The privatisation of the Zimbabwean state

By Mike Mavura, Thought Leader

There is consensus that safety, security, justice and the rule of law are core functions of the state as well as basic service delivery, financial and macro-economic management, inclusive growth and job creation, the protection of human-rights and so on and so forth. These are state responsibilities stipulated in the constitution of Zimbabwe and they shape societies expectations of the state.

Slum politics: Community leaders, everyday needs, and utopian aspirations in Recife, Brazil

by Martijn Koster and Pieter A. de Vries

This article envisages slum dwellers’ politics in Recife, Brazil as a realm of possibility in which care and recognition are central. Community leaders are its main facilitators as articulators of slum dwellers’ needs and aspirations. The article’s notion of slum politics is an elaboration of Chatterjee’s (2004) ideas on popular politics as a “politics of the governed.” Yet the article critiques the governmentality perspective for its inability to envisage a politics of hope and possibility. It distinguishes among slum politics, governmental politics (projects and programs), and electoral politics (voting), which are entwined and interdependent, but different. Zooming in on a community leader’s urban agriculture project, the article argues that this project, which from an outsiders’ perspective may be considered non-viable, provided slum dwellers with possibilities to strive for community solidarity and personal recognition. Slum politics, the article concludes, is about claiming the right to be counted and recognized, and about the care for the other.