The Sunday Mail
Bishop Lazi’s granny was celebrated for her witchcraft. The old lady surely knew how to concoct a delectable seven-day brew that could steal the heart of many an imbiber in the village and beyond.
When it came to brewing, she was simply a miracle worker, and this came in handy whenever she wanted to raise money for some provisions.
After working her magic over a seven day-period, it was left to the Bishop and his siblings to call for the communal bingeing fete.
This undertaking, which was carried out at the break of dawn to allow voices to be carried to far-off lands, involved finding the highest termite mound or perching on the highest tree and jointly letting rip a guttural call — ngoooto! ngoto! ngoto kuno! ngotooooooo! — which was an incantation to drive drinkers to their favourite watering hole.
And boy oh boy, did they enjoy their beer or what?
An enduring sign of a satisfied customer was the sight of a villager happily glugging away the precious brew followed by a very audible smack of the lips.
After savouring the taste, the obligatory rite was to run one’s hand — either the palm or forearm — across the mouth to wipe off the foam.
The longer the festivities, the merrier the gathering became and the more money they spent.
And of course, there was always that odd sloshed customer that would linger around long after the calabashes would have been emptied.
Like the Doubting Thomases they were, they would only leave after the calabashes were washed clean, which obviously meant there was no longer anything left to drink.
Musiyadzasukwa, they used to call them.
They often became a nuisance, and granny knew exactly how to deal with them.
She would dutifully deploy her specially made whip to chase them away.
It was quite a novel piece of customer care but it worked like a charm all the time.
At the end of the day, granny had happy customers and a bulging purse.
Ineptitude
In most, if not all, societies, bingeing is as old as time.
It is considered a worthwhile indulgence in both good and bad times, not least at weddings and funerals, among key social events.
It makes small man feel like giants; it makes fools feel like geniuses; and it also makes the stupid feel intelligent and sophisticated.
So coveted is the beverage that churchgoers desperate to be part of the legion of imbibers usually generously quote John 2:1-12, which describes how Jesus, after pleadings from his mother Mary, turned water into wine to keep the wedding party going at Cana in Galilee.
They reason that if Jesus himself could give people wine at a party, there is no way drinking it can be considered sinful.
With such a seemingly limitless demand for liquor, it is inconceivable how anyone can possibly become broke while in the business of selling the same.
Well, not if you are the MDC-A-run Harare City Council (HCC).
They only needed 12 good years after assuming control of the city to achieve the incredible feat of running the iconic Rufaro Marketing aground by 2012.
Some of its 86 beerhalls have now comically been turned into churches and colleges while other decrepit structures continue to rot away under a helplessly inept and corrupt council.
The Bishop’s intention is not to dramatise the decline of Rufaro Marketing — once a key asset of Harare City Council — but to highlight how the opposition-run council has managed, through obscene incompetence, to degrade every aspect of the capital city, as with other cities that they control, into a pitiable and embarrassing state.
Rufaro Marketing, therefore, becomes an anecdote of a metastasising cancer that needs to be urgently cured.
Not many people know that back in the day, revenues from this business unit, which was one of the major sources of income for the local authority, were used for major impactful projects such as building residential suburbs such as Mufakose, stadia and recreational facilities, among many other amenities.
Had the business been given to Bishop Lazi’s granny, she would have definitely done a better job that the current crop of city fathers.
So, if they cannot run beerhalls, how can they be expected provide satisfactory service to more than two million residents that now live in Harare?
The roads are now so potholed that they look like Swiss cheese and motorists have to intuitively make up their own lanes on unmarked roads as the drive.
The traffic lights look like metal contraptions from a bygone era and are always dysfunctional.
Road pavements that are supposed to contribute to the aesthetics of the central business district (CBD)’s cityscape continue to deteriorate.
It seems it has now been accepted as a fact of life that street lights and tower lights in residential areas will never be fixed.
Also, for most Harare residents, seeing running tap water is like spotting a comet. And garbage collection has similarly become a rarity.
All that we used to consider abnormal has gradually been normalised to become the norm.
When confronted about their ineptitude, City of Harare always plead poverty, which beggars belief.
How such a big city with so many suburbs could fail to raise enough money to bankroll decent services is a mystery.
In addition to low revenue collection capacity, there are countless new communities and suburbs that have sprouted over the last decade that are not paying a dime to local authorities for the land they currently occupy, yet they continue enjoying council services, which is simply a travesty of normal local governance.
This is just unacceptable.
Simple Minds
But the problem goes deeper than that.
It lies with simple-minded and thoroughly unqualified councillors that currently preside over council affairs.
Former Harare Mayors Muchadeyi Masunda and Bernard Manyenyeni once described city councillors as “functionally illiterate”. Kikikikiki.
Apparently, this was not an exaggeration.
A research paper that was done by Davison Muchadenyika — who was then a research fellow with the Institute for Social Development, University of the Western Cape, South Africa — and John Williams — a senior professor at the same university — was quite revealing.
They interviewed a local planning school lecturer in June 2013 who indicated that “Harare councillors included in a 2009 research project seemed more intent on stealing colleagues’ complimentary pens than engaging with the research topic”. Kikikikiki.
It doesn’t get as damning as this.
No wonder why the well-intentioned, ambitious project by Econet Wireless to modernise First Street through a partnership with council to spruce up pavements, design clean family-friendly sitting areas with water features, children’s play area, translucent seats, benches, open air theatre sitting and solar phone charging ports, among other welcome proposals, fell through.
It is not surprising that the only notable development that has taken place in the CBD in the past two decades has been the new magnificent Mbuya Nehanda statue, which has immeasurably beautified the cityscape.
We need more, not less, of such aesthetics in our cities.
But this cannot be possible if time and again, the opposition continues to second and deploy useless gremlins to such important designations simply because they know how to chant the party slogan.
Surely, council could do with sharp and inventive minds to solve the problem.
Our cities seem to be trapped in a time capsule.
But thanks to ED’s vision of creating the Office of the Provincial District Coordinator, who is increasingly nudging the local authority into action, we are beginning to see traction.
Storm drains and road verges are being cleared, municipal traffic police are back from wherever they were, some pavements are being sorted and road kerbs are being restored.
However, a lot still needs to be done.
We really cannot leave our city and cities to rot away.
It has to stop!
We need to run these incompetent and inept gremlins out of town.
Bishop out!
