The Sunday Mail
Bernard Manyenyeni
Last week we carried an article: “An end to Manyenyeni’s error’ where we did an assessment of the mayor at the helm of affairs at Harare City Council. We afford the mayor a right to reply.
The title of mayor means different things to different people.
Most Zimbabweans carry a foreign understanding and definition of our style of mayor. Their common understanding relates to Lusaka, Johannesburg or London, but not Harare. Our legal and political framework is very different. Mayors in Zimbabwe are simply non-executive chairmen of the board.
In other views, they can be like the Speaker of Parliament. For as long as the mayor is non-executive, no one should ever claim to have found the right man for the job because it will never be about one man with token legal and political power to make and effect decisions.
Even in terms of performance evaluation and comparison, we tend to be naive in our assessments. An opposition mayor in the capital city, in an environment politically controlled by a different party political commissar, will not have that much leverage to extend “his powers”.
Harare City Council is the most scrutinised institution in the country, making the mayoral position by far, the trickiest office in the land. An elected councillor serving as leader of 46 councillors is a “player-coach” or a “first-among-equals”, not a headmaster, the privilege which my independent predecessor Mr Muchadeyi Masunda had – and used most effectively.
It is almost impossible to compare any two mayors in Harare given our ever-changing job descriptions, ranging from similarity and expectations with Speaker of Parliament to a Minister, to a Prime Minister and a President. An executive mayor (like Engineer (Elias) Mudzuri was), cannot be measured alongside ceremonial mayors given the superior space and combined authorities under that previous set-up.
The only common factor is the title.
Town clerk
The town clerk saga confirms the hollowness of our mandate.
The appointment of Mr James Mushore was done with the full authority of our Constitution, but was frustrated and abused in terms of an archaic subordinate piece of legislation and politicking. Every literate Zimbabwean should know that. Political legal irons have made it difficult for us the elected “leaders” to appoint a town clerk for over three years.
Why don’t we simply get the Local Government Board to hire and fire our executives as they seem to be the people in charge?
Again the mayor and the city are decision-takers, not decision-makers.
Our mayors cannot be compared with mayors who have the authority to lead councils in discharging their mandates.
Harare water
The city’s water solution, like most infrastructure matters, is not a one-day solution. We are currently using and refurbishing a water treatment plant that is over 60 years old. We inherited and supervised a new project, the China Eximbank project at Morton Jaffray.
We have gone from just over 350 megalitres per day to consistently above 500 megalitres per day out of that project and it is 95 percent complete at a cost to date of $72 million. The water crisis still has a huge pipe replacement component to be initiated – our pipes are old and dilapidated.
We may not even have the capacity to repay the pipe replacement loan envisaged.
Procurement
Residents need to know that the mayor and his councillors in Harare are not responsible for procurement. This is done by management and the state procurement bodies.
So to blame the mayor for water chemical tenders is just barking up the wrong tree.
Motor vehicles
The purchase of motor vehicles under the Chinese loan was part of the loan provisions.
Problems arose after management decided to make the vehicle purchase a closely-guarded secret. The vehicles were also imported duty-free, making their cost about half-price in comparison with car showroom prices.
Again the mayor had nothing to do with the acquisition of the cars or any related procurement under the China loan.
Vendors and litter
Dealing with vendors has been fraught with politics, denial, capacity and short-termism. Until jobs are created, people will use our pavements to fend for their families in these harsh economic times.
We are all more guilty than any one individual. Litter is a human problem, not a leadership problem.
I will however admit that we have dismally operated on less than half our fleet of refuse trucks. We, however, have the “wisdom” to pump millions into football, netball and basketball.
No executive mayor would allow that, but collectively as council we can exhibit such poor judgment.
Road maintenance
Out of our estimated 400 000 vehicles registered in Harare, we expect $40 million a year in license fees which have been collected by Zinara with occasional token disbursements to the city.
It is quite likely that over the entire past nine years, Zinara has disbursed less than one year’s license fees to my council.
Therefore, the road management mandate is unfunded. Using these figures, it means we only have a duty to do, maybe just one-tenth of what we would ordinarily target to do.
So my likely performance in this area would be minimal given the total lack of resources.
Financial resources
For a council that started with a crippling $300 million debt write-off, the mathematical impact of losing two years’ worth of revenue means the target best level of council performance was 60 percent because 40% of the financial capacity was written off.
Since 2013, the revenue collection has hovered around 50 percent meaning, in monetary terms, that my council only had a realistic chance of achieving 30 percent of those goals, which are resource driven.
Decentralisation
As an extension of the devolution provisions of the Constitution, we initiated the Ward development fund to allow more effective local decision-making. This has suffered a stillbirth because of the fatal impact of our salaries on our finances.
Our human resources costs are gobbling over 80 percent, meaning that the 25 percent ward retention fund cannot be met after deducting the employment cost alone.
Performance evaluation
Performance of the mayor can only be collective given the very limited mayoral authority in Council. Council itself should be evaluated using non-contaminated tools of evaluation. Sentiment, emotions, politics and “journalism” are not the best tools for performance evaluation.
In terms of the collective aspect, the performance can only be the collective evaluation of the following key ingredients: –
- a) The economy
- b) The Government – central vs local politics
- c) Effective control and authority
- d) Elected leadership
- e) Management
- f) Resident and ratepayer performances
- g) Resources
An honest rating of the above components presents the performance of an era and its mayor. The privilege to serve Harare at its weakest has been an honour, not a curse.
So I humbly submit that Manyenyeni is not the error but it is rather the era.
