Urban Struggles over Water Scarcity in Harare
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9685524 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Muchaparara Musemwa (0000-0002-9715-4457, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 150 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 27-47 |
| Publication date | 2021-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Daedalus (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0011-5266 • E-ISSN: 1548-6192 |
| Publisher | MIT Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1162/daed_a_01871 |
| OpenAlex | W3200871641 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
This essay counters the growing tendency in current scholarship to attribute nearly all the enduring water scarcity problems to climate change. Focusing on Harare, Zimbabwe's capital city, this essay contends that recurrent water crises can only really be understood within the contentious, long, and complex history of water politics in the capital city from the colonial to the postcolonial period. Although the colonial and postcolonial states in Zimbabwe had very different ideological and racial policies, for various reasons, neither was willing nor able to provide adequate supplies of water to the urban poor even as water was abundant in the city's reservoirs. It posits that while the colonial government racialized access to water by restricting its use by urban Africans, the postcolonial government failed to change the colonial patterns of urban water distribution and did little to increase water supplies to keep pace with a swiftly growing urban population and a geographically expanding city
Archaeology · Capital (architecture · Colonialism · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Government (linguistics · Ideology · Market economy · Pace · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Scarcity · Scholarship · Sociology · Water scarcity · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure
Access to water, sanitation and hygiene facilities by women with disabilities in Zimbabwe’s Harare Metropolitan Province during Covid-19
Climate-smart harvesting and storing of water
A tale of two Harare(s)
Interrogating multi-level government power dynamics and cooperation in Zimbabwe
Urban water crises driven by elites’ unsustainable consumption
| Citations per year | 1.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |