Zanu-PF militia have moved into all the big townships around the capital, burning Mugabe's opponents out of their homes, beating and raping those they capture, and sometimes torturing them to death.
Urban and industrial waste disposal sites exist in the region due to the close vicinity of Delhi and several big townships.
The main conference allows one-off gatherings elsewhere under the TEDx label, with examples in Africa including TEDxSoweto in South Africa's biggest township.
But this morning, behind the wheel of my tiny hire car, and without really meaning to, I'm trundling down a strangely quiet road towards Chitungwiza, the biggest township of them all.It is a long road.
In Soweto, Johannesburg's biggest township, he organises training, helps people find ways to make ends meet and tells them that democracy needs an opposition, pointing at next-door Zimbabwe.
My personal high point of the year was the opening night of the £12m Soweto Theatre in May, a Gehryesque architectural tour de force in South Africa's biggest township.
The theatre is the latest symbol of a transformation that would have been unthinkable in the 1970s, when clashes between protesters and apartheid police turned South Africa's biggest township into a virtual warzone.
In small pockets of Soweto, Johannesburg's biggest township, smart houses and fancy cars are no longer rare and Soweto's house prices are going up at a dizzying speed, by 39% in the past year, more than double the national average.As a tribute to this new black spending power, Soweto's vast Maponya mall was recently opened by Nelson Mandela.
Mrs Irving, an architect, is now working with Cape Town officials to help improve Khayelitsha, the country's biggest township.
It's the biggest township in Cape Town by far, it was the second biggest in South Africa, now it's about the fourth biggest in South Africa.
