ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the everyday challenges faced by ordinary residents of Bulawayo around civic activism and how this relates to the prospects of downward social accountability of Bulawayo’s city council. The political, social, spatial and historical experiences of Bulawayo city are strongly tied to foundational socio-cultural arrangements and the trajectories of everyday lives, which in turn have a bearing on how residents view and relate to local power and institutions. The impact of these locally based experiences has translated into disengagement by residents in social accountability processes, alongside fear and despondency. Nonetheless, residents in the low-income, high-density areas of Bulawayo have sought to self-mobilise and self-organise in informal and loose residents’ associations, underpinned by gender, class and ethnic dynamics. They have formed their own development-focused associations to address social service delivery challenges and, at the same time, embed themselves in local systems of corruption to their own benefit. In this way, they are developing alternative ways of negotiating the challenges they face in deeply deprived residential spaces.
