Right to the city? Urban governance and the spatial politics of street traders in Harare, Zimbabwe
Abstract
This study investigates how contemporary modes of urban governance in Harare, Zimbabwe are experienced, negotiated and resisted by street traders in their everyday struggle for their right to the city. The study has three specific objectives. First, to examine how street traders are portrayed in media and institutional discourses. Second, to interrogate policy and governance responses and their implications for different groups of street traders. Third, to analyse how street traders negotiate access to contested spaces and the different strategies they use to resist exclusionary practices. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative approach rooted in the critical realist philosophy, which emphasizes the social construction of knowledge. Data was collected through Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of 51 newspaper articles, 26 key informant interviews with urban governance actors (e.g. planners, civil society leaders, municipal enforcement officials among others), 19 semi-structured interviews with selected street traders, 3 focus group discussions, and photovoice with 10 street traders. The findings demonstrate that street traders are discursively represented as a disruptive urban nuisance that undermines the propagated socio-spatial order, ‘criminals’, agents of pollutions and diseases and ‘economic parasites’. These top-down hegemonic discourses have dominated media and institutional narratives for a long time, while at the same time overshadowing any forms of counter-discourses that construct street trading as a legitimate economic activity for the urban poor. These negative discourses are then used to de-legitimize street trading and implement aggressive repression, including evictions, harassments and penalization aimed at eradicating the livelihoods of street traders. Although these hostile practices are universally experienced by all street traders, their impact are severe for female street traders and those with other vulnerabilities (e.g. the elderly and disabled street traders). The City of Harare has also experimented with an alternative governing mode that involves relocating street traders to designated trading spaces. However, most of these trading spaces are located outside the central city areas, which undermines the organic attributes of street trading activities. Despite facing intensified hostility and spatial exclusion, the findings reveal that street traders exhibit endurance and ingenuity by using different strategies (e.g. subaltern surveillance, spatial maneuvering, evasion etc.) to lay claims to urban space and defend their right to the city. Nonetheless, these forms of resistance and negotiation provide temporary reprieve without triggering long term structural changes in urban planning, policy, and governance frameworks. Therefore, the study makes a call for cities to recognize the contributions of street traders and integrate them into urban planning and policy frameworks as a foundation for building inclusive and pro-poor cities.