Families crammed into apartments of less than 12 square meters without access to electricity, water or even toilets. Many of them settle in unhealthy areas such as garbage dumps or along rivers or wetlands – and are therefore vulnerable to climate change. And almost no one owns the land they live on. This reality is well known to Marcelle Mardon (Harare, 48), a Zimbabwean architect and urban planner working with the Zimbabwe Homeless Federation (ZIHOPFE) as part of the Dialogue on Shelter technical management project on the urban development of informal settlements in this African state south of the Sahara. Today more than 1 billion people worldwide live in slums. Although there is no official data on Zimbabwe, the UN-Habitat World Report on Cities 2022 states that 85% of these sub-populations with 359 million people are spread across Central and South Asia; East and Southeast Asia with 306 million; and sub-Saharan Africa with 230 million.
To face this reality, with the support of the organization Mardon works for, residents of the marginal neighborhoods have organized and created a national network of homeless people, which includes nearly 52,000 families. Their goal is to negotiate with the Zimbabwean communities about leasing their land. In Mucheke – one of the most populous suburbs of Masvingo Province (south of the capital Harare) with a population of about 25,000 – the organisation, especially of the women, has pushed them to get their properties legalized. “Once they own the property, they can start to claim their rights,” says the architect. The numbers of achievements, he says, represent major advances, even if they may seem “tiny” at times: “For example, we’ve now built 10 ecological toilets, and each bathroom serves 35” men or women – the toilets are separated by gender—
Several houses that make up Mucheke preserve the history of the country: “In the colonial days, many black people were responsible for taking care of the white people’s horses. Most of them lived there in the stables and slept next to the animals. After independence from England, the whites left and these lots are now part of these shacks,” the urban planner says in an interview in a cafeteria in Bilbao, but clarifies that this is a special case compared to many other neighborhoods in the country. .
Mardon was six years old when Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980. “In such a short time, our country has tried to rebuild itself, but it is very difficult. Our currency is constantly being devalued and more than half of the population lives in poverty,” he argues. According to the United Nations Urban Settlements Program (UN Habitat) and Unicef, 60% of the total population in sub-Saharan Africa has the worst housing conditions in the world. The deprivation of this right is related to the conditions of employment and the economic income of the population.
Rural-to-urban migration, the climate crisis, mismanagement by governments, poor urban planning and poverty are some of the elements contributing to the proliferation of informal settlements in Zimbabwe that Mardon focuses his work on. “More and more people are leaving their cities in search of work”, which is reflected in “repopulation of the cheapest areas to live, almost always on the outskirts or near motorways”. This has led to a constant battle between the authorities trying to expel them,” he mentions. In the next five decades alone, most of the sprawl and growth will be concentrated in low-income countries, where growth will be 141%, while lower-middle and upper-middle-income countries will see growth of only 44% and 34%, respectively. %, according to UN-Habitat estimates.
African identity
Mardon, a Mestizo, says working in the profession was her way of rediscovering her African identity. “The reality is that there is a lot of racism in Zimbabwe. Being whiter or seeing yourself gives you more privileges, like access to the best country. In my country, I lived in an area within the city that was better equipped with access to basic services compared to the newer areas. These were not considered official neighbourhoods.” Shortly after receiving a scholarship from his country to study architecture in the UK, where he studied for seven years, he knew he wanted to devote his life to reducing these gaps contribute to social inequality. “In England you’re either white or black. And I realized that even though I live in Europe, I am a daughter of the country… a Ndiri mwana whevu,” she says in Shona, an official language of Zimbabwe, along with English and Ndebele.
And although he confesses that his desire to choose a profession was guided by design and drawing, one of his first-year university professors spoke to him about the urban problems of the favelas in Brazil, their relationship to poverty and inequality, and the fight for yours Right. Mardon was quick to draw a parallel with the situation in Zimbabwe. “I realized that people from these neighborhoods are building their homes in unsafe or illegal areas because they need a roof to live on. Our job as urban planners is to provide them with the tools to meet their housing needs. The trick is getting the entire community involved,” he says.
The way to achieve this was through a collaborative effort to achieve a common goal. “I started working as a consultant in the Dialoge on Shelter project to improve informal neighborhoods in the country and then I understood that the ability to improve these places was in the hands of their own people and through group organization they could improve their quality of life ‘ he recalls. Because of this, Mardon’s work should focus on women’s empowerment. “They face greater hygiene risks during menstruation or at night from physical threats, and young women risk losing their studies by spending hours fetching water,” she laments.
Solidarity is one of the tools of empowerment and transformation, Mardon concludes. “I have spent many years making very small steps but making important and necessary changes. More and more of us believe that knowledge transfer can help reinforce the importance of local; from what we do, from our passion, only then can we find our collective soul,” he concludes.
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