Commitment Issues

Standing in the line waiting to board the Johannesburg-Ndola flight on SA Airlink I closed my eyes listening to the accents around me and figured I could be boarding a Quantas flight given the predominance of Australian slang. Subtle eavesdropping reveals that many of these antipodeans are on their way to the DRC, site of many international mining interests; others were on their way to Kitwe, the erstwhile core of the Zambian Copper belt and home to the Copper Belt University’s School of the Built Environment and the Department of Urban and Regional Planning, my hosts.

Kitwe is a city of about 0.5 million people. It is attractive with many flamboyant trees and a lush landscape. In the distance one sees the mine shafts, the ‘hard hats’ that gain access to the depths below. This is the view from afar. My guest house is located in a comfortable suburb with the Bar playing host to a range of Nationalities: English, Australian, Chinese and South African. My fake wedding ring gives me some protection from continuous harassment since a single woman visiting on business is clearly a very foreign feature. The copper price has been steadily increasing so business is improving in this part of the world but I cannot help but wonder: where’s the money? It is certainly not present in the city infrastructure. Closer inspection reveals streets in dire need of repair and a city in much demand for a waste management strategy. A tour of informal settlements on the outskirts reveals minimal servicing and neglect. A curious feature is the predominance of home-based spaza shops, constructed as little kiosks embedded in fencing or as extensions of people’s homes; ‘welcome shoppers’ boasts one.

Kiosks range from hair dressing services, complete with painted signage, the ubiquitous phone shops offering ‘top-up’ and spaza shops selling basic groceries with some selling fresh produce. The market down the road is one of the biggest I have seen (I have yet to travel to West Africa…) with hardware, clothing and other goods and services arranged in self-appointed districts. I am told by my Zambian colleague that the site is to be redeveloped into a shopping centre, seen by the local authority as a healthy dose of foreign investment. I would hate to calculate the many livelihoods that would be affected by this intervention. It strikes me that the promise of FDI in this instance, and perhaps in many other examples in this mining region, is not dissimilar to my fake wedding ring: an outwards sign of commitment, but inherently false and intentionally deceptive.