By Correspondent
Some shady residents organisations have been pushing the idea of a Commission to temporarily run Harare City Council.
These include the Zimbabwe National Organisation of Associations and Residents Trust led by Shepherd Chikomba.
It accuses Councillors of lining their pockets against service delivery.
Zimbabwe Combined Residents Association (ZICORA) led by Steven Nyabvure has also peddled the same line.
Nyabvure says a commission should have been put in place way back.
Only the Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA) has provided cautionary words to the enterprise.
Its Director Loreen Mupasiri-Sani was quoted saying the move was replete with too many loopholes.
This coming mainly from the supposed Commissioners lacking a mandate from the residents and being answerable to central government.
The Makwavarara Commission
A further cautionary tale are the exploits of the last Harare Commission led by Sekesai Makwavarara.
Personally, Makwavarara herself was a political flip-flopper, as opportunistic as she was ineffective when given the Harare reins.
She was originally with ZANU PF and then switched to the then MDC.
Under the party she was elected as a Councillor for Mabvuku in 2002.
However at the height of political frictions with the ZANU PF government she resigned from MDC.
A few months later she was appointed Harare Commission Chairperson, itself a seeming return to the ZANU PF fold.
However, her rein is most infamous not for an strategic turnaround schemes at Council but profligacy.
A Rein Of Profligacy
She became the last Harare leader to occupy the massive and lavish Mayoral mansion in Gunhill.
The massive structure, constructed for around US$500 000 was a grand luxury residence which, in her aftermath, has been shunned by everyone.
It has since become a white elephant slowly rotting from negligence as its use is expensive.
Makwavarara, overlooked all that and stayed there during her rein between 2006 and 2008.
During her rein many analysts described her as a very incompetent political appointment.
“She is the personification of incompetence,” said political analyst Eldred Masunungure.
Enjoying the protection of then Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo, Makwavarara set upon the scheme to buy a Council owned house at a fraction cost of $78 000.
Makwavarara was embroiled in another scandal relating to her lavish lifestyle after installing a satellite dish and decoder at a cost of $100 million.
All this was done without the requisite approval of the Commission or any tender procedure.
She made another scandalous move when she made an expensive trip to Moscow and ordered curtains at a cost of around US$350 000.
Poor Leadership
Such was her flagrant disregard for any protocol that even the spokesperson of the Harare Central ZANU PF Province Branch Chairperson William Nhara spoke out.
Nhara said Makwavarara was undermining the party and lacked any professionalism or leadership qualities.
Brought in to supposedly steady the ship and revive the city, things actually became worse under her Commission.
Roads became potholed, infrastructure was not fixed and according to a Mail and Guardian report, “there were frequent water cuts and burst sewage pipes became perennial.”
By 2008 when she finally stepped down the city was the worse for wear with absolutely nothing to show from her reign.
The Commission had achieved practically nothing of note and the lingering residue of its tenure was the cloud of corruption and extravagance.
