Open AccessUrban Struggles over Water Scarcity in Harare
Author(s) -
Muchaparara Musemwa
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
daedalus
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.34
H-Index - 55
eISSN - 1548-6192
pISSN - 0011-5266
DOI - 10.1162/daed_a_01871
Subject(s) - colonialism , scholarship , water scarcity , government (linguistics) , ideology , scarcity , capital (architecture) , politics , pace , population , political science , political economy , development economics , economic growth , geography , sociology , economics , law , archaeology , market economy , linguistics , philosophy , demography , geodesy , agriculture
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.