Sacrificing urban governance at the altar of political expediency: Illegal street vending in Harare

ABSTRACT

This article uses the case of illegal street vending in Harare to explore the interface between urban governance and politics. Drawing on the ideas of urban governance and informal governance, it illustrates how polarisation between the opposition political party Movement for Democratic Change-dominated municipal council and the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front-led government is affecting governance in general and in particular Harare municipality’s ability to handle the illegal street vending problem. While the paper essentially identifies political expediency as the major reason why a lasting solution is elusive in handling the illegal street vending problem, it acknowledges that there are broad reasons for its persistence. Consequently, the article demonstrates some of the reasons why illegal street vending is difficult to end using the conventional methods and provides some alternatives.     

Regional mediation strategy: The case of Zimbabwe

The growth and survival of the field of conflict resolution can only be attained if practice is used to generate theory, rather than a reliance on the current situation where theory attempts to direct practice. Some conflict resolution practitioners believe that theory and practice cannot be separated. This article evaluates the art of mediation using Zimbabwe as a case study, where the strategy was used in an attempt to resolve the Zimbabwean conflict that began in 1999. Employing primary and secondary sources, the article delineates the major characteristics of mediation and clarifies principles of the strategy. It further establishes the affinity and dissonance between practice and theory. In addition, it asserts that in the Zimbabwean case, the achievements of insider-partial mediation as a strategy were limited. In the long term the mediation strategy failed because the Government of National Unity did not fulfil all the outstanding issues enunciated by the global political agreement as a precursor to free and fair, credible and legitimate elections. In opposition to the mediation targets towards sustainable peace, Zimbabwe witnessed rushed elections before the accomplishment of the issues at stake, leading to the overall failure of the insider-partial mediation.