the city council.


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Approximately 2 per cent of people 20 years and older in Cape Town have received no schooling, and only a fifth have finished high school. The unemployment rate is 17 per cent, and of those who were employed in 2010, over a quarter earned less than R1 601 per month (€150). Over 15 per cent of Cape Town’s population live in informal dwellings. However, approximately 93 per cent of households have access to a flush or chemical toilet, 80 per cent to electricity and 80.5 per cent to piped water in their dwellings. The majority of the inhabitants of Cape Town speak Afrikaans at home, followed by Xhosa and English.

Conakry

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

French colonial administrators chose Conakry, now the largest city in Guinea, as the capital city of French Guinea in 1885. Conakry’s development is the product of different historical phases, starting with colonial planning (1880–1958). In 1893 the city adopted a grid plan, consisting of 14 east–west avenues and 12 north–south boulevards. Spatial segregation, based on financial means, led to separate ‘African’ villages and white neighbourhoods. After independence, there was a phase of minimal state intervention (1958–1984), followed by the promotion of private investment (local and foreign) and economic liberalism, and a development policy for the metropolitan area. This current phase has seen the building of many multi-storey buildings, the widening of major arteries and the construction of new roads.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

Conakry has been characterised by rapidly accelerating growth, which started in the second half of the 20th century. The current total population is between 1.5 million and 2 million inhabitants,


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and the city stretches for more than 30 km from east to west. Conakry is home to about 50 per cent of the country’s city dwellers and between a fifth and a quarter of the country’s total population. Demographic data is hard to come by and highly unreliable.


In 1991, under the guise of a discourse on good governance, the state reconstructed and decentralised its governance, dividing the country into 34 préfectures or régions administratives (administrative regions), each administered by a governor. The prefectures are subdivided into 335 sub-prefectures and five communes, which are in Conakry, namely, Kaloum (the former city centre), Dixinn, Matam, Ratoma and Matoto. The mayors of each commune are elected in the context of a highly monitored process of democratisation and state clientelism. The city operates in a wider context of political instability. In December 2008, 48 hours after the death of President Lansana Conté, a new military regime took power in Guinea.


The first inhabitants (Susu and Baga) came from the immediate hinterland and the nearby Futa Jalo Mountains. They were followed, in smaller numbers, by migrants from the Upper Guinea Plateau (mainly Malinke) and the forested regions of Kpelle, Loma, Konianke and Kissi. This heterogeneity has characterised the population of Conakry since independence.

The main economic sectors are trade and services, and Conakry is the centre of the country’s educational institutions. Conakry is Guinea’s only major port, which serves as an outlet for the country’s bauxite exports, as well as rare substitution industries. Living standards (schooling, literacy and health, though not the HIV rate) are usually higher than in the countryside or smaller cities.

Cotonou


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HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Cotonou is a colonial city, established by the French government as a military post in 1851. Later, the king of Dahomey authorised the French to settle and trade there. The first population centre developed around a canal, named Cotonou Lagoon, which was constructed in 1894 to link Lake Nokoué to the ocean. It was around the lagoon that the first groups of inhabitants came to work on building sites or to trade.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

According to the 2002 census, the official population is 658 572, but the total is closer to 1.2 million if informal settlements are included. Cotonou experienced its highest rate of growth between 1961 and 1979, in the years following independence. This was linked to the rural exodus and population growth. The cosmopolitan city has become a refuge for many Africans fleeing dictatorships and war, and the diverse population includes Fon, Mina, Hausa and Yoruba inhabitants, as well as migrants from further north and neighbouring countries. The city is well known for its inter-religious cohabitation. Some 75.7 per cent of the population are Christian (of which 57.8 per cent are Catholic), with Islam (14.2 per cent) and voodoo (2.3 per cent) also being practised.


Benin has an efficient democracy. It was in this country that the continent’s first national conference was inaugurated in February 1990, putting an end to the revolutionary regime dominated by Mathieu Kérékou (in power from 1972 to1991) and paving the way for political pluralism. As part of the country’s decentralisation process, the first municipal elections took place in 2002. The municipal council elects the mayor and the deputies. The city of Cotonou, which is divided into 13 arrondissements (administrative districts) has also become a département (département du Littoral ).


The main highway linking Abidjan and Lagos passes through Cotonou. The city faces geographical constraints, with new suburbs crowding into the narrow space between the Atlantic Ocean and Lake Nokoué, and along the road going north towards Niger. As the economic capital of the country, Cotonou’s main activity is focused on its harbour and the giant Dantokpa market. The harbour exports the cotton cultivated in the north, and imports second-hand cars as well as industrial products, of which a small portion is re-exported to neighbouring countries. Women hold an important position in the economic and social life of Benin. Not only are they behind the country’s imports, but they also dominate the Dantokpa market. However, in the near future they may face competition from Chinese-built commercial centres.

Dakar

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Founded in 1857 by the French on the strategic Cape Verde peninsula, Dakar became the capital of French West Africa in 1902. During the 20th century, it outstripped Gorée, Rufisque and Saint-Louis to become a major naval base and trade centre. The granting of French citizenship to African indigenes from the ‘Four Communes’ (municipalities) gave them access to the local political arena. It also disturbed the segregationist colonial project, which aimed, with the creation of the Medina in 1914, to turn the Plateau into a pure ‘white’ town. In 1958 Dakar replaced Saint-Louis as the capital of Senegal, and has remained so since independence in 1960.


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DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

With an estimated population of more than 2 million, the urban area of Dakar (including Pikine and Guediawaye) is home to more than 20 per cent of Senegal’s population. Migration from the rural areas and smaller cities, as well as from neighbouring countries, was particularly marked from 1945 to the 1960s. The inflow turned Dakar into a multicultural city, and the indigenous Lebu, traditional landowners, are now a minority. Dakar’s population is grouped around several centres of urbanisation: since the 1950s, a series of irregular neighbourhoods have sprawled beyond Plateau and Medina. The suburbs of Pikine and Guediawaye, founded to accommodate the first migrants, today function as reception areas for rural migrants and the marginal population of Dakar.


The first decades of independence were marked by a decline in the autonomy of municipal institutions. From 1964 to 1996, the mayor was a state appointee. In 1996 the Decentralisation Act increased the powers of the municipality, made the mayor into an elected official once again and established borough councils. This development also deepened patronage politics, which essentially revolve around land resources. Controlling Dakar means coping with major national issues, as the city is a key electoral pool and has a history of challenging the central government, as it did during the electoral riots of 1963 and 1988, and the student riots of May 1968 and 2009.


Lebanese and French firms dominate the contemporary economy while the multiform informal sector, boosted by migration, employs the majority of urban dwellers. This context has turned Wolof into the major language of economic and social exchange, while French remains the official language. Since the late 1980s, Murid brotherhoods (a branch of Sufi Islam) have gained visibility in the urban context, offering alter native modes of activism for the youth. Overpopulation, unemployment and lack of public facilities in some districts have led to sporadic social tensions, various criminal activities and, on rare occasions, xenophobic outbursts.


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Ekurhuleni

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

The Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality, formerly known as the East Rand, was established after the municipal elections of 2000. It is bordered by Johannesburg to the east and Tshwane (Pretoria) to the north. Ekurhuleni is the result of the merging of the former municipalities of Alberton, Benoni, Boksburg, Kempton Park, Germiston, Springs, Nigel, Brakpan, Edenvale/Lethabong and Kyalami Metropolitan Council, and the Black Local Authorities that fell under each municipality. Most of these cities of the Witwatersrand date back to the late 19th century and started as mining towns before they became industrial nodes.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

The region has approximately 2.6 million residents and comprises some 190 000 hectares of land. The annual growth rate of the population is between 2.5 and 3 per cent, and the area has had a long history of migration. The real unemployment rate is above 40 per cent of the active population. The population of Ekurhuleni is very diverse, inter alia, in terms of the inherited racial categories (75 per cent black African, 21 per cent white, 2.6 per cent coloured, 1.4 per cent Indian).


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Ekurhuleni is governed by an executive mayor and a mayoral committee of 10 members. The ANC has been in power since 2000, with no serious challengers. The metro area is divided into three service-delivery regions (north, south and east), with 88 wards in total. There are 88 ward councillors (and a ward-committee system in each ward), and 87 proportionally representative councillors, totalling 175 councillors. One characteristic of Ekurhuleni’s political life is its identity problem: is it a city? Is it becoming a city? Or is it simply a political and administrative structure presiding over a diverse group of cities? There is some doubt as to whether or not a successful process of identity construction has actually been achieved.


Ekurhuleni is mainly industrial, and is responsible for 23 per cent of the gross geographic product of Gauteng. Manufacturing contributes 22.4 per cent to overall employment, although many manufacturing and warehousing operations have their head offices in Johannesburg and other metro areas. The metals and machinery sector is dominant, accounting for 30 per cent of manufacturing value-added and 31.7 per cent of employment. The city motto, ‘The Smart, Creative and Developmental City’, describes the importance of attracting investment into the area and the simultaneous effort to reduce inequality. The latter is noticeable, particularly in the differences between white and black areas and between the eastern and western parts of the region. The dominant African languages are Sesotho and isiZulu, but all of the official South African languages are present in the metro.

eThekwini

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

eThekwini, a metropolitan municipality created in 2000, includes the city of Durban and surrounding towns. It sits on South Africa’s Indian Ocean coastline and has been settled for the last few thousand years. Initially of little interest to European traders, during the 19th century a series of wars between the Zulus, Voortrekkers and the British meant that control of the territory (then called Natal) was often contested. In the 1840s the British won a convincing victory and incorporated Natal and Durban into the Cape Colony, where it remained until South Africa’s independence in the 20th century.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

The population of the city is approxi mately 3.16 million. Women comprise 52 per cent, and the average growth rate is 1.56 per cent per year. The province of KwaZulu-Natal has a high Gini coefficient (0.65) and very high rates of HIV/AIDS. The black African community constitutes the majority (68 per cent), but there is also a large Indian community (20 per cent), brought over from South Asia as indentured workers during the 19th century. Whites make up 9 per cent of the population. The population is relatively young, with 28 per cent under the age of 19. The poorest members of the community are located in the rural areas and townships and informal settlements situated on the periphery of the metro area.


At its formation, eThekwini amalgamated seven council areas and some tribal land into one metropolitan area. The city council has 200 councillors, half of whom are elected ward councillors, with the rest representing political parties on the basis of proportional representation. An executive mayor heads the council, with an executive committee of nine councillors, who are supported by six committees (each with a key focus). The city and the province have been the site of conflict


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between the political/tribal Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which has historically represented Zulu interests, and the ANC, although the last elections (in 2009 and 2011) made it clear that the ANC is the more popular political party.


Farming is still a major part of the metro’s economy, with 50 per cent of the area used for subsistence agriculture, and only 2 per cent under urban settlement. Durban harbour is the largest and busiest port in Africa and handles over R100 billion worth of container traffic per year. Although the city has generally experienced sustained growth, recent years have seen a drop of over 1.8 per cent per year, and unemployment is over 35 per cent. There is a large discrepancy in access to services and quality of life throughout the metropolitan area. Although over 80 per cent of households have access to electricity and over 60 per cent have access to piped water, 17 per cent of the population live in conditions of informality.


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Johannesburg

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Johannesburg is the provincial capital of South Africa’s Gauteng province. The area has been inhabited since the Iron Age and has seen waves of migrants, including people from the Great Lakes region and the Dutch-descended Voortrekkers. The character of the area changed almost overnight following the discovery of gold in 1886, propelling it into the position of the economic powerhouse of the southern African region. Tensions over control of the goldfields contributed to the outbreak of the South African War (1899–1902), which left the territory under British control. The reconstruction programme following the war heralded an era of racial and capitalist control and segregation that would survive various changes in official boundaries and structures of government until South Africa’s first democratic elections of 1994.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

Today, almost 3.3 million people live in the geographical area of 1 644 sq km that constitutes Johannesburg, but a further 4 million live in the Greater Johannesburg area. Children and youth (below 19 years) account for about a third of the population. Black Africans constitute 73 per cent of Johannesburg’s population, followed by 16 per cent whites, 6 per cent coloureds and 4 per cent Asians.


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Since the official end of apartheid, the city has enjoyed relative political stability. Following a national demarcation drive in 2000, five municipalities were merged to establish the current geographical boundaries of Johannesburg, which incorporates seven administrative regions overlapping with 109 electoral wards. There are a total of 217 elected councillors, from various political parties, with an executive mayor at the helm. Key city service functions are supplied by a number of separate, self-contained entities, each run on business lines with its own CEO, and each has entered into service contracts with the city.


Acute inequality and substantial poverty hamper the city’s potential, and the signs of inequality are obvious throughout Johannesburg. Although gold-mining no longer takes place within the city limits, mining companies and other multinational corporations have their headquarters in Johannesburg, and the city is home to a range of manufacturing, banking and commercial companies. By contrast, less than a third of the city’s adult residents have a high-school qualification; 7 per cent are completely illiterate; 22 per cent of residents live in informal dwellings; and inequality remains racially defined as 37 per cent of city residents are unemployed and 91 per cent of unemployed residents are black. Despite sharp inequality and high levels of poverty, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange is the largest in Africa and the city contributes almost 15 per cent of South Africa’s GDP. At home, 34 per cent of residents speak Nguni languages, 26 per cent Sotho languages, 19 per cent English and 8 per cent Afrikaans.

Kano

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

The city of Kano is situated in north-west Nigeria. Kano’s history goes back over a thousand years, from when the first centralised state and authority were set up under the leadership of Bagauda in AD 999. Islam was introduced by the Wangarawa merchants/scholars from Mali in the 15th century and Muhammadu Rumfa became the first acknowledged Kano Muslim Emir (1463–1499). Following the 1804 Jihad led by Shehu Ibn Fodio, Kano became the most prosperous emirate of the Sokoto Caliphate, one of the most powerful empires in sub-Saharan Africa prior to European conquest and colonisation. Kano was occupied by British troops in 1903 during the colonisation of Nigeria. After Nigerian independence in 1960, Kano became the capital of one of the 12 states created by the military government in 1967.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

According to the 2006 National Population Census, Kano State has the highest population in Nigeria, with 9.38 million, but this has been contested. The Kano urban area covers 137 sq km and comprises six local government areas with a population of 2.16 million. The indigenous people of Kano are principally Hausa, Fulani and Maguzawa. The imposition of British rule boosted the migration of Yorubas and Igbos from southern Nigeria to Kano. However, the British enforced a policy of legal and residential segregation between the ‘natives’ of Kano and the ‘non-native’ southern Nigerians. This historical and colonial discourse continues to create tension in the postcolonial era. Kano has a sizeable population of Lebanese, Arab and Syrian migrants, who are mainly in the upper middle-class bracket.


Kano is the capital of Kano State, one of the 36 states in Nigeria. It is currently governed by the All Nigerian People’s Party (ANPP). Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau has been the governor of Kano since 2003. Intra-party and inter-party conflicts are prominent features of politics in Kano. At the traditional


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level, Sarkin Kano Alhaji Ado Bayero is the emir of Kano. As a centre of populist politics, this predominantly Muslim city has seen periodic crises relating to attempts to defend the interests of Muslims and northern Nigeria from perceived political marginalisation and threats against Islam. In 1999/2000, Sharia law was imposed by the state government.


For several centuries, Kano had a reputation for its boisterous commerce, religiosity and a liberal policy of accommodating diverse peoples and identities. Kano’s reputation for commercial activity dates back to the 15th century. Trade routes linked Kano commercially with North Africa, the Middle East and the Red Sea. Today, the city has the largest concentration of privately owned industries in northern Nigeria and a booming informal sector that specialises in trading imported textile goods and other commodities. Traders from various parts of Nigeria, neighbouring states in West Africa and beyond visit Kano to do business. Hausa is the main language, and is widely spoken by both locals and migrants. Kano’s manufacturing sector is dominated by immigrants from Asia and the Middle East, especially Koreans, Syrians and Lebanese.

Lagos

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Lagos is on the Atlantic coast of south-west Nigeria. It was founded in the 16th century by the Awori, a subgroup of the Yorubas. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Lagos was a major centre of the Atlantic slave trade. In 1861 it was annexed by the British, who used it as a base to extend their influence to other parts of Nigeria. Lagos was the seat of government until 1991, when the federal capital was moved to Abuja. Lagos has played a leading role in the political and constitutional development of Nigeria.


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DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

Today, Lagos has a population of about 15 million people, inhabiting an area of 3 577 sq km. The expansion of the city occurred as a result of an influx of people drawn by its political and economic status. In 1866 the population was only 25 083; by 1950 it had risen to 655 246. Today, metropolitan Lagos extends over 16 of the 20 local-government areas of Lagos State. Lagos is a cosmopolitan city, in which all of Nigeria’s ethnic groups are represented, in addition to nationals of countries of the West African subregion. The male : female ratio is 53 : 47.


Metropolitan Lagos was run by the Lagos Town Council from the beginning of the 20th century until 1962, when it was changed to the Lagos City Council. In 1967 this arrangement was replaced by the local-government system. Since the return to civil rule in 1999, the Lagos state government has consistently remained in opposition to the federal government, and the city is a stronghold of traditional Yoruba opposition to the Hausa-dominated federal government. Lagos is governed by the Action Congress Party, which has embarked on a programme of urban renewal.


Lagos is traditionally a Yoruba city. Its cosmopolitan nature, however, suggests the presence of other ethnic groups, such as the Igbo and Hausa. Public drumming is part of the social life of the city, and leisure spaces range from beer parlours to amusement parks. Lagos remains the economic and financial capital of Nigeria, and houses about 95 diplomatic missions. Over 65 per cent of Nigeria’s industries are in Lagos, and there is a move to develop Lagos into a ‘world-class city’. The size of the informal sector has been estimated at between 50 and 75 per cent, and the unemployment rate at 35 per cent. The poverty levels are about 51 per cent for men and 54 per cent for women. Yoruba and pidgin English are the two major languages of communication.


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Lanquedoc

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Lanquedoc is a housing project for farm workers, located between Stellenbosch and Franschhoek in South Africa. Although not really a ‘city’, Lanquedoc is an example of urbanisation and de-agrarianisation. It was established in 1902 as a farm workers’ village of about 200 houses, and has been added to over the years by the landowners. South Africa’s political transformation in 1994 led to the legal protection of agricultural workers and a constitutional right of access to housing. To supply further housing in the area, Anglo American Corporation and the farm workers negotiated a public–private partnership, using government housing grants and private sector top-ups. However, there has been some controversy over people’s willingness to move.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

The original number of villagers increased from about 1 000 to 4 000 with the arrival of the farm workers. They were settled mostly in so-called clusters, or groups of people who had their origins from the same farm. The majority of the workers belongs to the coloured population category, but there are also a few hundred isiXhosa-speaking migrant workers and their dependants, who originally stayed in a hostel on one of the farms. These migrants have strong links to the rural areas of the Eastern Cape. The educational level of this migrant population is quite low.


Lanquedoc’s creation involved several government departments, Anglo American and the Boland District Municipality. An elected executive of the Lanquedoc Housing Association negotiated the terms and management of the housing project. The Stellenbosch Municipality, in whose area of jurisdiction the village is situated, is belatedly becoming involved in the provision of services. A local councillor represents the area on the municipal council, and is advised by a ward committee that


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represents local interests. Many in the village often express unhappiness about the level of service provision, although that does not affect their electoral support for the ruling ANC party.


The largest employer is the agricultural sector in the Paarl Valley, including the industrial processing of fruit products, but seasonal unemployment is high during winter. The recent sale of the Anglo American-owned farms to a black empowerment group has also led to the retrenchment of many in the village. Some find work in the towns around the village, but educational levels and skills tend to be low, while poverty and associated social ills are high. The recent building of a large dam on the Berg River and the upgrading of the main road have provided several months of work for some. Afrikaans tends to be the dominant language in the village, with the small African segment using isiXhosa as their home language.

Lomé

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Lomé, the capital of Togo, was officially established in 1897 by German colonial authorities. The original colonial city now includes a number of villages. Lomé has been affected by political disturbances since the so-called false democratisation of the 1990s. Since 1967, the Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais (RPT) has been the dominant party, and is embodied by the Eyadéma family. In presidential elections held in March 2010, Faure Eyadéma was controversially ‘re-elected’ amid strong contestation and accusations by the opposition of election rigging.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

Lomé is a small city, with just over 1 million inhabitants (representing a sixth of Togo’s population). However, urban growth is about 6.1 per cent per year, and as a result, the city has sprawled towards


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the north and west, creating irregular suburbs. Lomé has always appeared as a city without segregation; it was not an egalitarian city, but its inequalities were not along spatial lines. However, the growth of the city may cause this to change: as urban transport becomes too expensive for the poorest residents, they may be forced to live closer to the city centre and economic opportunities. Almost half the city’s residents are migrants from countries in the Economic Community of West African States, but they have little to no official recognition in the city.


The city is spread over an area of 60 sq km. There is no metropolitan authority; instead government of the urban area is divided between the municipality (for the inner city) and the Préfecture du Golfe (for the growing suburbs), a subdivision of the Maritime region. There is no real urban policy, and the last local elections took place in 1987. Since then, Lomé’s municipal team has functioned as a specific delegation of the central authority. In each ward, there is a traditional chieftaincy, but since 2005 these authorities have been nominated by the specific delegation. The main party is the RPT (as mentioned above), which is aligned to, if not synonymous with, the Eyadéma family. The Union des Forces du Changement (UFC), the historic opposition party, has strong support in Lomé, as the detailed results of the last presidential elections demonstrate. But in the absence of local elections, the RPT dominates the political landscape.


Lomé’s economic situation is not good. There is very little international investment, and local investors are few. Only the port (and its associated free port) seem to have a real economic importance (with 10 000 employees in 2007). The main economic driver is the informal sector, which comprises 81 per cent of all economic activity, with a special emphasis on informal trading.

Luanda


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HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Luanda was founded by the Portuguese in 1576 on a semi-arid coast with no indigenous settlement. Until 1836 it was an emporium for slave exports to Brazil, and afterwards became a commercial port. The city is divided into the downtown area (Cidade Baixa), where business is concentrated, and the upper town (Cidade Alta) on the high plateau, which has public buildings and symbols of military, religious and civil power. In the 1940s, Luanda grew with the construction of the port, industrial and commercial development, coffee exports and diamond exploration. In 1975 Angola gained independence from Portugal after 10 years of armed liberation struggle, and a socialist-oriented government assumed power. A violent and prolonged civil war immediately broke out, lasting until 2002.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

In 1827, before the abolition of slavery, Luanda had about 6 813 inhabitants. By 1930 the population had increased eight-fold. However, growth really took off with industrial development – by 1940, the city had 61 028 inhabitants (14.7 per cent being white), and by 1970 Luanda was a major cosmopolitan city of 475 328 inhabitants (26.3 per cent being Europeans). Population growth exploded after independence, and the population reached 948 000 inhabitants in 1983 and 3.28 million in 2000. Today the population currently exceeds 6 million, more than a third of Angola’s total population. The majority of Luanda’s inhabitants are from the Ovimbundu, Kimbundu and Bakongo communities.


Angola has been governed by the same party, the MPLA, since independence, despite a constitutional change to a multiparty system in 1992. In spite of the 2002 peace agreement ending the civil war, the country is still waiting for free and democratic presidential elections. For Luanda, power is centralised at the provincial level, with a centrally appointed provincial governor in charge of the province. This system has translated into grandiose plans for the growth of the urbanised city, with accelerated renovation and verticalisation of the city centre and expulsion of the poor to the periphery.


After being a slave-trade port, Luanda became an important commercial port. This contributed to the emergence of a local bourgeoisie, a process consolidated by the construction of the port and industrial and commercial development from the 1940s onwards. Since the late 1980s, economic liberalisation has favoured the emergence of a strong informal sector. In the last decade, following the end of the country’s civil war, increasing oil and diamond exploration has fuelled economic growth, but the city displays massive spatial inequalities. Over half the city’s inhabitants live in poverty and few have access to basic essential services.

Maputo

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Colonial Lourenço Marques (as Maputo was called until 1975) was an administrative centre, providing port and railway facilities, and migrant labour for the South African mines. It experienced secondary industrialisation and rapid population growth from the 1950s. Mozambique’s independence in 1975 saw the exodus of skilled whites, rapid African occupation of the city centre, a change of name and the introduction of socialism. Civil war in the 1980s led to insecurity, food shortages, a flood of rural refugees and the collapse of infrastructure. In the 1990s peace and multiparty democracy were accompanied by economic structural adjustment. The 2000s have seen rapid, but uneven, economic growth, the expansion of the city, a building boom and growing inequality.


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DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

The official population figure (2007) is 1.01 million but unofficial estimates are closer to 1.3 million. The city has expanded rapidly since the end of the civil war in the 1990s, and greater Maputo also draws in a substantial floating population on a daily basis from the adjacent municipalities of Matola, Boane and Marracuene. There are more female residents (52 per cent) than men (48 per cent), and a very young population. Over three-quarters (76 per cent) of the city’s residents are under the age of 35, and only 2 per cent are over the age of 65. Life expectancy is 59, considerably higher than the national average.


After independence, under the control of Mozambique’s ruling party, FRELIMO, Maputo was managed as a dependent arm of central government, without political or administrative autonomy. In 1999 decentralised autonomous local government, with competitive politics, was introduced. The opposition party, RENAMO, boycotted the first elections; in subsequent polls FRELIMO has continued to dominate city politics, despite the emergence of a small independent group. Local administration is complicated by a system of dual subordination to central and provincial government, where the mayor also has the status of governor. The most recent mayor was credited with a number of significant improvements but was sidelined by FRELIMO in 2008 for being too independent.


Poverty is widespread, and is more acute in the peri-urban areas, where nearly three-quarters of all Maputo’s residents live in informal housing with poor or non-existent urban services. About a third of all households are female-headed; two-thirds of household heads have only primary education or less; and nearly two-thirds of families depend on the informal economy for their livelihoods. In order to limit risk, many households have members who work in South Africa or live in the rural areas. There is a rich associational life in the city. Civil society has expanded since the end of one-


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party rule, but it remains weak. Portuguese is the official language of communication in Maputo, but local languages are commonly spoken, especially in the peri-urban zones.

Nairobi

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Nairobi is in many ways an archetype of the African colonial city, having purely British colonial origins, which shaped its structure and management at the time of Kenya’s transition to independence in 1963. Nairobi was first established in 1899 as a transport and administrative centre, and later grew to become the capital of Kenya and a fully fledged city. The present administrative boundary covers an area of 686 sq km – from 3.84 sq km in 1910. From 2008 the spatial planning of Nairobi has included the Nairobi Metropolitan Region, an area covering 3 000 sq km that depends on Nairobi municipality’s core functions.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

Nairobi’s population, dominance and importance have grown steadily since independence, and will continue to do so. For example, the city’s population has increased from about 12 000 in 1906, to


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506 000 in 1969, to 2.1 million in 1999. The population of Nairobi is currently estimated to be 3.36 million, representing about 38 per cent of the total urban population in Kenya, and with an annual growth rate of 3.8 per cent. Whereas in the past rural-to-urban migration was the major contributor to the urban growth of Nairobi, natural growth and in situ urbanisation are becoming significant factors of population growth.


Nairobi has eight electoral constituencies represented in Parliament by their Members of Parliament. The constituencies consist of a number of electoral wards, each represented by a councillor. Currently, the Members of Parliament and councillors in Nairobi come from the two dominant political parties in Kenya: the Party of National Unity and the Orange Democratic Party. The Nairobi City Council, composed of elected and nominated councillors and the executive arm, is in charge of city governance. The political leader of the council is the mayor, elected through a secret ballot by all the councillors, while the executive arm is headed by the town clerk.


Nairobi plays an important role in the global, regional, national and local economy. It is the home and headquarters of a number of international and regional organisations, institutions and companies. Locally, Nairobi is an important centre of employment and socio-economic activities in Kenya. It generates over 45 per cent of GDP for the Kenyan economy and employs 25 per cent of Kenyans and 43 per cent of the country’s urban workers. Despite the increase in informal-sector activities, Nairobi still dominates urban formal sector employment. The cosmopolitan population includes various nationalities and Kenyan ethnic groups.

Ouagadougou


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HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

Ouagadougou was formerly a centre of power of the Mossi kingdoms, a trio of states that lasted until the arrival of the French in the late 19th century. During early colonial times, it was a military camp, and was later chosen as the capital of Haute-Volta (Upper Volta, renamed Burkina Faso after independence from France). Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso’s second city, was far more dynamic, and would have been more suitable as a capital. But choosing Ouagadougou was a way for the French to control the Mossi warriors. Until 1947 it was barely a city, and consisted largely of traditional buildings. However, modernisation and westernisation accelerated after 1947 and following independence.

DEMOGRAPHIC PROFILE

From 1970 to 1980, Ouagadougou’s population grew at a rate of 9.4 per cent per year. This has slowed to 4.4 per cent per year. By 2000 the city had a population of about 1.13 million, which represents almost half the urban population of the country. The city is organised on a centre/periphery scheme, and remains a mostly ‘horizontal city’, with many traditional compounds. The city centre has undergone many changes since the early 2000s, with former residents relocated to suburbs that remain mainly poor and display rural characteristics.


The city is now a municipalité, according to the 1993 decentralisation process, which empowered local government. The urban area is divided into arrondissements (sub-metropolitan assemblies); the assemblies are elected by residents and have a mayor. The city mayor is elected for a term of five years. Since the first municipal elections in 1995, the position of city mayor has been held by Simon Compaoré. The sub-metros should be autonomous, but in reality, mainly because of a lack of funds, the mayor controls most of the decision-making in the city. Compaoré is an efficient manager, but his position has been questioned: his power is highly centralised and he has strong ties to the ruling party, the Congrès pour la Démocratie et le Progrès (CDP). The most recent municipal elections had a very low rate of participation, but the results showed support for the opposition in the capital city.


Ouagadougou is Burkina Faso’s economic hub and home to the headquarters of all national government departments, banks and embassies. There are large textile and food-processing corporations, and the city has good rail links to the rest of West Africa. Ouagadougou’s periphery is poorly served, however, with a lack of water access, electricity and tarred roads. Despite great economic inequality, the city has a strong identity. It is also traditionally rebellious, and, unlike the rural areas, has often opposed the ruling party. The press is also very powerful, and openly criticises the state, which has led to the deaths of some journalists.


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IntroductionSimon Bekker and Laurent Fourchard

Half the world’s population lives in cities. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of urban dwellers will have doubled from 2007 to 2030. In 2007 there were 373 million, and demographic projections suggest that there will be around 770 million in 2030, more than the total number of city dwellers in the entire western hemisphere today (UN-Habitat 2008: 4). This phenomenal growth is powered by the most rapid, and most recent, process of urbanisation on the globe and has led to renewed interest in Africa’s cities. Several key issues are being explored: the problems and opportunities posed by this avalanche of immigrants and new residents; the extent to which city government resources are draining away; whether service delivery is being taken over by self-help groups; and whether cities are becoming polarised into large, impoverished majorities and small elites. For millions of rural-born Africans, urban Africa has emerged as a new place to live and work, as well as a primary developmental focus and a major field of study. It is within this general context that we would like to situate this book.

At a general level, there have been two competing and divergent approaches to the subject of urbanisation. One characterises this process as poverty-driven; the other views urban places as centres of economic opportunity.

The first approach conceptualises African cities as ungovernable and powerless in the face of massive in-migration, and with shrinking formal economic activity. When placed on a linear trajectory of modernisation, these cities are viewed at best as stragglers, at worst as failures. Africa is often perceived by policy analysts as different from the rest of the world. For instance, although the World Bank has recognised that the urban economies of countries of the South contribute a large proportion of gross domestic product, recent reports describe the African continent’s urban growth as ‘pathological’ or ‘dysfunctional’, suggesting that, unlike in the rest of the world, urbanisation in Africa has not been accompanied by sustained economic growth or reduced poverty (Kessides 2006).

Similarly, in the words of a UN-Habitat report (UN-Habitat 2008: 7), ‘African urbanization is a poverty-driven process and not the industrialization-induced socio-economic transition it represented in the world’s other major regions.’ One consequence of this approach is that poverty, which used to be perceived in Africa as a largely rural phenomenon, now appears to have migrated to the city. This view, which runs the risk of overlooking the large remaining poverty-stricken rural areas, is reinforced by the prioritisation of the Millennium Development Goals aimed at reducing urban poverty, and by the dissemination of well-publicised key reports and well-marketed academic books on the pervasiveness of slums in Africa (Davis 2006; UN-Habitat 2003).

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G O V E R N I N G C I T I E S I N A F R I C A – P O L I T I C S A N D P O L I C I E S

2

The ‘opportunity’ approach conceptualises African cities as cosmopolitan and global, as cities that work – and that work partially by virtue of the creativity and innovative activities of their residents. A body of literature critical of the ‘poverty’ approach began by contesting global city research paradigms that situated Africa off the global city map (Robinson 2002). A second argument suggested that globalisation should not be reduced to mere economic processes, but should be understood more widely in terms of cultural, social and political processes, in which Africa evidently plays a part (Malaquais 2006; Nuttall & Mbembe 2008; Simone 2004). Others have contested the assumption that Africa’s cities have been excluded from the global economy by pointing to uneven globalisation processes that connect large metropoles in Africa (and elsewhere), while bypassing other regions of the continent (Ferguson 2006; Grant 2009). Moreover, despite the fact that Africa is seen to be off the global city map, the notion of a world-class city is being used more and more by city managers and politicians in the continent. In a number of Africa’s larger cities, recent city government interventions to regulate revenue collection, taxation, spatial planning and trade have led to claims of world-class status by certain city administrations (Lindell 2008).

This shifting image of a number of Africa’s cities – from urban poverty to places of economic opportunity – is also changing the perceptions international investors and policy makers have of urban Africa. The shift from cursed territory (‘terremaudite’) to economic Eldorado (‘d’Eldorado économique’) (Otayek 2011) may appear to be an exaggeration, but consider the following, taken from an article in ForeignAffairs:

Not so long ago, the world lamented its broken continent. ‘The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world,’ declared British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2001 – and his was a common refrain … A decade later, Africa has outgrown the gloom and doom. Today [it] is alive with rising urban centers, a growing consumer class, and sizzling business deals. It’s a land of opportunity [and] now one of the world’s fastest-growing economic regions. (Dorr et al. 2010: 80)

We will look beyond these contrasting approaches in this book, for two reasons: both tend to focus on macroeconomic trends and play down the role of power and politics at city level, and both tend to employ only superficially three important common-wisdom notions, namely urban governance, urban identities and urban informality. First, the poverty and opportunity approaches both tend to depoliticise the local – to underestimate or ignore the role that politics and power play at the city level and the importance of city–state and city–party relationships, which remain central to the ways cities are governed, or not governed. The poverty approach conceives of poor urban residents as essentially powerless (particularly with regard to local institutions), and having little, if any, involvement in the wider city and its structures. The opportunity approach focuses essentially on the emergent urban economy and labour market, with equally little focus on urban politics, and urban party politics in particular. We will attempt to correct this omission by introducing a continuous political dimension: by analysing urban issues at different scales – geographic scopes that are meaningful to residents, such as neighbourhood, residential area, town, city, province or country – and by focusing on intra-urban party-political struggles and


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compromises, thereby revealing the micro realities and conflicts that characterise the everyday lives of residents, officials and local leaders.

The second reason brings us back to the issue of urbanisation and urban growth in Africa. The general characteristics of these processes are well known: urban sprawl becomes ubiquitous and haphazard, and service delivery – the provision of water, sewerage, waste removal and, critically, urban transport – is taken over by self-help groups or members of resident households. Perhaps the most visible consequence of this process is that housing construction becomes ‘informal’, with homes built with locally available materials by self-help contractors or residents themselves, and located to improve access to work opportunities (Bekker & Therborn 2012). In such a context, the notions of urban governance (or the absence thereof), urban identities and urban informality have been universally, and unproblematically, employed by commentators and researchers alike.

Although governance is recognised as a useful concept in political analyses (Le Galès 2002; Rosenau 2002), in the case of Africa it has been applied primarily at a national level (Hyden & Court 2002; Joseph 1999), often leading to a depoliticised vision of power relationships by focusing on formal manifestations of power (Engel & Olsen 2005). Moreover, at city level governance has been viewed within a widely publicised normative context, where it is understood to refer to participatory, transparent and accountable government (UNDP 1997).

Urban identities – widely considered to reflect national patterns of affiliations – have typically been viewed simply in ethnic (Chabal 2005), religious (Baumann 1999) or, in the case of South Africa, racial versus class terms (Marks & Trapido 1987). Little attention has been given to the micro, or neighbourhood scale, to the continually shifting allegiances and local constructions of identity, or interactions ‘from below’ (self-identification and identification by other city dwellers) and ‘from above’ (by agents such as authorities, mass media and international organisations assigning identities) that typify cities in Africa (Bekker & Leildé 2006).

The notion of informality was originally coined by the International Labour Organization (ILO 1972) and Keith Hart (Hart 1973) in order to address the question of why the dearth of formal-sector employment had not led to unsustainable levels of unemployment. Academics, policy makers and bankers took rapidly to this notion in their analyses of (especially urban) labour-market dynamics in developing countries. Several competing meanings have subsequently emerged from the works of academics and international institutions (such as the International Labour Organization and the World Bank), and subsequently today there is no consensus on what informality means. Among the many definitions, two seem to be widespread: one in which informality includes all economic activities that escape taxation or state registration, and a second definition – one that is more commonly applied, as it helps international institutions measure the contribution of the informal sector to gross domestic product – which is mainly based on non-wage salaries and self-employment enterprises (ILO 2004). After the 1970s, the term ‘informality’ was used to suggest that the cities of Africa had entered a new era marked by a general


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informalisation of the urban economy (Hansen & Vaa 2004; Lindell 2010; Zeleza 1999). However, not only were such economic activities common during the colonial periods of many African countries (Fourchard 2011), but the increasingly explicit use of the informal/formal distinction to describe a wide range of activities has also led to a dangerously simplified binary classification of urban activities, which, upon closer analysis, often emerge as distinctly more complex (Elyachar 2005; Roitman 2007). By problematising the assumptions underlying these definitions, the authors of this book intend to reveal a number of pitfalls encountered in such analyses.

Urban studies in Africa

Until recently, urban studies of sub-Saharan Africa have kept to a number of visible trajectories. Strong urbanist traditions were found in both anglophone and francophone Africa – first from the urban anthropological work of the Rhodes-Livingstone schools of sociology and anthropology (for an excellent review, see Ferguson 2006), and thereafter in the pioneering works of what has come to be called the new social and urban history (Cooper 1983; Coquery-Vidrovitch 1991; Van Onselen 1982). These works nevertheless followed different tracks, partly because of historical differences in colonial policies that influenced Africa’s cities and partly because of language barriers – although important exceptions must be noted (Gervais-Lambony 1994; Goerg 1997; Gondola 1996; Simone 2004). Few studies are available on the ways the cities of lusophone Africa are governed (see, however, Cahen 1989, Jenkins 2000, 2012; Lachartre 2000), and these have rarely been translated.

Studies of urban South Africa proliferated during the last two decades of apartheid South Africa (Maylam 1995; Parnell & Mabin 1995; Van Onselen 1982) and work continued during the first decade thereafter (Seekings 2000). Analysis of the apartheid and post-apartheid city, however, often ran the risk of exceptionalism, implying that South Africa’s cities were fundamentally different from others on the continent (Humphries et al. 1991). Writing soon after the demise of apartheid, Maylam (1995), in his review of urban research over the previous two decades, appeared obliged by virtue of the focus of the works he reviewed to treat South Africa as a ‘social isolate’, a unique island disconnected from its continent. In a later review of urban studies after apartheid, Seekings (2000) used a similar focus: the only reference to Africa beyond South Africa’s borders is a closing remark regarding swelling African migration streams into the country and its cities. It is no surprise then that it was during this period that Mamdani (1998) recommended that

[we] have to take head on the notion of South African exceptionalism and the widely shared prejudice that while South Africa is a part of Africa geographically, it is not quite culturally and politically, and certainly not economically [a part]. It is a point of view that I have found to be a hallmark of much of the South African intelligentsia, shared across divides: white or black, left or right, male or female.

After the turn of the century, the focus of urban studies broadened. Scholars from other African countries collaborated with South African scholars on comparative


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urban work (Simone 2004), and urban scholars began to treat South African cities as examples of cities from the global south (Watson 2009). Notwithstanding this shift in focus, Nuttall and Mbembe (2008) have criticised South African scholars for their continued obsession with the segregated nature of the country’s cities while paying insufficient attention to the integration of South Africa into world social and political trends.

At the continental level, studies in North Africa, in the Maghreb region and Egypt, are perceived to belong – at least in institutional research terms – to a different region, to the arabophone Mediterranean rim. As far as urban studies are concerned, there have been few examples that bridge the Saharan gap (see, however, an attempt at synthesis in Freund 2007). The fact that North Africa, the anglophone and francophone countries, and southern Africa are bounded by different languages that need to be accessible to the researcher has limited the attempts to build a comparative analysis of Africa’s cities. In this book, we have decided to restrict our attention to the cities of sub-Saharan Africa largely for practical reasons. African studies in Europe and Africa typically share this geographical focus.

There are three challenges we believe are worth identifying in the search for clarification of Africa’s urban past and urban present. Although these may not be original insights, they are nonetheless significant and have influenced the way in which we have planned this book.

The first challenge involves a critical analysis – a deconstruction, if you will – of the categories commonly used by scholars and policy makers in their characterisation of Africa’s cities (Fourchard 2011). These include terms such as ‘colonial’, ‘postcolonial’, ‘cosmopolitan’ and ‘informal’. The use of such terms poses a number of dangers:• When Africa’s cities are considered to be dysfunctional, chaotic or informal,

it is typically by comparison with the Western city – a paradigmatic model or benchmark.

• Each of these categorisations may have its advantages, in particular that of comparison with cities within, and categories of cities outside, the selected group. Simultaneously, there are disadvantages. In the first place, the category tends to frame the nature of a city’s relationship with other cities and accordingly usually determines this relationship. This may well lead not only to simplification of a complex set of relations, but also to a distortion of priorities (Davis & Kingsbury 2011).

• Associated with this point, all cities may be visualised as forms of living geology, shaped by and functioning through historical layers of ambitions, efforts and constructions of meaning, set in natural environments of topography and climate, and subject to change (Bekker & Therborn 2012). Africa’s cities are no different, but many of the categories used to classify them appear to ignore these processes.

The second challenge is to demonstrate that the history of African cities is important, but not in a simple linear way. Conventional analyses of urban change in Africa have tended, rather too simply, to divide its chronology into discrete phases:


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an ahistorical and often forgotten pre-colonial past; a supposedly orderly and racially informed colonial period (often reduced to urban planning, technologies of control and associated civilising missions); and a postcolonial period, perceived as a more fluid and complex era, shaped by pervasive conflicts (see Demissie 2007; Enwezor et al. 2002; Myers & Murray 2006). Such an approach often falls into the trap of introducing binary categories whereby colonial and postcolonial cities are treated as fundamentally different, and crosscutting historical influences are ignored. There is, however, a small but growing body of research on Africa’s urban past that relates to more general urban studies, and these works are opening up new theoretical partnerships between history and the social sciences (Ferguson 1999; Rakodi 1997; Simone 2004). We would like to situate this book within this area of literature.

The third challenge is to move beyond one of the major biases found in many works in the fields of African urban history and African urban studies. In a nutshell, the issue is an exclusive focus on the local – on local urban strategies, local urban regulations and local urban actors in a single urban place (Coquery-Vidrovitch 1991; Fourchard 2004; Le Galès 2002; Saunders 1992). These studies typically become monographs trimmed of comparative dimensions and located somewhat superficially in regional or global contexts.

In our ambition to eliminate this bias and locate this book squarely within a comparative framework, we are aware that we will not be the first. Others have already started to study Africa’s cities in such contexts (Bekker & Therborn 2012; Freund 2007; Gervais-Lambony 1994, Simone 2004). And some comparative work has also been undertaken regarding public policies implemented in cities in Africa and other regions of the South (Durand-Lasserve & Royston 2002; Huchzermeyer 2004; Jaglin 2005). The aim, however, is to position our book neither as a series of monographic studies of various cities in Africa nor as a history of these cities in a linear context, but rather as a series of comparative studies that put party politics, policies and history at the centre of an analysis of processes shaping urban Africa, and interrogate a number of the conceptual tools widely used in such analyses.

Exploring urban Africa

In order to guard against exclusive attention to a single city, we have decided in this book to study urban issues across several cities. And in order to move beyond language constraints, geographical segregation and a binary approach to colonial and postcolonial events, we have decided deliberately to select cities from different regions and with divergent colonial histories.

Our point of departure was to select a number of contested issues and themes, and to assemble teams of scholars to research them. Some 36 researchers (including doctoral students) from six countries (Ethiopia, France, Kenya, Nigeria, Portugal and South Africa) were approached. Their work was conducted in three languages. The teams collaborated over a four-year period. The research programme was planned and launched at conferences held in Johannesburg and Bordeaux, and culminated in a conference in Stellenbosch in December 2009. The individual teams met a number


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of times during this period to discuss issues relating to the preparation of their chapters, each of which was written by a number of authors. Each team approached their selected subject from a range of disciplines and assembled data from between four and six cities. A last team meeting (dubbed

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Politics and Policies - CORE · Julie Berg, Rufus Akinyele, Laurent Fourchard, Kees van der Waal and Michellene Williams. Contributors 189 Index 191 . Governing cities.indd 3 2013/03/14