The Sunday Mail
If we are to believe our city fathers, Harare will be a world-class city by 2025 – only 10 years from now.
To give the dear reader an appreciation of how time flies, a decade is not a very long time, it was only 10 years ago when we were in 2005. To those who love music, it was in 2005 that Alick Macheso released “Vapupuri Pupurai” or it was in 2005 that Simon Chimbetu, the “Master of Song”, passed away.
So if you can vividly remember Chimbetu’s funeral procession like it was yesterday, it should not be much of a problem to envisage 10 years from now. It is like seeing tomorrow.
My worry, though, which must be shared by a fair share of the country’s citizenry, is whether we will be able to turn around Harare, in the next 10 years, to be like (forget Johannesburg for we are already like Johannesburg) but New York, Amsterdam, London, Tokyo, Moscow, Beijing, Cape Town, among a long list of other filth-less cities.
Whereas VP Mphekezela Mphoko might have been a bit insensitive when calling vendors lazy, I, like many other citizens, share his revulsion for the manner in which the cities’ streets have been turned into vending sites.
The national economy has been turned into a pavement economy, leaving many wondering if the vision by such cities as Harare, to turn themselves into world-class zones, could not be but just day-dreaming.
The reasons why vendors have all of a sudden flooded our streets are varied, with the usual “Mugabe must go” madness cited as the most common reason.
But if any rational person were to sit down and analyse the situation, even if President Mugabe were to go today, tomorrow or whenever you fancy, would the vendors go off the streets?
And if we were to replace President Mugabe with Tsvangirai, Makoni, Mazara or whoever you fancy, will the vendors walk off the streets the morrow?
Regrettably, as a nation, we have reached a point where we have failed or are failing to analyse situations and ascribe real solutions.
We want to blame all of our failures, as a people and a society on one man, yet we don’t want to look at ourselves and see what role we are playing in the decay of the same.
I am not here to play President Mugabe’s advocate.
But in all fairness why should the failure of a council to enforce its standing rules and regulations governing the proper running of its city or town, be blamed on President Mugabe?
Does President Mugabe issue vendors with licences to trade wherever they wish?
Some will argue that as much as council is responsible for controlling what happens in its environs, it is President Mugabe who has forced thousands off the factories and industries, rendering them jobless and hence their looking up to vending as an option.
These kinds of arguments and observations are of a political nature and will not help us much in trying to find the solutions to the problems lying before us.
At the end of it all, it becomes a question of one’s political persuasion and the bickering might not even end.
The issue is, we have a vending problem before us, that the whole of Harare and even in other cities has been turned into a vending zone. And the vendors are so daring that they sell their wares right in front of operating shops and supermarkets, even during the shops’ operating hours.
Previously, the vendors would come and lay their wares after hours, as the shops closed.
But it is now different, as the shops open, the vendors start business as well.
Shops and supermarkets, in their usual defence, say that they are not empowered, that in fact, it is the purview of the city authorities to control and monitor the activities that happen on the pavements.
As much as we appreciate that our employment levels are not up to scratch, that most of the vendors are innocent and law-abiding citizens looking for a criminal-free manner to survive, the onus then should lie with the city authorities to ensure that the vending is done systematically and in a manner that does not inconvenience other citizens.
For instance, it is really a hassle to walk in Harare’s pavements any hour of the day as all the pavements have been turned into shopping stalls and malls.
And what is even worrying is that all these vendors are trading without anything accruing to the State or city authorities in terms of levies or taxes.
Yet levy and tax-paying establishments are being robbed of customers and profits in broad daylight!
I think the obtaining scenario is that we resolve our problems without being grossly emotional, emotions which in turn usually erodes most rationale and reasoning.
We have a problem on our hands and what are the practical solutions that will solve our problems, vending in particular?
For starters, city authorities might find it prudent to avail vending stalls at appropriate places, at appropriate charges to prospective vendors.
Right now, for council to chase away the vendors from the streets might be in vain, because before they chase them away, they should proffer a solution.
Vending structures with all the attendant facilities will help in bringing sanity and order to the Sunshine City, which has the unenviable task of becoming a world-class one in 10 years’ time.
As much as local authorities battle to bring sanity and order to our towns, central government should be helping in taking the people off the streets by implementing some of the “mega-deals” that we seem to be reading about only in the newspapers.
For instance, why is Ziscosteel still not operating? Our lead stories in this section deal with the discovery of coal-bed methane gas, which was discovered ages ago and which up to now remains untapped?
Why? When we are sitting on such resources? Are our mega-deals meant for newspaper stories only and nothing further?
Last Sunday, there was talk of the establishment of a new city, a story which drew mixed reactions. Whilst others argued misplaced priorities, like building a new parliament and new city when social infrastructure is not there, others cited the example of Sandton in South Africa, where filth and dirt of Johannesburg was left to deal with itself whilst the moneyed looked for new horizons.
South Africa is a different economy to ours, in fact is more vibrant hence it made more business sense to have another centre of financial power.
But does it help here, when High Glen shopping centre is almost empty, so is Chitungwiza Town Centre, Eastgate shopping mall, Joina City and when there are also plans to build the Zimbabwe Mall in Borrowdale?
Are we saying the whole of Zimbabwe should come and stay in Harare? What are we doing to de-centralise our services and products, such that Harare does not become Bambazonke, like it is now?
Why not allow Tokwe-Mukosi to flourish, Ziscosteel to take off, Chisumbanje to be at its peak, Chiadzwa rolling, tourism elsewhere evergreen, such that there is not that demand and hunger to come to Harare?
The vending menace aside, those pirate taxis and their siblings, the kombis, have not made downtown Harare any envious.
There is a theory that some people within Harare House are benefiting from the chaos that is prevailing in the city, that some of the municipal officers and/or top cops own the mushika-shika, or have some vendors on their payroll, which all could be bar talk, or even not, but the time has come to bring sanity to our cities.
President Mugabe has nothing to do with what is prevailing on the streets of Harare and other cities.
Rather what we need are proper town planning regulations, which we should adhere to, either at administrative level or vendor level. It is as simple as that.
