The Sunday Mail
SCIENTISTS believe human beings are a remarkable and unique species that has managed to perpetuate itself for over 300 000 years — despite the vicissitudes of an ever-evolving world and planet — because of their ability to adapt to change.
Indeed, our forebears have lived through great wars, pestilences, extreme weather events and changing climate, among other calamities.
In recent times, we have fought and won a major war against an invisible enemy — the coronavirus.
Who would have thought, imagined or even prophesied that there would come a time when billions around the world would at one time shelter in place or walk around in masks for safety as death stalked the world?
Bernard Manyenyeni
By God’s grace, we will live for many more years to come.
So, adaptation becomes an innate human attribute that programmes human beings to get used to their environs, however adverse they might become.
Psychologists have been able to establish that one way people get used to initially peculiar situations and developments in their environment is through habituation, which generally describes the ability to get accustomed to situations and stimuli that repeatedly present themselves.
This explains why, as human beings, we initially get shocked before becoming used to things that might ordinarily seem out of the ordinary.
Bishop Lazi would, thus, like you to consider habituation as inborn shock absorbers that often help us cope.
Normalising the abnormal
It is, however, both good and bad.
You see, sometimes it makes us shut out situations that might be absurd and preposterous; in the process, normalising the abnormal.
For some of us who have known how our cities used to be clean, organised and orderly, it has been particularly painful and irksome to witness their precipitous deterioration into the decrepit precincts they have now become over the past 23 years.
In recent years, perhaps one of the living and walking examples that highlighted to all who cared to notice that the centre no longer holds in the capital, Harare, was a woman called Madhuve, who appropriated for herself a piece of land right at the heart of the Central Business District.
Next to the offices of a major telecommunications company owned by a Zimbabwe-born billionaire, Madhuve established her home, which was improvised from cardboard boxes.
She also converted the neglected dining shed of a once-popular international fast-food franchise (Wimpy) in the First Street Mall into her “dining room”.
As improbable and incredible as it might sound, whenever she felt she needed a meal in the afternoon, she would just brazenly light a fire pit, on which she set her pot to cook some pap (sadza) and vegetables.
After she had her fill, she would wash her dishes close to the fountain that used to adorn the dining shed and leave them to dry in the sun of what used to be the Sunshine City.
She would also similarly wash her laundry and linen in public, including some torn knickers, and hang them out to dry, unperturbed by the disbelieving stares of shocked passersby.
The first time Bishop Lazi came face-to-face with such an egregious exhibition of lawlessness in the capital he was shocked out of his wits.
The last time the Bishop had encountered such a similar abomination was in a foreign land, decades ago, when, in a surreal moment, he witnessed the jarring spectacle of a cattle herder chasing after a beast that had strayed into the capital.
It was simply unbelievable.
Well, Madhuve might have later vanished from the streets of Harare — of course, not because the city fathers did the needful — but the lawlessness has since multiplied many times over.
They might be the now-famous vendors who roast maize cobs at street corners.
They might be settlers who just occupy open spaces or disorderly properties that mushroom on road servitudes.
They might be people who dump litter anywhere and everywhere.
Or they might also be the numerous liquor centres that are curiously opening on every street and attracting the odd crowd of imbibers who catcall at passing women or piss anywhere they feel is convenient.
The result has been a repugnantly dirty and smelly city.
Harare, in particular, has gone to the dogs.
But local authorities are indispensable insofar as they are at the coalface of service provision.
Their routine interface with the people makes them a vehicle through which Government’s power is felt.
So, the plan to build a modern and prosperous society cannot be realised if our city roads remain potholed and when sewerage continues to flow in our communities, which are already being buried in mounds of uncollected garbage.
Our recreational areas and community halls that used to incubate talent continue to rot away in neglect.
This untenable situation will not be allowed to continue.
A growing economy and the progress we are making as a country can only be a felt and lived reality for Zimbabweans if we build communities and provide services compatible with the 21st century.
Ending the circus
Suffice it to say the leadership vacuum in our urban local authorities is more than apparent.
And, as the Greek philosopher Aristotle once observed, “nature abhors a vacuum” (horror vacui).
1 Corinthians 14:33 tells us: “For God is not a God of disorder, but of peace — as in all the congregations of the Lord’s people.”
Genesis 1:1-2 also says: “God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.”
Bishop Lazarus warned city fathers soon after the August 23-24 elections that
they needed to shape up, sooner rather than later.
And the message from President Mnangagwa last week could not have been more emphatic — if not ominous — when he launched the Local Authorities Blueprint on Service Delivery.
Essentially, it means local authorities have seven months to put their house in order, which means sorting out their billing system and improving revenue collection, providing up-to-date audited accounts, develop their masterplans and conduct valuation of properties for rating purposes, among other urgent tasks.
An inspectorate department housed under the Ministry of Local Government and Public Works — now driven by two men with extensive experience in the private sector — will soon be set up to ensure that local authorities do play ball.
What we are beginning to see is the progressive tightening of the noose on inept councillors.
Well, time is running out for clowns who have been causing the circus at Town House.
Although former Harare Mayor Bernard Manyenyeni’s advice to his fellow CCC party members before the elections, particularly on the need to select competent councillors, came across as crude and crass, it succinctly captures the reason for the decline of our towns and cities over the past two decades.
“As we head for municipal elections, one big question is, how urban is your next councillor, the custodian of your urban lifestyle?” he posted on X (formerly Twitter).
“The danger of having rural people running cities must be contained. It dilutes expectations, outcomes and deliverables. Many urban residents are not fit-for-town themselves, which is also contributing to the decline.
“Can we at least point to the urban leaders confidently. From 30 metres away, our city fathers must look unmistakably ‘urban’ — they must smell city from a distance.
“Personal track records must tell us who they are and what urban values and experiences they present to the residents . . .” Kikikiki.
Was it also not Manyenyeni who once told us that some of the councillors he had the misfortune to work with, who were also from his own party, were functionally illiterate? Kikikiki.
But we will not continue to be held to ransom by some of these clowns.
Not anymore.
The writing is on the wall.
They simply have to lead, follow or get out of the way.
Bishop out!
