By Correspondent
Harare City Council’s ambitious target set in 2012 to become a world-class city by 2025 was never realistic.
At best it was a mirage to attract steps towards the future. Only.
Still, much was expected of the City Fathers and after over 10 years significant changes should have been realised.
However, the Harare City Council has failed in a big way to bring progress to the capital.
The situation has become worse than when the vision was initially launched.
There are many and varied reasons but few stand out as very significant.
We have listed three which have been central to the epic failure which has lately seen even wildlife dying at Lake Chivero.
Structural Contradictions and Weaknesses
Even after the advent of the new Constitution in 2013 which celebrated devolution nothing much changed.
Power has remained centralised and every other “devolved” arm within the governance structure is restricted.
It is only blame that is dished and shared around, otherwise actual decisions are still being made by few.
Harare Residents Trust Director Precious Shumba said as much.
“(The vision) cannot be achieved under the current structural and institutional setup in the City of Harare.
“There are just too many contradictions at the policy-making level to comprehensively address the policy shortcomings of the City of Harare,” he said.
Human Resource Gaps
Harare’s struggles with human resource issues are ages-old and no solution has been found as yet.
At one time Council only had one substantive Director, Dr Prosper Chonzi for Health, while the rest of the posts, about 5, had acting personnel.
Former Acting Mayor Stewart Mtizwa even appealed to Government for help.
In response then Local Government Minister July Moyo set up a team of local government experts to do an administrative audit of all urban councils!
Meanwhile the Local Government Board, which approves senior Council appointments wasn’t fully constituted for a long period.
“At the bureaucratic level, there are huge gaps in terms of technical capacities among human resources.
“Key departments do not have substantive directors, like chamber secretary, chief legal officer, human capital, and finance which do not have a functional, transparent, and accountable enterprise resource plan.
”The end result has been a rigid and staid Council structure which doesn’t create any ideas to deal with arising challenges because everyone is holding a temporary position.
Corruption Or Is It Inefficiency?
The hallmark of Harare’s failures has been the struggle and failure to have a functional BIQ system for years.
The BIQ system was abandoned in March 2019 and since then authorities couldn’t accurately bill ratepayers.
Council in 2019 had failed to pay for the BIQ billing system after it hiked fees from US$35 000 annually to US$75 000.
In retrospect this was a very small sum considering the alternatives.
This prompted Quill Associates, the South African system developer, to terminate its services.
The losses and mess that followed encapsulated the general chaos that has underpinned the epic failure to realise Vision 2025.
From 2019 a while capital city couldn’t come up with either an alternative BIQ or resolve its differences with the former partner.
Some officials were even accused of rooting for a more expensive alternative in which they had a stake.
Still, others actually preferred the chaotic status quo to persist as the many loopholes facilitated corrupt activities.
It’s such kind of contexts that defined and provide a window into the mayhem that is Harare City Council.
No World Class City status could be channeled from such disorder and inefficiency.
