Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment (ETDs)

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Browsing Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment (ETDs) by Author "Chikomwe, Savory"

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    An analysis of public-private partnerships in housing in the Zimbabwe National Housing Delivery Programme: a case of Masvingo City
    (2014-10-27) Chikomwe, Savory
    Based on evidence of the performance of a public-private partnership (PPP) housing arrangement in Masvingo City, Zimbabwe, I argue that PPPs may not thrive in youthful democracies entrenched in informal approaches to project management. The PPP strategy which was meant to deliver about 10 000 housing units in Masvingo City has dismally failed to live to its expectation, save for an ignited spirit of cooperativism. This is in spite of what was dubbed as a potentially promising partnership strategy involving indigenous private developers and contractors. Yet the compulsory acquisition of urban and peri-urban farmland country-wide presented powerful launch pad for a promisingly successful housing delivery that is widely expected to wipe out serious housing deficits. Housing problems were recently further compounded by Operation Murambatsvina in 2005 which ruthlessly demolished all informal housing and left several hundreds of thousands homeless. Following an insightful in-depth interview methodology and several ground-truthing trips to the Victoria Ranch Housing Project site, I argue that Government of Zimbabwe (GOZ) arrangements in terms of legal, administrative and financial aspects were weak to enable successful implementation of a formal PPP strategy. The arrangements advertently or inadvertently promoted privatism instead of the mutually beneficial PPP arrangement. As such, there were no clear regulatory mechanisms and modalities to enable beneficiation of the targeted low-income people and other economically weaker sections of the Masvingo City Community. There are fears that undeserving better-offs could have hijacked the scheme. However, a commendable resilience has emerged through a resurgent self-help housing delivery approach resulting in many self-built houses in what is widely viewed as a “peculiar” parallel development. While it could be too early to meaningfully comment on the long-term performance of the PPP approach, it is clear that justice has not been done to low-income people in Masvingo who remain largely homeless.
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    Governance of infrastructure provision in informal settlements: the electrification of unproclaimed areas in the City of Johannesburg
    (2022) Chikomwe, Savory
    An increasing number of informal settlements in South Africa are receiving interim services for extended periods while awaiting permanent upgrading or housing solutions. This thesis explores the complex governance arrangements and challenges that arise around the provision of basic services using City of Johannesburg as a case study, with a focus on three ‘unproclaimed’ informal settlements that have undergone electrification. These are Stjwetla, Protea South and Slovo Park. The three cases shed light on the modes of infrastructure governance that characterize informal settlement upgrading as practiced in the City of Johannesburg and to some extent in South Africa more generally. Formal grid electrification in the case study settlements is juxtaposed by other temporary basic infrastructure provisioning in a complicated socio-political, institutional and governance context. The inquiry adopted a qualitative methodology. The case studies of the three settlements and the City of Johannesburg were compiled through an extensive literature and document review and indepth interviews with key informants. These spanned community leadership, political representatives, experts and officials in municipal, provincial and national departments and stateowned entities. The thesis finds ambivalence, disconnections, misalignments and contradictions in the basic infrastructure provision and upgrading processes within the City of Johannesburg and between the City and central government departments. This was accentuated by the role of the national state-owned electricity company Eskom in one of the three settlements. The thesis finds that the prolonged temporary status of the informal settlements promotes contestations at various levels, including ligation. In the absence of progress towards permanent upgrading, investment in grid electrification ambiguously signals permanence even where there is no state intention to upgrade in situ. Within communities, this confusion contributes to tension while also triggering consolidation and in-migration. Differing interpretations across entities of the state about the role of grid electrification in informal settlement trajectories open up space for temporary electrification ultimately to lead towards the pragmatic adoption of permanent in situ upgrading. This notwithstanding, literature reviewed for this thesis points instead toward the necessity for a turn to off-grid electrification technologies for informal settlements.