Order and disorder in African cities: the social roots and contemporary outcomes of approaches to governance and land management

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1 Order and disorder in African cities: the social roots and contemporary outcomes of approaches to governance and land management Carole Rakodi International Development Department, School of Government and Society, University of Birmingham, UK Paper presented to the UNU-WIDER Project Workshop Beyond the Tipping Point: Development in an Urban World, Cape Town June, Abstract African cities are often regarded as having descended into or being threatened by chaos. The historical roots of these perceptions of urban chaos and fear of disorder will be briefly traced. In response, both colonial and post-independence governments have attempted to impose order on towns and cities, in particular with respect to politico-administrative systems for urban management and the development of urban land. This paper will, first, explore the forms which these attempts to achieve orderly urban development have taken in the colonial and post-colonial periods, and second assess the extent to which they have succeeded. We will see that attempts to foster political and physical order by basing political organization on representative liberal democracy and the registration and regulation of individual interests in land and property have been problematic. An important question, therefore, is whether the problems arise from the underlying assumptions on which the models are based assumptions about what characteristics political and physical order should have and how it should be achieved or from shortcomings in the way the political and land administration systems have been designed and operationalized. In particular, the influence of attempts to create political and physical order has been limited, with the result that most political activity and land development does not comply with the rules of the formal political and land administration systems. The common view that cities are, as a result, chaotic will, however, be challenged. That in most cities residents and enterprises are able to access land, (some) services and utilities continue to function, and social and political relationships are not anarchic belies the diagnosis that African cities are chaotic and disorderly and raises questions about the conception of order on which most attempts to manage urban development rest. The relative roles of formal/state and informal institutions (or rules) governing social relations with respect to political and land development processes will be analyzed. It will be asserted that, far from behaving in an anarchic fashion, actors in urban politics and land development base their behaviour on widely understood and accepted, if informal, rules for social interaction. As a result, the appropriateness of the concepts of order underlying attempts to institutionalize particular forms of political and physical order need to be challenged. The implications of the analysis for developing improved conceptual frameworks and policy will be explored and some pointers for the future will be identified. 1

2 1. Introduction 1 African cities are often regarded as having descended into or being threatened by chaos and disorder. Academic analysts, politicians, novelists and foreigners alike have frequently portrayed African cities as chaotic and unruly (Dunn, 2004; G.A. Myers and Murray, 2007). This was certainly the reaction of many of the early colonialists to existing towns in Africa. Today, in states riven by conflict and warlordism, effective governance at both national and city levels has collapsed. The situation is made worse by influxes of refugees from rural insecurity cities like Mogadishu, Kinshasa, Kisangani or Freetown are mirrors for the fears of other African countries and foreigners alike. However, much more generally, African cities are seen as disorderly and threatened by chaos. The perceived disorder has many manifestations. In particular it is both socio-political and spatial. First, the concentration and mixing of people from a variety of areas of origin is believed to be accompanied by the erosion of traditional values, the breakdown of basic social units and networks and increased political volatility, resulting in cities that are socially unhealthy and ungovernable. Second, the processes of land development are also disorderly, giving rise to congestion and traffic chaos, unplanned settlement in unsuitable areas, and the failure of infrastructure networks and environmental health services to keep pace with demand. Such a view of cities is not new, of course commentators on the growing industrial cities of the 19 th century also portrayed them as anarchic and threatening to the social and political order. Nor is it restricted to Africa Mooney and his colleagues in an Open University text entitled Unruly Cities? note that the idea of disorder has become central to many accounts of contemporary cities, fuelled by growing social and spatial polarization, the ghettoisation or territorial stigmatization of disadvantaged areas in cities around the world, growing levels of crime and social unrest, and heightened concerns about urban sprawl, congestion and pollution. Disorder is associated with social conflict, a lack of formal rules and the active disconnection of areas and groups constructed as disorderly (as alien, foreign and other ) 1 The ideas in this paper were first explored for a paper presented at one of the five platforms (conferences) organized as part of the preparation for the 11 th Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany in 2002 (Rakodi, 2002). It draws, in particular, on recent research in which the author collaborated with colleagues in the International Development Department and beyond, on urban politics and governance in ten cities in the South and informal land delivery in several Anglophone African cities. 2

3 despite (or maybe because of) being in close spatial proximity to areas and groups who perceive themselves as orderly (Cochrane, 1999; Mooney, 1999; Pile et al., 1999). But disorder only emerges out of a sense of order (Mooney, 1999, p.55). Concepts of order reflect particular worldviews, including the relations of inequality and power that underlie and reproduce those worldviews. Disorder must be understood in relation to what is considered to constitute order. Because of the fear of disorder and for other reasons, especially health and economic efficiency, decision-makers have long tried to achieve more orderly urban development, imposing their own ideas of what constitutes order and systems by which that order is to be achieved. In discussing urban disorder, therefore, the questions of what is order? and whose order? are central, since the outcomes of attempts to impose order depend not just on how it is conceptualized but also on who is trying to impose it and their relations with those people or environments regarded as disorderly. In this paper, I focus on two inter-related aspects of social ordering: political order and physical or spatial order. I will explore attempts to impose order on (or restore order to) African cities, teasing out the concepts of order being used and their origins, identifying some outcomes and assessing whether alternative, supposedly more authentically African, orderings might be more appropriate. 2. Visions of orderly urban development All development objectives, whether economic, social or political, urban or rural, embody a vision of the order that it is hoped they will achieve: the ideal worlds that development actors aim to bring about through the execution of proper policy and project design (Lewis and Mosse, 2006). This section examines the origins and underpinnings of the visions of order that have influenced analyses of and policies applied in African countries, with particular reference to urban centres, considering political and physical order in turn. Political order The governance of African urban centres was a key preoccupation of colonial governments, since new urban centres were needed to accommodate, in the style to which they were 3

4 accustomed, expatriate administrators; engineers and supervisors engaged in colonial port, railway and road construction and operation as well as mining enterprises; and the traders and bankers on which they and the commercial farmers depended. Moreover, the colonial enterprise depended on a mostly indigenous labour force that had to be enticed into the urban centres but then kept under control. In some places, these urban centres were started from scratch and urban administrations on the model of the mother country instituted. Elsewhere, the adoption of indirect rule and/or the existence of earlier indigenous urban centres led the colonial administrators to develop parallel urban administrative systems and settlements alongside the existing ones. In the British colonies, preoccupation with the health of the European population and ensuring that the colonies were not a financial drain on Britain led to the establishment of local authorities governed by elected councils in which the franchise was restricted to ratepayers those liable for payment of property tax. In accordance with the British legislation of the time, such property owners were male and European, since Africans were regarded as a necessary but temporary labour force and their return to rural areas was enforced by prohibiting them from owning land and property in urban areas. As pressure for independence grew, the earlier emphasis on a relatively high degree of financial and decision-making autonomy for urban areas was reinforced by a belief that engagement in local government was a good school for education in the values and procedures of democracy, although at the urban level the role of political parties as embodiments of political interests and formulators of policy was, in line with the UK local government system of the time, downplayed in favour of independent candidates. At both national and local levels, the franchise was gradually extended, finally becoming universal at independence. The increased roles and responsibilities of central and local governments would, it was anticipated, be fulfilled by Weberian bureaucracies operating in the public interest and accountable to elected politicians. The scene was set for urban centres to contribute to the development and modernization projects of post-independence governments. That systems of representative democracy were established in most newly independent African countries in the 1960s is, of course, not to say that they have been stable political systems. Nor have governments borne much resemblance to capable and accountable Weberian bureaucracies. In practice, conflicts between factions have generally been resolved 4

5 by a return to authoritarianism, either military or presidential. In the former, for example Nigeria, coups and counter-coups alternated with periods of democratic rule, and elected municipal councils were replaced by appointed administrators or commissions. In the latter, for example Zambia, Tanzania, Senegal or Kenya, an executive president emerged who was able to stand above and manipulate factions or bypass parties and place the bureaucracy under his own control. Representative institutions such as parties, parliament and local governments were downgraded or abolished. Although many of the regimes instituted mechanisms for the expression of political voice, generally through the machinery of the dominant party ( participatory democracy ), the scope for freedom of expression was rapidly eroded and the machinery used predominantly for information giving, mobilization and eventually repression. Such systems sometimes achieved stability in the 1970s and 1980s, but in some countries they soon broke down, opening the way for military intervention or extreme clientelist spoils politics. In the latter type of state, ethnic identity is used to mobilize political support, and the winner (the dominant faction) takes all, looting an economy dominated by the black market. Such an economy is characterized by generalized economic crisis, pervasive criminality and corruption, the erosion of authority, and instability, which in some countries resulted in complete state breakdown (Chabal and Daloz, 1999). Following the end of the Cold War, economic crisis, international and domestic pressure for change, especially from urban populations, and the ending of some civil conflicts, the 1990s were marked by widespread re-democratization. That is not to say that there has been a common experience the pressures that led to re-democratization differed, and the constitutional outcomes and subsequent experiences vary also. The core components of political reform, under international pressure, have been multi-party competition, fair elections and democratic decentralization not very different to the model of the 1950s and 1960s (Bangura, 2000; Kamrava, 2005; G.A. Myers and Murray, 2007; Parekh, 1993). We can, therefore, discern a dominant ideology of political order and a more or less universal model that is being tried and re-tried the order of liberal representative democracy, in which liberalism determines the nature of the state (formal, abstract), its structure (separate from the autonomous civil society, a clear separation between public and private), its rationale (protection of the basic rights of its citizens) and its basic units (individuals rather than groups or communities). Democracy specifies who constitutes the legitimate government and wields the authority inherent in the state (the elected 5

6 representatives), how they acquire authority (free elections, choice between parties) and how they are to exercise it (in broad harmony with public opinion) (Parekh, 1993, p. 165). The precise arrangements vary. Nevertheless, it was expected that, by adopting the mechanisms of liberal democracy, relations between states and citizens would be satisfactorily regulated, competing interests balanced and reconciled, and elected representatives and the bureaucracies that supposedly implement their decisions held to account 2. Democratic decentralization is expected to increase the capacity of local governments to manage local development, including urban growth; enhance their responsiveness and accountability to residents, especially the poor; and also to relieve the political and fiscal pressures on central government (Blair, 2000). However, at the same time as attempts were made to realize this political vision, economic pressures to reduce public sector spending and technocratic pressures to improve the efficacy of government by reforming public sector management also came into play. Reducing the size of the public sector by devolving many functions to private firms as well as arms length public sector agencies was justified in terms of the market or management incentives and mechanisms that were expected to result in more effective and efficient service delivery, although many of the implications of relying on market-based and indirect channels to ensure responsiveness and accountability, including the political implications, were little considered. Physical order European and North American countries experienced rapid uncontrolled urbanization both during the industrial revolution and later, following the development of new transport technology (railways and motor vehicles). The emerging industrial cities were regarded as not only physically disorganized and congested but also as socially disorderly upper class alarm at the threats posed to their health and the apparent unruliness of the urban underclass led, in the early 20 th century, to the institution of a variety of more or less effective systems for planning and regulating urban development. These aimed to reduce the public health threat, to produce orderly patterns of urban development, and to protect property owners by separating them from the social groups and areas perceived as sources of disorder the socially marginalized ghettoes. In the leap characteristic of physical determinism, it was 2 See, for example, (Kamrava, 2005) and (Luckham et al., 2003) for discussions of the issues and challenges posed by democratic transition and consolidation. 6

7 assumed that improving poor physical environments would bring about changes in the unruly and dysfunctional behaviour that trapped people in poverty. Later, wide public backing for postwar reconstruction and, in a situation of ongoing food shortages, means of safeguarding agricultural land, as well as recognition that development control helped to produce and protect property values, led to stronger planning systems. The ideas, mindsets and technologies were exported to the colonies, with variations emanating from differences in the legal systems and culture of European countries on the one hand and colonial perceptions of the situation they found in Africa on the other 3. The systems of urban planning and land administration introduced in the colonies were, therefore, based on European conceptualizations of the nature of property rights and the legitimate role of the state, as well as the desire of Europeans to further the colonial enterprise, protect themselves against ill-understood diseases and maintain socio-political control over the indigenous population (Simon, 1999; Abdoulmaliq Simone, 2005). Perhaps most importantly, colonial urban development was based on private rights to enjoy property in perpetuity, dispose of it freely and use it as collateral for investment. The legal basis for private property rights was enshrined in colonial legislation and large tracts of expropriated land disposed of for commercial agriculture or urban use in accordance with this legislation. Indeed this was regarded as the only possible system for urban areas. The expropriation of land by agreement or force failed to recognize the nature of indigenous land rights systems, which were generally based on multiple holders of rights to any one area of land and rights of usufruct rather than outright ownership. In a system of private property 3 Dunn (2004) focuses on colonial and post-colonial travellers perceptions of Africa, noting that the traveller is not a blank slate who has objective experiences, but rather someone who reproduces and reinforces the dominant narratives of an ideological system. For travellers to Africa, an understanding of the land and its inhabitants pre-exists before contact, given the construction of Africa and African identities in societal discourses, narratives and representations. Different travellers may react and/or alter these discourses in myriad different ways, but the societally constructed narratives remain the foundational ground upon which they react and negotiate their own understandings Just as colonial African travel narratives were built upon pre-existing constructions of African identities, postcolonial African travel narratives build upon the colonial discourses and tropes appropriating, re-employing, subverting and inverting them depending upon the context and author (p. 487). He suggests that the discursive images through which African tourist destinations are marketed portray the continent as a primitive paradise, a zoo and undeveloped, traditional and pure the supposedly authentic Africa (p. 488). Rarely [he notes] are there images of urbanised and industrialised African spaces (p. 488). The result is manifest in attempts to preserve the traditional and pure Africa through depopulating space of Africans (game parks) and controlling the images through which the destinations are portrayed. Contemporary tourism is, he suggests, underlain by a long-standing Western fear of unordered and chaotic African space that continues to give rise to a desire to control and tame Africa: its landscape, its nature and its inhabitants (p. 492). Analysing the influence of these tourist discourses on those other travellers, the myriad expatriate experts and consultants employed by the aid industry, would be instructive. 7

8 rights, the role of the state is to protect and guarantee the rights of property owners and occupiers by registering those rights and enforcing contracts related to their ownership and transfer. This requires bureaucratic and technical capacity backed by a legal system. Only when one rights holder s enjoyment of his (or more rarely her) property interferes with the ability of others to do the same is state intervention, in theory, acceptable. In practice, of course, governments have adopted a range of other roles which are, to a greater or lesser extent, accepted as legitimate. These relate in particular to the provision of physical infrastructure and the regulation of development to protect public health and achieve desired patterns of land use. When the colonial powers started to develop urban enclaves to accommodate their businesses, officials and other nationals, as well as their local employees, they used the same engineering technologies, planning ideas and standards that had been developed to meet the requirements of rapid urbanization in Europe. Sometimes these were copied directly hence the far from apocryphal stories about building standards that required roofs to be capable of bearing the weight of snow. In other circumstances, they were refracted through colonial perceptions of African circumstances, for example the perception that land was abundant (see also Krueckeberg, 1999). Thus garden city ideas were prescribed by British town planning consultants for Lusaka in the 1930s, but at half the densities adopted in the British new towns (Rakodi, 1986). The engineering approaches included supply-driven engineer-led approaches to urban water supply, which downplay the full costs of provision and discourage demand management. They also included the notion that universal road access and waterborne sewerage are desirable, leading to width standards for access ways that are excessive given low levels of vehicle ownership and human waste disposal methods that are costly in terms of both finance and water use, reaching few urban dwellers as a result. Inextricably linked to the land use planning and regulatory system were ideas on what constituted a good urban built environment, which were embodied in plan proposals and needed to be implemented through public investment and development control decisions. Possibly the most influential of these was the desirability of separating social (racial, ethnic, class) groups and uses. In addition, to protect urban dwellers against fire, infectious disease and other health hazards, builders of substantial housing and rapacious landlords, it was assumed that detailed control over the construction of individual houses was needed, despite the inability of local authorities to achieve this given the pace of urban growth and their limited resources (see, for example, Njoh, 1999; Simon, 1999). 8

9 The modernist conceptions of physical order and the planning and regulatory systems to ensure that the urban built environment fitted these conceptions were, therefore, exported to Africa by the colonial powers, taking different forms in different places depending on their European origins: Urban areas have long been perceived as reservoirs of European modernity and progress amidst a host of threats from their uncivilized outsides [They embody] a modernist urban imaginary, which provides a utopian image of order, control and ontological security in the face of difference (Popke and Ballard, 2004, p. 101). This has been perpetuated by the post-independence development discourse, conceptualized within a theoretical framework of modernization theory, which fixed Africa and Africans in a specific reading of space and time within an evolutionary narrative dictated by Western/modernist values of the individual and the market. This new development discourse was, at its heart, a re-framing of the civilizing discourses of colonialism. Africa, defined as a traditional space, was set in opposition to Western modernity. Within the terms of economic development, this has meant that traditional elements whether economic, social or political must be rooted out in the name of progress (Dunn, 2004, p. 489). The modernist urban imaginary continues to be embodied in little altered legislation and practice, as well as the inherently slow to change built fabric. It has been reinforced by the continued transfer of northern ideas and technology through models of professional training, the use of international consultants and contractors, the preconceptions and practices of international development agencies and their staff, travel by Africans themselves, and ideas and images transmitted through the global media. Cities have always been structurally enmeshed in global economic and geopolitical networks. Nevertheless, their form cannot be attributed solely to the forces of globalization and imported ideas. First, global influences interact with local political and economic configurations in different ways depending on the conduits of transmission and the networks that mediate them (G.A. Myers and Murray, 2007, p. 3). Moreover, not only have Africans internalized imported ideas, they have also evolved their own ideas in response to decision-makers imperatives to create impressions of their power (G.A. Myers, 2003, p. 329), achieve economic prosperity and prevent disease and unrest. 9

10 3. Outcomes of attempts to create order and the contemporary city Almost inevitably, Lewis and Mosse (2006, p.2) suggest, there is a disjuncture between development intentions and outcomes, between the ideal worlds and the social reality they have to relate to. In this section, recent research is drawn on to explore some of the outcomes of attempts to govern and manage cities and to critically examine some of the alternative sources of order that are advocated. 3.1 Political order Research, for example in Mombasa, Kumasi and Johannesburg, shows that by the end of the 1990s, the outcomes of renewed democratic decentralization fell short of what was hoped in four key respects (Devas et al., 2004; Rakodi, 2004): First, local representative political organization has often been seen as a challenge to both political stability and the ruling party, by providing sectional interests or opposition parties with a political platform. This led to continued failure by central governments to provide municipal and city councils with a financial base adequate to fulfil their mandates and continued limits on their decision-making autonomy, together giving rise to difficulties attracting good quality candidates into the local political arena. In addition, in some cases, central government appointed a chief executive of whose political support they could be assured and who could manipulate and over-ride the local legislature, as in Kumasi, or suspended local councils on the pretext of their poor performance when political impasse has been reached, as in Dar es Salaam in The result is generally a vicious circle of poorly resourced city councils with limited scope for responding to local needs, therefore limited legitimacy in the eyes of local residents, thus continued poor revenue generation and service delivery performance, reinforcing residents lack of trust and the unattractiveness of local parties to able and trustworthy politicians. A second key finding from our research and other studies was that local elections are invariably fought on party political tickets even if they are theoretically supposed to be nonparty, as in Ghana. However, parties rarely have a coherent political platform, nor do they aggregate and articulate local interests, in part because they are not themselves democratic political institutions. Also parties do not command loyalty because they are seen merely as a 10

11 means for attaining, first, power, and second, access to the resources with which to reward their supporters. Politicians often change parties to improve their electoral chances or gain access to the resources of the ruling party. Parties and politicians have to raise funds for campaigning and patronage, so they are obligated to both their sponsors and supporters, resulting in clientelistic and particularistic practices, as seen, for example, in Kenya. Thirdly, the research showed that representatives seem more likely to be responsive to their constituents, especially poor local residents, if they are elected on a ward basis than through a closed party list system, when primary allegiance is to the party. However, the responsiveness of councillors in a ward-based system depends on a number of other factors (Devas et al, 2004). First, it depends on candidates motives for seeking political office, which may be to personally benefit from access to public sector resources. This does not necessarily imply grand corruption but may derive from privileged access to information (on infrastructure routes or contracts), the allowances they are paid, or access to patronage resources such as municipal jobs, public housing or trade licences. For example, in Kumasi elected municipal assembly members from the same political party as the appointed mayor/chief executive benefited from the award of contracts for operating public toilets (Ayee and Crook, 2004), while in Mombasa a large number of new unskilled employees were taken on by a bankrupt council in the months before the 1997 elections (Rakodi, 2005; Rakodi et al., 2000). Secondly, in a majoritarian ward-based system traditionally under-represented groups (for example, women) and minorities are likely to continue to be under-represented, providing an argument for a combined ward-based and proportional representation system, as in the new system in Johannesburg (Beall et al., 2001). Thirdly, the accessibility of councillors to local residents is often limited in large socially mixed electoral wards. Yet sub-city levels of government, which might improve local service delivery and the scope for direct participation and increased accountability are resisted, as in Kumasi in the 1990s, where sub-metro assemblies, town councils and unit committees were ineffective largely because the resources made available to them by the Chief Executive and the Municipal Assembly were insufficient (Devas, 2004) 4. 4 Difficulties arising in the single list electoral system in Abidjan led some of the ten municipalities to introduce neighbourhood management councils or committees to ensure more participatory management of local services (Attahi, 1999 ; see also A. Simone, 2000 on Dakar). 11

12 A fourth and hardly unexpected group of findings was that the accountability of city bureaucrats to elected councils and of elected representatives to their constituents is weak. Elected councillors power to hold bureaucrats to account is constrained by their weak mandate, lack of expertise, lack of organized political party backup and involvement in corrupt practices, often in collusion with the officials themselves. Also senior local government bureaucrats may be appointed by central government, reducing councillors capacity to hold them to account. Residents ability to hold elected councils to account is also limited, by factors such as the ability of middle class residents to secure services for themselves by purchasing them privately (for example, individual septic tanks or private education), the tendency for political allegiances to be based on ethnicity, cutting across economic divides and weakening solidarity amongst the economically disadvantaged, and the undeveloped nature of civil society (Devas et al, 2004). This particularly applies to those sections of civil society concerned with developing the capacity of citizens to exercise their political rights (Mitlin, 2004). The underdevelopment of community-based and other civil society organizations is a legacy of periods of military and single party rule, when CSOs were suppressed and grassroots organizations associated with the attempts of the government in power to secure support and exert control. Even today, many CSOs are regarded with suspicion by so-called democratic central or local governments, which attempt to use them as useful supplements to the state (for example in Tanzania) or to control them. Although the space for associational life has widened greatly since the restoration of multi-party systems, many of the formal and informal associations present in cities today are concerned with the welfare of their members or the intended beneficiaries of their programmes rather than exercising political voice (Mitlin, 2004; Roque and Shankland, 2007). The continued ineffectiveness of city governments, the prevalence of patronage politics and ongoing political instability raise questions about the validity of the political order that has been so widely adopted, not only today but also in the period around independence. There are clearly a large number of problems, in principle and in practice, with applying a liberal democratic conception of political order to Africa. In particular, it is asserted that the principles of liberal democracy are not rooted in the shared values, meanings and representations that constitute African culture, in which people are not regarded as selfcontained autonomous individuals but as members of social groups, and the culture is said to be essentially one of consensus (Hodder-Williams, 1999; Parekh, 1993). 12

13 In a competitive multi-party system, elections are costly, said to encourage corruption because they need to be financed, and are potentially divisive, especially in multi-ethnic societies (Bangura, 2000). In addition, because the political order is informal and particularistic (Chabal and Daloz, 2006) and parties lack policy, electoral discourse tends to focus on communal identity, personal characteristics and unrealistic promises. In the absence of loyalties other than those associated with ethnicity, and because of the economic centrality of the political arena, ethnicity is used to mobilize political support and divert attention from the ruling party s own accumulation of wealth and abuse of power (Hyden, 2000). Moreover, because people s main political participation is through periodic voting, the passive concept of citizenship on which liberal democracy is based is arguably inadequate to overcome the perception held by many people in African countries of the state as being part of an amoral public sphere from which benefits are expected but which is unimportant when defining duties. Many analyses recognize this problem of passive citizenship with some versions of liberal democracy (Held, 1996), arguing that it needs to be supplemented by arrangements for participatory or deliberative democracy based on more active conceptions of citizenship (e.g. Luckham et al., 2003; Miller, 1993). Current models of liberal democracy are underpinned by disillusion with governments capacity to plan comprehensively, deliver a full range of public services and conserve public resources. Today, as noted in Section 1.1, democratic governments are expected to organize themselves in such a way that the market and private sector management approaches and tools complement government activities in order to improve efficiency and effectiveness, especially in the delivery of services and housing development (G.A. Myers and Murray, 2007). Such partnerships, or what Swyngedouw (2005) calls governance beyond the state, disperse power and responsibilities in horizontal tripartite networks of private (market), civil society (usually NGO) and state actors. The outcomes are contradictory: while these forms of stakeholder governance may improve service delivery and provide space for participation, they may merely enhance the power of the technocratic arms of government and market-based actors. In addition, power is invariably distributed unequally between the actors; and the rules by which they operate are uncodified and often ad hoc, giving rise to distrust rather than collaboration (Swyngedouw, 2005). Moreover, rather than deliberately constructed partnerships, it is as if not more common for under-resourced government agencies and users desperate to access them to operate through informal go-betweens (administrative brokers) and for services to be provided by informal sector entrepreneurs (e.g. water vendors, drug 13

14 store proprietors). Such actors and activities, if not corrupt or illegal, nevertheless blur the line between formal and informal, legal and illegal practices (Blundo, 2007). Given these intransigent problems, it is suggested that, instead of liberal democracy, we must look to indigenous authority structures, social institutions and associational forms. For example, Mohamed Dia and others believe that traditional government was broadly representative and consensual rulers had authority but shared power, there were effective procedures for limiting abuses of power and authority, there were requirements for the sharing of accumulated wealth, and social relations were defined in terms of obligations to the group (Dia, 1996). Even though contemporary analysts acknowledge the downside of hierarchy, deference and patriarchy, they suggest that a political order could be developed based on the continued moral and political legitimacy of indigenous social and political structures (Abdoul, 2005; Dia, 1996; Luckham et al., 2003; Sklar, 1999). They point to the continued role of traditional authorities with respect to land, as will be discussed in more detail in Section 3.2, the apparent resilience of kinship structures, and the adaptation of traditional associational forms to contemporary life. Not all analysts agree with this positive view of traditional governance they note that all socalled traditional political and authority structures have changed in response to colonial manipulation and the political tactics of successive post-independence governments, often resulting in abuses of power, the advancement of self over group interests and reduced legitimacy. Chabal and Daloz (2006, p. 243) also argue that accountability rests essentially on the rulers ability to meet the demands of the communities and factions that support them rather than the electorate at large. Moreover, it is suggested that indigenous structures find it difficult to adjust to accommodate contemporary demands (including urbanization and equal opportunities for women and men) and are used to justify political practices in which ethnic rivalry is deliberately mobilized in order to gain or retain power, destroying social cohesion without producing legitimate and effective government (Enemuo, 2000; Hyden, 2000; Mamdani, 1996). What little research has been done in urban areas suggests caution in adopting an overly optimistic or generalized view. Traditional authorities do not retain significant functions in all cities their existence and role depend on the legacy of both colonial and post-colonial policies. Where, as in Kenya or Zambia, they have been nearly or completely eliminated, they 14

15 cannot be invented or re-invented. There is considerable evidence of the resilience of kinship networks and their importance in sustaining their members through bad times, but they cannot be relied on as the primary source of social trust in ethnically mixed urban areas where the younger generation is jobless, disillusioned and disconnected from the rural origins of their parents and grandparents (Diouf, 1999; Abdoulmaliq Simone, 2005; Sommers, 2003). There is widespread experimentation in self-organizing, economic organization and cultural expression the composition of order (Lewis and Mosse, 2006). Examples include religious organizations, community level organizations to maintain local services or increase neighbourhood security, and traders associations to advance common economic interests (Abdoul, 2005; Giovannoni et al., 2004; Momoh, 2000; Abdoulmaliq Simone, 2005; Tostensen et al., 2001). While some of the new associational forms are related to traditional authority structures and coalesce along kinship or ethnic lines, many do not. For example, women s groups in Dar es Salaam are often deliberately ethnically mixed, to avoid any association with the ethnicized political system (Campbell et al., 1995). Such organizations engage in struggles concerned with the nature of state power and local governance, workplaces and community life, and the creation and consumption of popular culture, attempts to remake the city (Abdoulmaliq Simone, 2005; Zeleza, 1999, p. 62). However, there is always contestation between non-state organizations and the state over the exercise of public authority (Lund, 2007). In addition to this self-organized associational life, in some cities considerable attention has been paid to fostering community organization and, although often such organizations struggle both to maintain and renew themselves and to influence government agencies and service providers, in others (e.g. Luanda) they are beginning to contribute to the emergence of a more deliberative democratic arena. Always, however, tensions arise in the working out of relationships between community organizations, which are often fostered by NGOs, and the representative political structure (Roque and Shankland, 2007). 3.2 Physical order Clearly, from the early days of colonial urbanization, the control the colonial administrators desired over population movements and urban development was never easy to achieve. In some countries and cities, notably the settler colonies of South Africa and Zimbabwe, draconian controls were put in place to control rural-urban migration and to ensure that indigenous labour migrants lived only in healthy and easily supervised areas within the urban 15

16 centres. This was achieved by the provision of rental housing in segregated residential areas, often separated from European housing areas by industrial districts or cordons sanitaires, and also the demolition of unauthorized housing. Somehow, the settlers felt that, if they succeeded in controlling migration and producing physically orderly urban centres, their fear of the unruly native could be overcome and their rule maintained. Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, largely succeeded, producing physically tidy urban environments with highly segregated spatial patterns, but the violent struggle for independence demonstrated that physical order cannot be equated with acceptance of the political order. That fear of concentrated urban populations (political opposition or the urban mob ) is not only typical of colonial administrators or settlers is shown by the fact that, after independence, Zimbabwean politicians and professionals continued to determinedly demolish all squatter settlements in urban centres (Rakodi, 1995), and by the government s 2005 Operation Murambatsvina, which aimed to demolish all structures deemed illegal 5. Both the UN special envoy s report in late 2005 and estimates based on a subsequent survey concluded that the demolitions had resulted in 700,000 people losing their homes or livelihoods, while even more were indirectly affected (Bratton and Masunungure, 2007; Potts, 2007). In contrast, everywhere else, sooner or later, the attempts by colonial and post-colonial governments to control migration proved futile. Under the pressure of demographic growth, public housing policy proved incapable of coping with demand and more and more new urban households had to fend for themselves. Even in planned cities, such as Lusaka and Lilongwe, informal settlements emerged (G.A. Myers, 2003). These areas were generally and rather misleadingly termed squatter settlements and were regarded by colonial administrators and post-colonial governments alike as illegal and havens for social deviants. For example, soon after independence in Zambia, the burgeoning informal settlements were labelled by administrators as havens for criminals and the unemployed, despite the emerging evidence that their inhabitants were mostly families with, at that time, male breadwinners working in wage employment, mainly in formal industry and the public sector (DTCP, 1973). Despite the official and media portrayal of such areas as physically chaotic and socially unruly, research demonstrated that in most cases people developed mutually acceptable ways of organizing space and positive relationships with their neighbours (Schlyter and Schlyter, 1979). As Myers (2003) notes, they demonstrated the production of an urban order that may 5 Officially translated as Operation Restore Order, one of the common unofficial translations was Operation Drive Out Rubbish. 16

17 appear to outsiders as disorderly while it conforms to many aspects of customary norms, repressive or inequitable as these customs themselves sometimes may be (p. 352). In no African city, he concluded, can it be said that the rational order of western modernity and the material progress idealized as its ideological companion define the lifeworlds of the majority of residents (Myers, 2003, p. 353). Instead, colonial and post-colonial modernist strategies of enframing through spatial projects have repeatedly collapsed, to be replaced by reframing of space by city residents, ultimately producing new forms of urban order (Myers, 2003). Efforts in the 1970s and 1980s to meet demand by subdivision and administrative allocation of publicly owned land and regularization-led upgrading were largely unsuccessful 6. In particular, titling is administratively difficult and costly and thus has rarely been implemented on a large scale. In addition, it has often led to gentrification, without realizing many of the benefits claimed for it including, for low income occupiers, security, access to institutional credit followed by investment in economic enterprise and housing improvement, and for local authorities, increased revenue (Payne et al., 2007). In practice, therefore, the state has lacked the capacity and widespread public backing to register and regulate transactions in land or to ensure sufficient planned subdivision to meet needs, and the majority of urban residents have obtained access to land through processes that are, in one respect or another, informal. Today between half and three quarters of urban residents in most African cities live in informal settlements and earn their living in informal enterprises 7, although in many places the availability of undeveloped publicly owned land for settlement has been more or less exhausted and informal subdivision commercialized, so poor households have little choice but to become tenants, often of a single room. The rich and powerful, in contrast, fortify their houses and create gated communities 6 See Gulyani and Bassett (2007) for a review of the evolution and outcomes of approaches to informal settlement upgrading in African urban centres. 7 It is common to conceptualise urban physical and economic environments as formal or informal. Generally this refers to whether they are regulated or not, although there are a variety of definitions. Despite many critiques (see, for example, Hart, 2006; Meagher, 2005; Sindzingre, 2006), the terms continue to be widely used in academic analysis and policy debates. In particular, Sindzingre argues that formal/informal dualism is definitionally weak, logically inconsistent and methodologically problematic, with the result that it fails to contribute to understanding of the phenomenon under observation. In the face of contemporary forces of deregulation and globalization, informal forms of economic organisation [Meagher argues] have become so pervasive, and so deeply intertwined with official economics, that the old notion of an informal sector or informal economy has been called into question The growing interpenetration of formal and informal forms of organization have led prominent analysts of contemporary informality such as Keith Hart to argue that the formal/informal distinction has outgrown its usefulness (2005, p. 217). When the term informal is used in this paper, it is generally placed in inverted commas for these reasons. 17

18 that insulate them from the chaotic life of the city beyond and reduce their interest in holding public service providers to account. Nevertheless, despite the chaotic appearance of informal settlements, there are few people who are literally homeless and, although dysfunctional political relationships, social malaise and poor urban governance are widespread, generally speaking social and political relations between city governments and their citizens and between residents themselves are not anarchic. That most people live in unplanned areas, most new land subdivision and house construction occurs in them, and most of their residents can access at least a survival level of services and utilities, however erratic and inadequate, suggests that these areas are neither chaotic nor completely beyond government reach. Socalled informal economic activities (and building extensions that do not comply with the regulations) are of course not confined to unplanned areas, but penetrate public and even private spaces in planned industrial, commercial and residential areas (Brown, 2006; Popke and Ballard, 2004; Zeleza, 1999). We therefore need, first, to revisit the conceptualization of physical and legal order on which formal planning and land administration systems are based and to which they aspire and, second, to question whether the land transactions in informal settlements and the physical and social spaces that result or informal economic activities are in fact disorderly since, despite the limited scope of the public and formal private sectors, most urban residents have shelter, can earn some sort of living, obtain some food and services, call on social and psychological support systems, and move around the city. City governments reactions to informal development vary some have periodically evicted occupants without formal title, others have neglected them, and yet others have recognized that settlements accommodating such a large proportion of urban voters cannot be relocated and must be provided with sufficient infrastructure to at least avoid the worst health and environmental consequences of incremental settlement. In some places, as unplanned settlement and economic informalization have become more widespread, there have been attempts to recognize their roles in the city through accommodation, regularization and upgrading (for example, see Gulyani and Bassett, 2007; Nnkya, 2006; Popke and Ballard, 2004). Often, however, both illegal settlements on well located land and informal activities that occupy the interstices in the built environment have been displaced by the market through development, redevelopment and gentrification. Also, both unplanned residential settlements and the informal activities that invade planned areas have frequently been subject to evictions and clean-up operations by private owners or local government officials, backed by the security forces and justified in terms of restoring order to the city, although in reality 18