First black woman to get a PhD in Urban Planning

A local lady and scholar, Dr Hangwelani Hope Magidimisha, made history when she became the first black woman to get a PhD in Urban Planning at the University of Kwazulu Natal.

A resident of the rural Ngudza village, Magidimisha stated that her motivation to study and work hard came from her uneducated parents. “I am from a humble beginning with supportive parents and a supportive community,” she said. “When I was in Grade 12 at Ramugondo Secondary, our school achieved a 100% pass rate for the first time in history. We were a highly motivated class. This was also the motivation for me; it just proved to me that the sky is the limit.”

She indicated that hard work had always had a way of paying off. “If I work hard, anything is possible,” she beamed. “I like doing what people think is impossible. I guess this is something I got from my father.”

She stated that urban planning was a mixture of both technical and political processes. “It concerns the use of land and the arrangement of space,” she said. “In South Africa, this profession has been at the forefront in segregating black and white people through what I call a 'zoning-and-bulldoze' approach.” 

Hangwelani said she was quick to realise that there had been some inequality in terms of land use planning in Southern Africa. “You find that some cities function better than the others,” she said. “Some cities are better planned than the others. I needed to understand the underlying factors which contribute to these inequalities among cities.”

Her qualification means a lot to her as she believes it places her at a strategic level where she is now able to engage with planning issues at a higher level. “It has broadened my knowledge in the field of urban planning,” she said. “As an academic and researcher, I am able to share my work through academic platforms with other academics, students and practitioners.”

In 2001, she published a book aptly titled Responsiveness of Town Planning System to Urban Agriculture: A Case study of KwaMashu. Before that, she had co-authored another book, Unmasking the Invisible Class in Urban Development: Focus on the Elderly People in Zimbabwe. She has numerous academic papers on the topic of urban planning published in a wide range of both print and online publications.

Date:29 April 2016

By: Tshifhiwa Mukwevho

Tshifhiwa Given Mukwevho was born in 1984 in Madombidzha village, not far from Louis Trichardt in the Limpopo Province. After submitting articles for roughly a year for Limpopo Mirror's youth supplement, Makoya, he started writing for the main newspaper. He is a prolific writer who published his first book, titled A Traumatic Revenge in 2011. It focusses on life on the street and how to survive amidst poverty. His second book titled The Violent Gestures of Life was published in 2014.

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