PhD defence Mandipa Ndlovu - Myth, Memory, and Political Settlements in the City: Compounded Disadvantage and a Path for Plausible Futures

On Wednesday 23 September 2026 from 1 to 2 pm, Mandipa Ndlovu will defend her dissertation Myth, Memory, and Political Settlements in the City: Compounded Disadvantage and a Path for Plausible Futures at Leiden University. This dissertation interrogates the structural, symbolic, and futures-facing dimensions of urban disadvantage in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city. It argues that the city’s marginalisation is not simply the result of economic decline nor poor governance, but part of a wider “architecture of disadvantage”: a system built over time through colonial legacies, post-independence political settlements, centralised power, militarised governance, patron-client networks, spatial inequality, and entrenched myths about the city.

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