Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Cities in Malawi continue to be sites and spaces of resistance, struggle and contest over urban
spaces. Since the introduction of colonial modernist planning with its adherence to
segregation through functional zoning, homogenisation, and fragmentation of urban areas,
squatting and land invasions on urban land have remained one of the widespread struggles for
space in urban Malawi. Continued occurrence of squatting, land invasions, and
encroachments on urban land reflect the inability of urban planning and its attendant land
policies to provide land and housing to the majority of urban dwellers mainly the middle
income as well as the marginalised urban poor.
Over the years, government efforts have not decisively addressed the issue of land
contestations in urban areas in spite of numerous reports of increasing cases of conflicts and
competing claims over urban land in Malawi including land dispossessions, conflicts over
land uses in urban and peri-urban areas and most significantly contestations manifested in
squatting and land invasions on state land leading to growth of spontaneous settlements. In
urban areas, efforts to address these competitions have included relocation; titling
programmes, sites-and-services schemes, land reform programmes, and forced evictions, but
struggles such as squatting and land invasions persist. In urban Malawi, the question is: why
is urban planning, as it is conceived and acted upon (i.e. as mode of thought and spatial
practice), a creator and not a mediator of urban land conflicts?
The study aimed to answer this question, by using Lefebvre’s conceptual triad of social
production of space, to gain an in-depth understanding of how the contradictions between
people’s perceptions and daily life practices in relation to space, on one hand, and planner’s
conceptions of space as informed by colonial, post-colonial, and neoliberal perceptions of
space, generate perpetual struggle for urban space in Malawi. The study also investigated
spatial strategies and tactics which urban residents employ to shape, produce and defend
urban spaces from possible repossession by the state. Finally, the study explored lived
experiences and the multiple meanings that urban residents attach to spaces they inhabit and
these are used to contest imposition of space by state authorities while at the same time to
produce their own spaces. Mixed method approaches were used to gather geodata, quantitative and qualitative data in
the two neighbourhoods of Soche West (Blantyre city) and Area 49 (Lilongwe city) where
there are on-going tensions over land between state authorities and urban residents. Primary
sources of data included household surveys, focus group discussions, key informant
interviews, documentary sources, observations, and electronic and print media. In view of the
magnitude of the data, three software were used namely, SPSS, ATLAS.ti, and ArcGIS 9.3TM
GIS for quantitative, qualitative, and spatial data respectively. Content and discourse analysis
were also used to analyse government documents and newspapers.
The research found that although planning thought and practice is dominated by imported
modernist conceptions of space, planning authorities in Malawi are unable to impose this
space on urban residents. Specifically, the research identified a number of constraints faced by
planning authorities ranging from human and technical capacity, corruption, cumbersome and
bureaucratic procedures, archaic, rigid and contradictory in laws and policies, complexity of
land rights, poor enforcement, political influence and emergence of democracy, incomplete
reclassification of rural authority into urban authority and shortage of financing mechanisms.
In view of these state incapacities coupled with peoples’s perception of the illegitimacy of the
state to control urban land, the study found that ‘dobadobas’ (that is middlemen, conmen and
tricksters) have taken over to contest planning practices of the state by employing both violent and non-violent spatial tactics to appropriate, and defend their claim for urban spaces, thereby
generating conflicts between the state and users of space.
Consistent with our argument regarding representations of spaces and representational spaces,
the research found that in both Lilongwe and Blantyre cities, the multiple meanings attached
to spaces represent divergent but true lived experiences that involve different core values that
may or may not be recognised by those residents who do not share them. Finally, planners,
therefore, have to reconcile the contradictions between planners’ visions and the experiences
of those who experience the city in their everyday life. By way of recommendation, planners,
therefore, have to reconcile the contradictions between planners’ visions and the experiences
of those who live in the city.
Planners’ emphasis on abstract spaces and their modernist images of order imply that viable
alternative place-making processes are not well understood, partially because formal
discourse in planning and place-making revolves around largely iterative representations of
space and the persuasive capacities of one or another representation.
Rather, this researcher recommends continued use of the conceptual triad to enable
researchers to become more fully aware of complexity in the human dimensions of space
before planning. In the same way, by focusing on the two neighbourhoods, the researcher
recommends that planning requires considerable time and effort and that it should priotise the
human or the micro scale. Planning ought to bring on board the multiple meanings of space as
discussed in the study as these are the multiple dimensions that planning has to grapple with
in its quest to organise and produce urban space. Since space is never empty as it always
embodies meaning, it is imperative to understand various meanings that people attach to the
spaces they inhabit and their attachment to these spaces. In the study the fact that spaces
carry multiple meanings encompassing exchange value, use value, emotional value, historical
value, and sacred values among others, has been explored. Continued advancement of colonial modernist conceptions of orderliness, segregation,
functional zoning and commodification which are constructed largely, by dominant economic
and political elites, provokes resistance by groups who defend and seek to reconstruct lived
space. Also, in view of the incapacity of the state to impose its conceptions of urban space
through spatial practice of planning, urban residents continue to devise their own spatial
strategies and tactics violent and nonviolent, to shape their own space. In conclusion, the
paper stresses that spaces are not exclusively shaped or moulded by planners and planning
practices of the state only, but also by spatial practices of everyday life albeit clandestine and
unofficial. In this regard, in Malawi, cities including the post-colonial city of Lilongwe should
not be understood as being shaped by planners’ space only but also the changing experiences
of the city and everyday life and ambiguities of the users of urban space. Thus plans and
documents as conceived spaces should not be understood as the only mechanism to shape and
organise urban space but also the changing experiences of the city and everyday life and
ambiguities of the users of urban space. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Stede in Malawi is nog steeds plekke en ruimtes waar daar weerstand, worsteling, en konflik
i.v.m. grond plaasvind. Sedert die invoer van koloniale, modernistiese beplanning wat
assosieer word met segregasie deur middel van funksionele streekindeling, homogenisasie,en
fragmentasie van stadsgebied, is plakkery en beslaglê op grond in stede algemeen in die stede
van Malawi. Die aanhoudendende voorkoms van plakkery, indringing en oortreding op grond
reflekteer die die onvermoë van stedelike beplanning en grond beleid om grond en behuising
aan die meerderheid van die stedelike burgers , meestal die middelinkomste klas en die
gemarginaliseerde stedelike armes te verskaf.
Die regering het nie oor die jare daarin geslaag om die kwessie van konflik oor grond in
stedelike areas suksesvol aan te spreek nie, dit ten spite van die feit dat daar toenemend meer
gevalle van konflik en meededingende grondeise bestaan, asook onteiening in stedelike en
omstedelike gebiede. Hierdie konflikte manifesteer in plakkery en indringery in staatsgrond
wat lei tot die totstandkoming van nie-amptelike nedersettings. In stedelike gebiede het
pogings om hierdie kwessies aan te spreek gelei tot onteiening,eiendomsreg-programme,
grondhervormings-programme, gedwonge uitsettings, asook gebiede waar daar net grond en
dienste verskaf word. Nogtans vind daar plakkery en indringing plaas. Met betrekking tot
stedelike Malawi is die vraag: Hoekom is stedelike beplanning soos dit begryp word (d.w.s.
as ’n denkwyse en ruimte-praktyk) die skepper en nie die bemiddelaar van konflik oor
grond in stede nie?
Daar is gepoog om hierdie vraag te beantwoord deur gebruik te maak van Lefebvre se drieledige
konsep van die produksie van ruimte, om sodoende ’n in-diepte begrip te verkry van
die teenstellings tussen mense se konsepsies en alledaagse praktyke met betrekking tot ruimte,
en die beplanners se konsepte van ruimte wat die gevolg is van koloniale, post-koloniale en
neoliberale sienings, en hoe dit lei tot ’n aanhoudende konflik oor stedelike grondgebied in
Malawi. Strategieë en taktieke wat deur inwoners gebruik word om ruimte te skep en te
verdedig teen moontlike onteiening deur die staat, word ondersoek. Laastens word die
lewende ondervindings van die stadsbewoners ondersoek, asook die veelvoudige betekenisse
wat hulle heg aan die ruimtes wat hulle bewoon. Hoe hulle hierdie betekenisse gebruik om die
oorname van hierdie spasies deur die staat, te beveg en terselfdertyd hulle eie ruimtes te skep. Die gemengde-metode benadering is gebruik om geodata, kwantitatiewe en kwalitatiewe data
in die twee buurtes van Soche West (Blantyre ) en Area 49 (Lilongwe ) waar daar
aanhoudende spanning oor grond tussen die staat en die stadsbewoners is, aan te spreek.
Primêre bronne van data sluit huishoudelike opnames, fokus groepbesprekings, sleutelinformant
onderhoude, dokumentêre bronne, observasie,en elektroniese en gedrukte media
in. Omdat daar so baie data is, is drie sagtewares, naamlik SPSS, ATLAS.ti, and ArcGIS
9.3TM GIS gebruik vir die ontleding van kwantitiewe, kwalitatiewe en ruimtelike data
onderskeidelik. Inhouds- en diskoers analise is ook gedoen om die regeringsdokumente en
koerantartikels te ontleed.
Daar is gevind dat alhoewel beplanningsdenke en –praktyk oorheers word deur ingevoerde,
modernistiese konsepte van ruimtes, kry die owerhede dit nie reg om die bewoners te oorreed
om hulle siening van stedelike ruimte te aanvaar nie. Daar is tydens die navorsing bevind dat
die owerhede die volgende kwessies moet aanspreek: menslike en tegniese bekwaamdede,
korrupsie, lomp burokratiese prosedures, uitgediende en weersprekende wette en beleide, die
kompleksiteit van grondregte, swak toepassing van wette, politieke invloed, en die opkoms
van die demokrasie, onvoltooide reklassifikasiwe van landelike owerhede, en ’n tekort aan
finanseringsmeganismes. Die staat se onbekwaamheid tesame met die mense se persepsie dat die staat nie volgens wet stedelike grond kan beheer nie, het gelei daartoe dat Doba Dobas
(d.w.s. die middelman, en die skelms) die beplanning van konflik oorgeneem het en
geweldadige en nie-geweldadige taktiek gebruik om grond te bekom en te verdedig, en
sodoende konflik tussen die staat en die mense laat toeneem.
Daar kan gesê word dat in beide Lilongwe en Blantyre die veelvoudige betekenisse wat aan
ruimte geheg word, die werklike ondervindinge van die mense verteenwoordig. Hierdie
ondervindings behels verskillende kernwaardes wat dalk nie deur ander gedeel word nie. Dit
bevestig ook Lefebvre se argumente oor die ruimtes. Laastens moet die beplanners die
beplanners se toekomsplanne en die alledaagse ondervindings van die burgers, versoen. Daar
word dus aanbeveel dat die beplanners die klem op abstrakte ruimtes en die modernistiese
beeld van orde moet versoen met die ondervindings van diegene wat in die stad woon.
Die beplanners se klem op abstakte ruimtes en hulle modernistiese beeld van orde impliseer
dat lewensvatbare alternatiewe plekmaak prosesse nie goed verstaan word nie, gedeeltelik
omdat die formele diskoers in beplanning en plekmaak grootliks draai om herhaaldelike
voorstellings van ruimte en die oorrredingskrag van die een of ander voorstelling.
Hierdie navorser stel voor dat Lefebvre se drie konsepte liewer gebruik moet word om dit
vir navorsers moontlik te maak om voor beplanners bewus te word van die kompleksiteit van
die menslike dimensies van ruimte, Nadat hy gefokus het op die twee stede, besef die navorse
dat beplanning baie tyd en moeite behels en dat die menslike of die mikroskaal voorrang moet
geniet. Die veelvoudige betekenisse van ruimte, soos bespreek, moet in ag geneem word
tydens die organiseer en skep van stedelike ruimte. Aangesien ruimte nooit leeg is nie en
altyd betekenis het, is dit belangrik om die verskillende betekenisse wat mense aan die plekke
waar hulle bly heg, te verstaan, asook hulle gehegtheid aan hierdie plekke. In hierdie studie
word die verskillende betekenisse van ruimte, naamlik ruilwaarde, gebruikwaarde,
emosionele waarde, historiese waarde, en gewyde waarde. Die bevordering van koloniale.modernistiese konsepte van orde, segregasie, funksionele
sonering en kommodifikasie,. grootliks deur die dominante ekonomiese en politiese elite, lei
tot weerstand deur groepe wat die ruimtes waarin hulle lewe wil verdedig en rekonstrueer.
Omdat die staat nie deur middel van die ruimtelike praktyke van beplanning, sy siening van
stedelike ruimte aan die bewoners kan oordra nie, hou die stedelike bewoners aan om hulle
strategieë en taktieke, geweldadig en nie-geweldadig, te gebruik, om hul eie ruimtes te skep.
Ten slotte word daar tot die slotsom gekom dat ruimte nie eksklusief deur beplanners geskep
word nie, maar deur die praktyke van die alledaagse lewe, al is dit ongeoorloofd en nieamptelik.
Die stede in Malawi, insluitende die post-koloniale stad, Lilongwe, moet nie
beskou word as gevorm alleenlik deur die stadsbeplanners nie, maar ook deur die
veranderende ondervindings van die stad en die alledaagse lewe en die dubbelsinnigheid van
die gebruikers van stedelike ruimte. Planne en dokumente moet dus nie gesien word as die
enigste meganisme wat stedelike ruimte vorm en organiseer nie.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:sun/oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/86660 |
| Date | 04 1900 |
| Creators | Mwathunga, Evance Evan |
| Contributors | Donaldson, S. E., Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Geography and Environmental Studies. |
| Publisher | Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | en_ZA |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 334 p. : ill., maps |
| Rights | Stellenbosch University |
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