Talk:Komboni

Sources for re-write

I found these sources which can be used to re-write this article in an more scholarly vein. I used them in the deletion discussion, but assuming this article survives that and I don't get around to re-writing it before then, the talk page is a more obvious place to look for these in the future.

References

~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:35, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Additional source to work in.

[1] ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:06, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Discussion copied from WT:DYK

Prep 6 - kombonis (ma or not ma?)

... that approximately 80% of residents of Lusaka, Zambia, live in 1 of 37 slums called kombonis?

So I added "Zambia" because I'm certain that a vast majority of our "English-speaking" audience don't know where Lusaka is. And I changed "one of 37" to "1 of 37" per our manual of style (MOSNUM), but looking at the source, it calls these "ma kombonis" not simply "kombonis". So I'd like to see this fixed or clarified before it hits the main page. Asking ONUnicorn, Tryptofish and Cwmhiraeth, all of whom were clearly very happy with the discrepancy in nomenclature (and italics). Plus, the sole source for this was published 10 months ago, so it needs a timeframe, so "as of March 2016", or even better, when the research was actually conducted for the book.... I would suggest these kind of numbers are fluid so stating it as fact as of now is somewhat dubious. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:56, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for pinging me, and thanks for catching those things. I will be clearly very happy if anyone makes the necessary corrections. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:11, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

BTW the article doesn't say that 80% of the residents live in 1 of the 37 slums, but that 80% of residents live in 37 slums. So I deleted the numbers from the hook and made it: ... that approximately 80% of residents of Lusaka, Zambia, live in slums called kombonis? Yoninah (talk) 22:42, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

I had read it to mean that all 37 slums are occupied, but that of course any single resident would live in just 1 of them. But I can see now how the wording could be misunderstood to mean that they are all crowded into just 1, leaving the other 36 bereft. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:46, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Pull: Yoninah's version is a substantial improvement, so thanks for that.  :) I was going to post some tweaks, but I think we have bigger issues to look at, including:

• TRM's point, to ma not to ma, about whether the correct term is "komboni", "ma komboni", or "ma komboni".
• Whether these are actually slums. Page 94 of this report (not presently used in the article) by Francis Chigunta uses the term as "informal communities", and distinguishes them from squatter camps. The associated footnote says: "Informal settlements should not be equated with squatting or illegal occupation. Although the former do not comply with the requirements of one or more laws regarding land tenure, land use, provision of social services or building stands, rights of occupation ranging from de facto official recognition to free hold title exist in the informal settlements (Muller, Ibid.). No such recognition is given to illegal settlements. For this reason, squatter camps are not entitled to provision of social services by the state or local authority." The reference used in the nomination and article (ref 3) described them as "poor, unplanned settlements" and makes clear that there residents include parts of the middle class, and the "unplanned" part is mentioned on WP as a long-standing problem with the city. This source also uses ma komboni.
• The article gets the publication details of the source 3 wrong. The article gives the reference as:

Gough, Katherine (2 March 2016). Young Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Routledge. pp. 67–79. ISBN 9781317548379. Retrieved 28 December 2016.

The actual reference is:

Chigunta, Francis; Gough, Katherine V.; Langevang, Thilde (2016). "Young entrepreneurs in Lusaka: Overcoming constraints through ingenuity amd social entrepreneurship". In Gough, Katherine V.; Langevang, Thilde (eds.). Young Entrepreneurs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Routledge Spaces of Childhood and Youth Series. Routledge. pp. 67–79. ISBN 9781317548379.

• The lead author, Francis Chigunta, should have an article (though this would not hold up the kombani nomination). He was a Professor at the University of Zambia, a Presidential economics advisor, earned his DPhil at Oxford (working in the community on which the article is focused), and died in mid-2016. There are about half a dozen newspaper obituaries of his death, one I noted quoting an Australia-based academic describing Chigunta and his contribution in glowing terms. I can find plenty of things he wrote, including ones where he used the term slum (in a discussion of HIV vulnerable populations), but not where he uses komboni as meaning slum.
• The current first sentence equates komboni and slum ("A komboni or compound is a type of slum common to Zambia, particularly the capital city of Lusaka."), yet I am finding more that support for "komboni" = informal community (ref 1 in the article, ref 6 in the article which is actually by the same author (the article gives the book editors as the author, rather than the chapter author) and the two sources are actually the same, in parts. The relevant section is identical in both: "The green veneer of the Garden City mystique still masks what it has always masked: a dusty, inelegant and largely poor sity made up of a checkerboard of large, low-density planned elite townships (massive footprints, low populations) and high-density informal compound areas (komboni in Chinyanja, the city's lingua franca). Some of the terminology, like compound/komboni, may be particular to Lusaka, but a similar bifurcation of the city into broadly formal and informal housing zones which increasingly blur into one another around the poorly managed—indeed, unmanaged—urban edges afflicts the spatial form of most cities in Sub-Saharan Africa.") rather than "komboni" = slum (coverage of Komboni Radio in ref 7), though some (like article ref 2 from The Guardian) are simply using the term slum.
• The hook might also be tweaked to include the fact that the komboni cover about 20% of the city, though the above sourcing / accuracy issues need to be addressed first.
• @ONUnicorn, Tryptofish, Cwmhiraeth, The Rambling Man, and Yoninah: As the article expander, nomination review, hook promoter, and both commenters in this thread, your thoughts are invited, along with everyone else's, of course. EdChem (talk) 03:50, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

• To give us time to sort this out, I've moved this hook to prep 4. Schwede66 08:34, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

• Realistically, with this kind of upheaval, it should really be taken back to the nominations page until it's good to go again. This should not be the venue for such detailed discussions. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:04, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

• I think you are right, TRM. Frees up the talk page. Could you please do the honours? For me it's sleep time. Schwede66 09:10, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

• Returned, please continue discussions there. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:20, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: Thank you for bringing up these issues.

1. The source I was citing for the statistic (# of kombonis) uses ma kombonis, but other sources drop the ma and just call them kombonis. One of my sources [2] uses ku komboni (which in context I believe the ku means something like at - at komboni). I don't believe dropping the "ma" is an issue when none of the other sources use that prefix.
2. Tryptofish's reading of the "one of 37" is correct - Lusaka has 37 neighborhoods that fit in this category of komboni, and approximately 80% of the people in Lusaka live in these neighborhoods, but no single person lives in more than one of them at a time. Spelling out one and not 37 is an indication of that - per WP:MOSNUM, "But adjacent quantities not comparable should usually be in different formats" "they live in one of those neighborhoods" "there are 37 of those neighborhoods" - talking about different things, and one is not being used as the number 1; it would be inappropriate to put 1 of 37. "One of thirty seven" might be appropriate; but "1 of 37" wouldn't; IMO. I do agree though that Yoninah's version is an improvement in clarity.
3. Ed Chem Thank you for finding that additional source! I'll have to look it over and see if I can work it into the article. It seems to clear up some things that other sources left ambiguous. Thank you also for providing a fuller citation for that book.
4. Komboni=slum is in part an artifact from the article as it stood before I started working on it. Towards the end of my research I was begining to doubt that equality since these neighborhoods sometimes middle class and aren't always quite "slummy", especially in cities other than Lusaka. The two sources by Patience Mususa especially lead me to question that. However, I still think a comparison to Brazil's Favelas is apt; and Favelas are described as slums even where they aren't so "slummy". The main thing about the kombonis is that the term originally described irregular housing for Africans on land belonging to their white employers - in modern times some of these neighborhoods are still poor, run-down slums, while some are more middle class, but all are still "kombonis" "compounds" "irregular neighborhoods" "informal communities".

I hope this clarifies things somewhat. I'll try to make both the article and the nomination clearer. Can we actually continue discussion of the article itself on the article's talk page? I'll copy this discussion there. I welcome any feedback anyone has. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:25, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

In response to EdChem's point, I considered changing "slum" in the opening sentence to "neighborhood", and then adding either a sentence or clause to the effect that "many of these neighborhoods are slums", but I do think it is appropriate to define them as slums, even though residents in some of them may have more middle-class incomes and lifestyles, given that, "these areas typically have poor quality overcrowded housing, inadequate public services, limited access to water, poor sanitation, few healthcare facilities, and limited access to employment." and a slum is "a heavily populated urban informal settlement characterized by substandard housing . . . most lack reliable sanitation services, supply of clean water, reliable electricity, law enforcement and other basic services." That characterization is supported by the sources. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 16:42, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

• It gets difficult to have this discussion in multiple places. Let's please discuss it only at Template:Did you know nominations/Komboni. Please feel free to copy comments from here to there. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:38, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Pictures?

I think a picture or two would benefit the article a lot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.241.146.106 (talk) 08:43, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Perhaps someone in Zambia could help. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 15:37, 23 March 2017 (UTC)