Komboni: Difference between revisions

A '''komboni''' is a type of informal housing compound or informal[[shanty housing areatown]] common to [[Zambia]], particularly the capital city of [[Lusaka]]. It is characterized by a low income and a high population density.<ref name=UrbanAfrica>{{cite book|last1=Myers|first1=Garth|title=Urban Environments in Africa: A Critical Analysis of Environmental Politics|date=24 February 2016|publisher=Policy Press|isbn=9781447322924|pages=65–73|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=b_KfCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA72&dq=Komboni#v=onepage&q=Komboni&fpg=falsePA72|accessdate=28 December 2016}}</ref>{{rp|72}} Kombonis typically began as housing for employees of a particular company, estate, or mine.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" /> An estimated 35% of Zambians live in urban areas,<ref name="View" /> and kombonis exist in many of them.<ref name=young /> It is estimated that 80% of the population of Lusaka live and work in these areas.<ref name=young>{{cite book|chapter = Young entrepreneurs in Lusaka: Overcoming constraints through ingenuity and social entrepreneurship|first1 = Francis|last1 = Chigunta|first2 = Katherine V.|last2 = Gough|first3 = Thilde|last3 = Langevang|pages = 67–79|chapter-url = https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Yl-pCwAAQBAJ&oiq=fndKomboni&pg=PA67&dq=Komboni&ots=M0Ywm_dOjD&sig=71lPdRvMyBe0tmdayCDLoDy5fcU#v=onepage&q=Komboni&f=false|title = Young Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa|editor1-first = Katherine V.|editor1-last = Gough|editor2-first = Thilde|editor2-last = Langevang|publisher = [[Routledge]]|year = 2016|isbn = 9781317548379|series = Routledge Spaces of Childhood and Youth Series}}</ref>

Northern Zambia is part of the [[Copperbelt]], which is a region of Africa known for [[copper mining]]. Beginning in the late 1880s, the region was largely dependent on copper mining. The increasing development of copper mining led to rapid urbanization and industrialization from the 1920s through the 1950s.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|66}} Many new towns such as [[Ndola]], [[Kitwe]], [[Chingola]], [[Luanshya]], [[Mufulira]], and [[Chililabombwe|Bancroft]] sprung up in the Copperbelt, each of them associated with a different copper mine or smelter and consisting of a planned "garden city" for their white residents and compounds housing male African workers, who came to work on the mines, usually for a period of six months, before returning home to their villages. The compounds were similar to army barracks, and the workers (who generally only spoke their own languages) corrupted the word "Compound" into "Komboni".<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|66}}

The mining towns were typically under the direct control of mining companies such as The Rhokana Corporation or Anglo-American, which provided social services and urban management. In many cases there were effectively "twin towns", one a mine town, such as Nkana, with the adjacent "civilian" town of Kitwe, lived in by people engaged in other occupations unrelated to the mines.<ref name=GettingBy>{{cite journal|last1=Mususa|first1=Patience|title='Getting by': life on the Copperbelt after the privatisation of the Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines|journal=[["Social Dynamics: A aJournal of African Studies"|Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies]]|date=22 June 2010|volume=36|issue=2|pages=380–394|doi=10.1080/02533951003790546|s2cid=153719282}}</ref>

[[Lusaka]] has been considered a poorly planned city, which grew slowly and in ways its planners failed to anticipate.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|70}}<ref group=Notes>In 1952 a British architect said of Lusaka that "It represents all that should not be done. 'Horrific" would not be too strong a word." In 1955 the ''[[Central African Post]]'' proclaimed Lusaka "a town which even its fondest son could never call beautiful".</ref> It was founded in 1905 as a railway station named for a local leader, and did not become officially become a town until 1913.<ref name=FrontierSpaces />{{rp|48}} In the 1930s it was named the capital of [[Northern Rhodesia]] and was redesigned with the intentions of making it a "Garden City for Africa".<ref name=FrontierSpaces />{{rp|48}} The intention was to have large open spaces, large building plots for European homes, and limited, much smaller housing plots for Africans.<ref name="young" />{{rp|68}} Like the other Zambian cities mentioned above, Lusaka consisted of "garden city" areas for white settlers and a village for the African employees of white settlers.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|70}} However, planned African areas were insufficient for the number of Africans in the city, even when the city was first planned.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|70}} Between the end of [[World War II]] and 2010, Lusaka grew from under 200,000 people to over 1.7 million as of the 2010 census,<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|70-7170–71}} although there are estimates that the actual population is over 2 million.<ref name=FrontierSpaces>{{cite book|first=Garth|last=Myers|editor1-last=Loeb|editor1-first=Carolyn|editor2-last=Luescher|editor2-first=Andreas|title=The Design of Frontier Spaces: Control and Ambiguity|chapter=Remaking the Edges: Surveillance and Flows in Sub-Saharan Africa's New Suburbs|date=9 March 2016|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781317036074|pages=49–51|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MIu1CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA51&dq=Komboni&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPsvuNoZfRAhVJhlQKHclAD5g4ChDoAQgoMAM#v=onepage&q=Komboni&fpg=falsePA51|accessdate=28 December 2016}}</ref>{{rp|48}} The vast majority of this increase in population happened in informal, unauthorized areas, on land that had been designated as belonging to white-owned commercial farms or industries.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|71}} The white owners of these areas were permitted to house their employees on their compounds, or kombonis.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|71}}

After [[History of Zambia#Independence and Cold War|Zambian independence]] in the 1960s the government attempted to replace the kombonis with planned neighborhoods of [[public housing]], but the informal areas grew quicker and even the planned areas lapsed into informality.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|71-7271–72}}

Lusaka was originally intended to be a garden city, with many trees planted in the planned white neighborhoods.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" /> The city government has made sporadic efforts to maintain a garden atmosphere and to extend it to the kombonis, but with limited effect.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|72-7672–76}} People in the kombonis tend not to be interested in ornamental trees planted and maintained by the city council; fruit trees, on the other hand, tend to do better in those areas.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|74, 77}} At one time Lusaka had rules against crops in residential areas, but [[maize]] and other crops are frequently grown in the kombonis, and are sometimes defended with violence.<ref name="UrbanAfrica" />{{rp|74}}

Kombonis tend to have relatively few industries or formal businesses located within them, leading residents to depend on an informal economy or commute for their livelihoods.<ref name="young" />{{Rp|68-6968–69}} Paid employment for people in these areas is difficult to find and often exploitative in nature.<ref name="young" />{{rp|78}} Many people living in kombonis attempt to start businesses, with a study in [[Chawama]] finding roughly 25% of people between 15-35 running their own business and 77% indicating a desire to do so in the future.<ref name="young" />{{rp|70-7270–72}} However, they are limited by lack of education, training, funding, and business support services.<ref name="young" />{{rp|72-7372–73}}

In recent decades China has invested heavily in Africa generally, and Zambia in particular.<ref name="FrontierSpaces" />{{rp|50-6050–60}} Modern housing projects are being built on top of older compounds.<ref name="FrontierSpaces" />{{rp|51}} Not all of the newer construction displaces komboni residents however; a development known as [[Meanwood (Lusaka)|Meanwood]] grew out of a farm owned by the Galoun Family, which was one of the largest white landowners in the 1930s and one of the few that did not allow kombonis to be built on their land.<ref name="FrontierSpaces" />{{rp|52}} The standard of housing in these new developments is substantially higher than the standard of living in kombonis.<ref name="FrontierSpaces" />{{rp|52}} As komboni residents are displaced from areas like Ng'ombe, they move to other kombonis, further expanding these informal areas.<ref name="FrontierSpaces" />{{rp|56}}

The class separation of Lusaka and the unplanned nature of kombonis can lead to violent clashes.<ref name="FrontierSpaces" />{{rp|56-5756–57}} In 2013 violence broke out in [[Kampasa]], an informal komboni built between land belonging to Galounia Farm and agricultural land owned by the [[Zambia National Service]] (ZNS).<ref name="FrontierSpaces" />{{rp|56}} The Galoun family and ZNS each gave land to a Chinese company to begin a farming project.<ref name="FrontierSpaces" />{{rp|56-5756–57}} With no warning, armed forces with the ZNS showed up at Kampasa at 4:00 &nbsp;a.m. and began to demolish houses and opened fire on the residents, who had long been day laborers at the farm or ZNS.<ref name="FrontierSpaces" />{{rp|57}}

[[Category:Slums in AfricaZambia]]