Re-thinking planning in Lesotho

…Towards socially cohesive human settlements

Lesotho like other developing economies is experiencing challenges which appear to manifest themselves mostly in our urban areas. These challenges are, inter alia, rapid urbanisation, growing poverty, unemployment, HIV/AIDS, economic stagnation, lack of adequate infrastructure and environmental degradation.

These are mostly caused by a plethora of factors including globalisation, regionalism and trans-nationalism. We are at a time when the urban planning profession is under pressure to solve these anomalies. Is it possible to solve these challenges?

While the answer is not a straight forward yes or no, it is definitely not a walk in the park facing these challenges head on, given that urban managers are struggling with the scourge of scarce resources.

It would take a re-structured urban planning and the redeemed and resurrected urban professionals to play a meaningful role in solving them, which is in it a step towards building socially cohesive human settlements; be it cities, towns or villages. I move below to suggest ways in which we would solve our problems and contribute towards socially inclusive sustainable and cohesive human settlements.

Firstly, our planning system should be strategic and future oriented. While our people and human settlements demand unlimited wants, the resources to satisfy those wants are limited. Sacrifices should be made on how to spend public resources to respond to their needs. In this sense, planning should focus more on solving the long term priority needs of the communities.

Secondly, planning should be vision driven. Strategic planning is itself a vision driven process. A dream of the future is mapped and ways of achieving it put forth. This helps in the focusing of limited resources to the most pressing needs. Visioning helps the planners and the society to have a path on which to travel to their destinations, the destination of an inclusive society and cohesive human settlements.

Thirdly, planning should be performance and outcome oriented. There should be very clear performance indicators in our plans which would be used to measure progress. We should move away from old school redundant blue print plans which are too general to be observed. The performance based outcome oriented plans would help us to ascertain whether we are solving our cities’ challenges or not.

Fourthly, we should always move away from the prescriptive modernist planning to the 21st century communicative, collaborative and people centred planning. This is participatory planning that involves all the key stakeholders in the planning process in order to cultivate the spirit of ownership amongthem.

Integrated and holistic planning focuses on the physical, institutional, economic and social aspects of society in order to build equitable access to services and cohesive human settlements. Of particular interest here would be the integration of infrastructure development and local economic development which would be useful in improving the living standards of the people.

Fifthly, our planning should have strong focus towards people development. It should respond to people’s needs and be socially rational in every way. It should be planning for the people by the people through the people.

Measures should be put forward to include all the key stakeholders and involve them in every step of the process. It should also be developmental, that is, it should focus on improving the lives of the people and the human settlements in which they are living. Planners should run away from the development control mantra and focus towards development facilitation and management.

Lesotho has not been explored and developed to its full potential. What we (and our cities) need is the production of the new cadre of development brooding agents who are keen to making our settlements the engines of growth and sustainability.

Urban planners (read: development planners) should be development midwives and caretakers of the development process. This development should be multi-pronged, that is, it should be environmentally sensitive and economically sound. Lastly, the urban planning profession should be build from scratch in Lesotho.

What we currently have is a disorganised profession in which every Tom, Dick and Harry could possibly plan, without having the necessary qualifications. Planners should unite in defence of their trade.

If these six points integrated into our planning system, Lesotho’s human settlements may be socially cohesive and equitable. There would be less inequality in our villages, towns and cities.

There would be less stagnating regions and our country would be able to solve those challenges that inflict pain and suffering to our society. As a concluding remark, our planning legislative regime should be harmonised with the 21st century. Our planning law, the Town and Country Planning Act 1980 should be revised to be development focused and business friendly.

Kelebone Lekunya