COVID-19 Lockdowns and the Urban Poor in Harare, Zimbabwe: Emerging Perspectives and the Morphing of a Sustainable Urban Future

This book focuses on the socio-economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated lockdowns on the welfare of the urban poor in the city of Harare, Zimbabwe. The authors look through the lenses of the urban health penalty, the right to the city, complexity theory, and distributive justice theory. These four theories help situate the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on the urban poor in the theoretical foundations that raise issues of how the poor are affected by disease/health pandemics, due to their living conditions. Uniquely, the authors use remote ethnography tools such as rich texts, video diaries and photo uploads to provide evidence-based stories of how COVID-19 mobility restrictions have affected poor urbanites in Harare.

The book concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic mandatory lockdowns have deepened social and spatial inequality among the urban poor, threatening their right to the city. The socio-economic impacts can upsurge poverty, increase unemployment and the risks of hunger and food insecurity, reinforce existing inequalities, and break social harmony in the cities, even past the COVID-19 pandemic period. These socioeconomic impacts must be considered to make just cities for all, from a right-to-the-city perspective. The authors recommend that mandatory COVID-19 lockdowns should not only be treated as a law-and-order operation but as a medical intervention to stem the spread of the virus backed by measures to safeguard the livelihoods of the urban poor while also protecting the economy. This means governments should provide social safety nets to informal sector operators whose income-generating activities are affected the most during the time of emergencies like COVID-19. Planners and policymakers should re-envision pandemic-resilient cities that are just, equitable, resilient, and sustainable.

Johannes Itai Bhanye is a researcher and academic in Migration and Urban Planning Studies, with strong academic credentials combined with “real world” experience. Dr. Bhanye has conducted research projects in Southern Africa, including Zimbabwe, South Africa and Lesotho.  He is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with the University of the Free State, Department of Urban and Regional Planning in South Africa. Dr. Bhanye holds a Ph.D. in Migration and Land Settlement with the University of Zimbabwe, with fellowship support by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His research interests encompass land governance, peri-urbanisation, migration, urban informality, food systems, cities and social change among other development related topics in Africa. He has been invited to speak at several International Conferences and seminars in Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, South Africa, Lesotho, Morocco, Zambia, and Ghana.

Fortune Mangara holds a qualification in Rural and Urban Planning from the University of Zimbabwe and earned an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning from the North-West University. He is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow affiliated with the Department of Geography at the School of Ecological and Human Sustainability located at the University of South Africa. Dr. Mangara's research focuses on spatial and urban resilience, disaster risk studies, disaster resilience, disaster risk governance, urban disaster risk, social and economic geography, urban policy, urban governance, transport planning and mobility, and spatial transformations in African cities.

Abraham R Matamanda (PhD Urban & Regional Planning) is an NRF Y2-rated Urban and Regional Planner who also trained as a social ecologist. Abraham lectures at the University of Free State (UFS) in the Department of Geography. Abraham is currently the editor of the Town Planning Journal published by UFS and also serves on the academic editorial boardof Plos Water Journal. He is a fellow of the Department of Higher Education and Training Future Professorate Programme Phase 1, third Cohort. Abraham is the South African PI for a global collaborative research project exploring how children and young people from monetary poor households have adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic focusing on food, education and play/leisure (https://panexyouth.com/). His research focuses on urban governance and planning, climate change adaptation, informal Global South urbanism, urban food systems, and housing studies. Abraham is co-editor of the book Urban Geography in Postcolonial Zimbabwe: Paradigms and perspectives for sustainable urban planning and governance published with Springer Nature in 2021.

Lameck Kachena is an early career social geographer with hands on experience in socio-environmental interactions in borderland regions of Southeast Africa (Zimbabwe, Mozambique and South Africa). Inspired by critical theory and co-production of knowledge, his current research is informed by ethnographic methods, creative methods and art-based tools to understand insecurities, injustice and inequalities associated with dominant discourse and policies on marginalized social groups. Mr. Kachena holds a Certificate in Climate Change and its Impacts (Brown University-USA), M.Sc. in Social Ecology and B.Sc. in Sociology (University of Zimbabwe).