Multi-Habitation: Urban housing and everyday life in Chitungwiza, Zimbabwe

The programme for this study was originally developed in cooperation wit Professor Graham Tipple at the Department of Architecture, University of Newcastle on Tyne, UK. The idea was that he should make a similar study on multi-habitation in Kumasi together with a Ghanaian colleague. The two independent studies would be basis for comparative analyses. Unfortunately, this was not realised. Nevertheless, Tipple has lent the concept of multi-habitation to this study. I was privileged to get funding from SIDA/SAREC and started the work affiliated to the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala. Half way through I moved to the Department for Peace and Development Research at Goteborg University. A paper based on the story about Esther was presented at a seminar in Leiden in 2001 and has been submitted for publication in a volume edited by Deborah Bryceson and Deborah Potts, entitled African Urban Economies: Viability, Vitality of Major Cities in East and Southern Africa. I appreciate their willingness to accept the reproduction of that story in Chapter Three of this report. For this study I have obtained the valuable support from Amin Kamete, researcher at the Department of Rural and Urban Planning (RUP), University of Zimbabwe, and his students, Lawrence Munyuki and Hazvinei Kaitano, who assisted me with the fieldwork in Chitungwiza. The study draws on my previous work in the same area, thereby making possible the collection of a longitudinal series of date. In my earlier fieldwork I learned a lot from my assistant Rose Mtetwe, then at the Zimbabwe Women's Research Centre and Network. I am grateful to them and to all my informants in Chitungwiza.