Sites of Struggle

The growing scholarship on urban historiography in Zimbabwe is neither widely published, nor particularly well known. The editors have here gathered the scattered and growing work on urban history into a representative volume, displaying the diversity of work that is available. The essays show that the study of urban history in Zimbabwe brings into focus a wide array of subjects: the spaces which were created for Africans in the urbanisation process; the contradictory responses of the colonial state; the effects of rural- urban linkages on labour organisation; and the struggles over the mapping of the city along racial, class and gender lines. The editors argue that the problems faced by colonial administrators continue to face their post-colonial counterparts, but in exacerbated form.