Editorial: Urban (in)security and social justice in post-colonies

Résumé

The articles in this collection draw on local experiences and practices to conceptualise and unpack the multidimensional nature of urban insecurity and injustice in Africa's post-colonies. They deepen understanding of urban informality, infrastructure violence and the enduring presence of coloniality. Insecurity in these papers is best understood from a vulnerability point of view. Following UN-HABITAT (2007) 1 vulnerability is the likelihood that an entity (individual, household, community, firm, city, or country) will suffer negative consequences as a result of an occurrence (risk event) and the inability to cope effectively with such a risk event and its consequences. The nature of risk events or shocks and the associated vulnerabilities can be distinguished into either natural (climatic, environmental, diseases) or human-made (economic crisis, socio-political conflicts, wars). Articles in this collection focus on human-made or constructed vulnerabilities and insecurities.Eyita-Okon 2 argues that urban insecurities should be understood in the context of Africa's failure to plan, invest, and capture the benefits of rapid urbanisation. Despite its best efforts and aspirations as illustrated in initiatives such as the New Partnership for Africa (NEPAD), African Union Agenda 2063 and commitments to SDGs, the continent remains a global economic periphery where the transformative role of cities is yet to materialise. Living in slums and informality characterise the everyday lives of many urban residents. Illustrated with the Zimbabwe case, informality is considered a manifestation of the mainstream economy's failure to accommodate all those who need decent work or employment (Ndawana 3 ), housing (Matamanda and Mphambukeli) and services. To address their livelihoods predicament, marginalised and poor urban residents resort to illegal/ informal street trading or vending. Ndawana re-confirms how political parties ab(use) informal street traders/vendors for political gain. The paper argues that elites and the ruling party particularly take a vacillating or ambivalent approach that treats the vendors as political assets or liabilities depending on prevailing circumstances. Consequently, there is no investment in lasting solutions with such ambivalence reinforcing spatial injustices and insecurity of livelihoods.Matamanda and Mphambukeli take an informal settlement-wide approach to deepen understanding of how infrastructure violence. Following Rodgers and O'Neill (2012) 4 and Desai (2018) 5, infrastructure violence occurs when the design and provision of infrastructure and services are absent, inadequate or reproduces and replicates inadequacies, everyday injustices, burdens, inequalities, tensions and conflicts. The lack of water and sanitation, transport services, police stations street lighting, and health and education infrastructure exposes residents to harm. Ironically, the conditions force some residents to engage in further criminal activities to survive. A vicious cycle sets in where an atmosphere of fear dominates these neighbourhoods due to perceptions and experiences of crime, robbery, rapes, thefts, domestic violence etc. The gendered nature of insecurity runs through these experiences.Five of the papers focus on South Africa where infrastructure injustice and a climate of urban fear and organised crimes are more pronounced. Covid-19 exacerbated the structural inequities and infrastructure Ethnography, 13(4), 401-412. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1466138111435738. 5 Desai, R (2018) Urban planning, water provisioning and infrastructure violence at public housing resettlement sites in Ahmedabad, India. Water Alternatives, 11; 86-105. Online: https://www.wateralternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol11/v11issue1/421-a11-1-5/file violence in urban South Africa. Separately, Mongale 6 and Check 7 argue that under conditions of structural poverty and resultant frustration, urban community violence, rioting and looting take place at the slightest provocation. Moreover, as illustrated in the July 2021 urban riots, there is a conflation of issues and actors; combining criminality and genuine political protest. Unfortunately, the major victims of this violence and looting are the very poor. The burden of this on poor migrants is exhibited in xenophobic attacks often aided by national political leaders. Sempijja and Mongale 8 explore this 'blaming the other' to underline similarities between the Ugandan-Asian debacle of 1972 and ongoing xenophobia against African immigrants in South Africa.Muswede 9 refocuses the debate on how the poor, marginalised and vulnerable illegal African immigrants have used social media technologies to mitigate xenophobic attacks, to also offer each other post-violence emotional and psychological support, share adaptive strategies and mobilise resources to support victims. These actions underscore the role of agency and social capital in contexts of vulnerability. However, this agency offers no long-term relief. Only by addressing the structural factors will deal comprehensively with these challenges. In contrast to Muswede, Chakwizira 10 focuses on how the upper classes reconfigure their spaces and craft community structures to respond to real and perceived crime and insecurities in a small new town. As with the poor African immigrants, the positive outcomes of reconfigured landscapes are considered limited. Long-term and comprehensive security will require a restructuring of the political economy overall.States in Africa are aware of the infrastructure violence, and the need to invest in critical economic infrastructure (roads and rail, dams, electricity generation etc.) 11 to grow their economies. However, the informal livelihoods and tenure of the poor are at risk of the development impacts of state initiatives to address the infrastructure deficits. In the last paper, Mbiba 12 suggests a combined livelihoods model for a social-spatial and historical comparative understanding of the impacts and opportunities these initiatives can bring.Collectively, the papers provide rich empirical insights into the gravity of urban insecurity facing Southern Africa in particular. This a region where human rather than natural shocks have an overbearing impact on the security of persons and livelihoods. The papers are written with a 'post-colony' label. However, the nature and meaning of this post-colony were not examined explicitly.

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