Wednesday 8 February 2012

 Reform odious by-laws and create an enabling legal environment for youth entrepreneurship in Chitungwiza.

The spirit of self-reliance and entrepreneurship is very much alive in the town of Chitungwiza, situated some 30 kilometers to the south of Harare. A drive around the town reveals that the residents are actively defying the area’s residential tag and in the process , the local authorities by-laws by establishing income-generating  projects in and around their places of residence. Small-scale brick, tile, tombstone and palisade fence making workshops compete for roadside space with welding, panel-beating and mechanical workshops. Open-air furniture showrooms showcasing sofas, beds, room-dividers and cupboards decorate major road intersections while backyard factories churning out basics like candles, clothes, detergents and confectionery are juxtaposed side by side with homes turning the sprawling township into a hybrid industrial-residential complex.

Known colloquially as Chi-town, the bustling high-density residential area was established in 1978 as a dormitory town to house mainly workers from Harare’s industrial areas, relieving the congestion in the capital’s townships. The third largest and fastest growing urban area in Zimbabwe, Chitungwiza has grown tremendously since attaining full municipal status in 1981 into a huge people’s town with an estimated population of around one and a half million people. Chitungwiza has several suburbs. Seke is an aggregation of many sections with fifteen different housing units which are named after the alphabet from Seke Unit A to Seke Unit P whilst Zengeza is composed of five different sub-sections; Zengeza one to five. The houses are mostly high density detached units of a single storey with a small yard surrounding these modest houses.
 These entrepreneurs drawn from all walks of life ply their diverse trades under trees, by the roadside and on any open space available in the town. The common denominator  and defining feature of these businesspeople and their enterprises is their location in residential areas on ‘premises’ that are not approved by the authorities which places them on the wrong side of the town’s by-laws and public health laws! Marking them as legitimate targets for state-sponsored demolition operations like the notorius Operation Murambatsvina . Who are these businesspeople? Where did they come from and why do they choose to operate outside the confines of national and local laws? Which national laws and by-laws are they violating?

At the most basic level, they are hardworking Zimbabweans choosing  self-employment as their response to the nation’s and by extension, their home town’s crisis of unemployment estimated to be around 90% by some experts.  They did not sit back and complain about the lack of employment opportunities and their miserable condition! They did not demand anything from anyone but took whatever was available- be it an open space in their backyard or by the roadside, utilised it and created income-generating opportunities for themselves and their neighbors.  These workers are superheroes to their families whom they provide for and to the community which they supply with quality goods at an affordable price. Life literally gave them rocks and they crushed them into three-quarter aggregate stones which they sold to the builders for an income.
Most of them are former factory workers- skilled and experienced in their trades- who were retrenched during the country’s decade-long recession as companies closed down or downsized. Some are graduates and qualified artisan’s who could not find employment in the formal sector and decided to start business with little in terms of capital. All of them are driven by self-belief and a ‘can do’ attitude that has seen them set up shop against all odds in a hostile economic and legal environment.

They are resourceful, resilient, innovative and independent thinkers who deserve to be applauded and supported- not harassed by the municipal police for serving their community in the best way they can. It is a glaring injustice under any circumstances to punish these entrepreneurs for being too poor to buy or rent proper premises from which to operate their businesses from.  In fact, these laws/ by-laws violate the poor business people’s (economic rights) i.e their rights to work and participate in economic processes. Their very existence in Chitungwiza’s  book of statuettes is an affront to the town’s motto- “Pamberi nekushandira pamwe” literally translated to mean “Forward with working together.  How can the residents of Chitungwiza ‘work together’  when they are by-laws criminalizing free enterprise and ingenuity? These laws have became odious and archaic in today’s world and should be revised accordingly or scrapped off completely!

On the other hand, Laws and by-laws are vital in balancing the competing interests of the town’s residents, businesspeople and the local municipality, i.e, the Chitungwiza Town Council. They are necessary for order, environmental conservation, hygiene/public health and aesthetic considerations. Without laws, human activities will be chaotic and prone to conflict which is retrogressive to the town’s development and the welfare of its residents. While it is true that the haphazard, unregulated manner in which these business have mushroomed in residential areas has courted the ire of some residents and the wrath of the law –enforcement agencies.It is interesting to note the town’s by-laws were crafted by colonial authorities who were informed by an apartheid mentality that regarded ‘locations’ like Chitungwiza as nothing other than reservoirs of cheap labour to be exploited by big business as and when it saw fit. These authorities assumed correctly then, that job opportunities were abundant and everyone who wanted to work was certain to find gainful employment in the formal sector, a situation that is far removed from our present reality.  No production or industry was supposed to take place in these ghettos then and no production is supposed to take place now in Chitungwiza (outside its very small industrial area) as a result of this colonial legacy despite the quantum sea changes in ideologies from apartheid to indigenization that has taken place since these laws were enacted. The need to reform these laws and bring them into sync with the community’s norms and aspirations cannot be overemphasized.

Small businesses are recognized the world over as the engines of economic growth, national and community development. The example of Asian tigers refers. They managed to transform their moribund national economies to world-class competitiveness on the back of small to medium enterprises in a space of two decades. If we as a nation are to transcend our economic challenges and build an inclusive economy- these start-up ventures should be encouraged and nurtured for them to flourish and hire more workers and breathe life into our comatose economy rather than concentrating on bailing out huge , inefficient and uncompetitive corporations like the recently bankrupt Rennaisance bank, which is the norm at present in Zimbabwe.



Chitungwiza Community Development Network (CCDN) is a nascent organisation that was formed in August 2010 by young men and women who are into entrepreneurship in Chitungwiza. The organisation seeks to establish networks and partnerships among entrepreneurs, decision makers, business and development partners so that the efforts of young women and men of Chitungwiza can be meaningfully harvested and harnessed for community development, sustainable livelihoods and economic empowerment.  After conducting a baseline survey of the challenges,  opportunities and issues affecting entrepreneurs based in the town, it identified outdated laws/by-laws regulating the location of businesses/industries One of its main programmes is to advocate for a pro-poor entrepreneur-friendly legal environment by lobbying local and national authorities to reform laws/by-laws that disadvantage struggling businesspeople. The organisation invites interested businesspeople, aspiring entrepreneurs and concerned residents to join the network and participate in the development of their community .

The writer, Admire Mutize is the organisation’s Programs and Communications Officer. He can be contacted on chitungwizacommunity@gmail.com or on 00263 776 358 933


Introducing the Chitungwiza Community Development Network (CCDN).



The Chitungwiza Community Development Network (CCDN) is a nascent youth serving organization that was formed in October 2010 in the dormitory town of Chitungwiza- situated some thirty kilometers south of the City of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. Since its inception, the network has managed to grow by attracting membership and building fraternal relationships with like-minded organizations. Its call for a rights based approach to economic empowerment has found resonance among the town’s youthful population the majority of whom are forced to work in the informal sector in a country with an unprecedented unemployment rate of 90%. Its area of focus is youth economic empowerment through entrepreneurship and its membership consists of young men and women who are into self-employment, income –generating activities, home and backyard industries.