The Efficacy of Devolved Disaster Risk Governance in Zimbabwe: A Review of the Communication Approaches

The chapter interrogates key aspects of devolved disaster risk governance in Zimbabwe, focusing on the place of communications in disaster situations. The world over, researches on disaster management have a history of establishing new knowledge on the types, forms and implications of disasters on communities. Most of these studies are from a physical perspective; hence, the scant literature on disaster risk communications. Disaster researches have been devoid of effective crisis communication as linguistic and strategic communications have been the preserve of communication studies that peripheralised disaster issues. Thus, the thrust of the chapter is to revisit devolved disaster risk management in Zimbabwe, reviewing the approaches to disaster communications. Based on an in-depth critical review of the literature, we argue that the extent of devolution in disaster management is dependent on effective crisis communication and that non-strategic communicative engagements worsen the environment. The study challenges the top-down approach to managing disasters as the approach allows for slope-sided communication channels which only follow a unilinear direction, an approach which is against efficient disaster governance. Making inferences from literature on disasters around the world and from the lived experiences of Cyclone Idai in Chimanimani District of Zimbabwe, we conclude that the magnitude of disasters may pass unnoticed by many if it is not well communicated. We recommend that contemporary disaster risk management ought not only to re-examine its practices, but also to deploy multidimensional disaster risk communication systems as part of the key component of its strategic management.