The Sunday Mail
Tendai Chara —
Whilst some of the world’s capital cities are known for orderliness and are major tourist attractions, Harare is synonymous with sewer blockages, uncollected garbage, congestion, illegal settlers and vendors and the spread of communicable diseases, among other negative attributes.
For the past decades, Harare has promised – and dismally failed – to provide to its long-suffering citizens, the basic of services.
Instead, it has often clashed with residents associations, civic groups and non-governmental organisations over its failure to curb water cuts and stop the mushrooming of illegal commuter omnibus ranks, among other issues.
Harare is struggling to contain stream bank cultivation and to put a halt to the invasion of wetlands.
Citizens brazenly cultivate on the verges of roads, hindering the flow of traffic and endangering the safety of the residents in the process.
Mbare Musika, the city’s cash cow, has often given the city fathers sleepless nights as individuals collect money from the bus rank without council authority.
Refuse disposal has been erratic with the council being unable to effectively and efficiently provide water and solutions to the transport woes.
The city has failed to effectively tackle issues to do with waste management and energy provision.
The chaos that is related to the unplanned cultivation of every available space often results in muggings, rapes and robberies. Criminals take advantage of the cover provided by the crops to pounce on unsuspecting residents who will be using footpaths.
Below we take stock of some of the council’s glaring failures.
Potholes
If there was an award for “The Most Potholed City”, Harare would have given other capitals a good run for their money. Roads that lead to most high-density areas are the most affected and have since became death traps.
In 2014, the council was taken to court for failure to maintain its road network and was also sued for $300 000 damages after a man broke his leg after falling into an unsecured drain. Harare businessman, Mr Maxwell Murombo, argued that the city should be forced to maintain roads, citing two roads – Ridge Road and Mount Road in Avondale, Harare, where he resided. He said the roads where in a bad state and pushed up his vehicle fleet maintenance costs.
Several cases were brought against the council by motorists over damaged cars. Motorists are now taking it upon themselves to re-fill the potholes.
The mushika-shika menace
Council, despite many assurances to the citizens, has failed to contain pirate taxis, commonly known as mushika-shika. The Coventry Road commuter omnibus holding bay was ditched by commuter omnibus crews and is now a white elephant.
There are only six legal commuter ranks in the CBD with several illegal ranks. Government recently approved a $30 million request from Harare to assist in their infrastructure requirements and equipment.
Haphazard and illegal allocation of stands
Harare City Council has often sent strong-worded threats to those that allocate themselves land. Although some of the houses that were built on illegally-acquired land have been destroyed, thousands of people still illegally possess city land.
Recently, the city was investigating circumstances that led to the allocation of residential stands 50 metres away from Marimba River in Budiriro 5 Extension.
Several properties in the area were flooded. A housing co-operative was allocated the land by the city council.
Mr Michael Chideme, the city spokesperson, all but confirmed that the allocation of land has not always been procedural.
“The investigation will ascertain the authenticity of the layout plan and whether the affected stands are within the approved plan. The city would also want to urge people allocated residential land to only occupy it when they have been given occupation certificates,” Mr Chideme said.
Street vending
Harare recently failed to remove vendors from its streets. A 48-hour ultimatum to all illegal food vendors operating within the Harare Metropolitan area to cease operations was largely ignored.
Water- borne diseases
The current typhoid outbreak has seen two deaths being recorded with 24 confirmed cases and 158 suspected cases. Preliminary investigations have shown that the key drivers of typhoid and any other water-borne diseases are issues related to personal hygiene, unregulated vending of foodstuffs such as vegetables, meat, fish (cooked and uncooked) and inadequate water supplies.
Dr Prosper Chonzi, the Harare City Council health director, recently confirmed that residents are consuming contaminated water due to erratic water supplies.
He also said some Mbare residents are now resorting to using the bush to relieve themselves due to the unavailability or limited supply of water. The rains ultimately washes away the faeces to the boreholes. Almost half of Mbare-Sunningdale boreholes have contaminated water that is not fit for human consumption.
World class by 2025
Despite these glaring failures on the part of council, it still maintains that it will meet its target to be a world-class city by 2025. In an interview with an online publication, Harare City Deputy Mayor Chris Mbanga is quoted saying although the picture is looking gloomy, the City of Harare is on the right track to become world class.
“The economy cannot continue to perform the way it is. We can improve and we are very confident that we are going to overcome our economic challenges and I can confidently say we are on track and we will meet the target of 2025,” Mbanga was quoted saying.
He said the main challenges facing the city are to do with resources and the poor performance of the economy.
“What is currently happening is that ratepayers are not able to pay and we cannot blame them because they haven’t got the money and it is not their fault that the money is not there. So this creates challenges for us to meet our targets to achieve world-class city status,” he said.
Facts on the ground, however, suggests that it will be a miracle if the city becomes world class by 2025.
Mbanga, however, said there is no need for Harare to be compared with other cities.
“When we talk of a world-class city, we are not talking about an animal that is not achievable. We are not comparing ourselves to New York, we are not comparing ourselves to London. We are comparing ourselves to ourselves. We have these things and all we need to do is try and have them habitable,” he said.
