The Sunday Mail
ONE of the thoroughly unpleasant tasks the Bishop had to endure and become inured to as a young village boy was being condemned by elders to lead yoked oxen by the rope halter during summer cropping.
It was a dreadful and nerve-fraying experience for a youngster, as it was akin to leading barely tamed monster-sized beasts.
These animals — bred in special paddocks where they grew intimidatingly big and strong because of abundant pastures — were not quite like the mongrelish tungundu type of breeds we see nowadays that are so small that they often lean on trees to moo for fear of tipping over. Kikiki.
So, you can imagine the fear that coursed through Bishop Lazi’s veins as he frenetically tiptoed, barefooted, to avoid being impaled by these creatures during the tedious toing and froing of tilling.
It usually got hectic at the end of the field, where the oxen were supposed to be led out sufficiently enough to allow the plough to burrow through to the end while, at the same time, leaving room between the prickly thickets and the mean beasts to dexterously manoeuvre to the next furrow.
Phew!
Curing stubbornness
Some days it even became dramatic, particularly when we had two yokes of oxen to include those that were being tamed to become beasts of burden.
The newbies, unused to the onerous exertions of pulling a plough, would expectantly try to bolt or stop in their tracks, which invariably attracted a torrent of lashes from a specially made sjambok. So, the sjambok naturally becomes a gear lever of sorts used to cue the young oxen into doing what was expected.
But this only worked to a point.
After finding the going tough, the newbies would often collapse into a stubborn beefy heap that did not budge no matter how much it was flogged.
However, this stubbornness could be cured as well. One of the most egregious methods involved lighting a small fire beneath or behind the animal to jolt it to its feet.
But a relatively benign method that was preferred by Bishop Lazi was to fashion the animal’s tail into a tensioned spiral cord, after which one mightily sank his teeth into it. Kikikiki.
It actually worked like a charm — always!
So, gradually and progressively, this is how oxen were tamed to provide draught power in the village. And the stubbornness that the Bishop saw in the young oxen is the same stubbornness that he sees in officials at Harare City Council, who are responsible for the administration — or rather misadministration — of the capital.
Recently, after Harare mayor Jacob Mafume was subjected to a barrage of criticism over the collapse of the deal with Sakunda Holdings to refurbish Rufaro Stadium into a world-class facility, he boldly, if not arrogantly, indicated that council would use its own resources to rehabilitate the facility by March this year, in time for the 2023 football season.
An incredulous Bishop indicated at the time that pigs would fly before the plan came to pass. How wrong he was. Images of a couple of workers in yellow work suits wheelbarrowing some dirt onto the turf put him to shame.
The perimeter wall is also being fixed.
Apparently, the pigs are learning to fly after all. Kikikiki.
You might be wondering where City of Harare’s new-found fortune that is bankrolling such an ambitious project is coming from, particularly at a time the local authority cannot even collect garbage, reliably pump water into people’s homes and has abandoned roads and communities. If you did not know, well, City Parking, an arm of Harare City Council, was awarded the contract to fix Rufaro, which explains the ongoing frenzied clamping of motorists for alleged traffic violations.
Shorn of all its pretences, the ongoing operation in the Central Business District is, to all intents and purposes, a major fundraising exercise to sponsor Mafume’s egotistic project, which has nothing to do with upgrading the iconic football venue, but has everything to do with spiting Sakunda for cheap political point-scoring. This betrays the folly and unsustainability of the project.
It is just vanity.
Ecclesiastes 4:4-6 says: “And I saw that all toil and all achievement spring from one person’s envy of another. This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. Fools fold their hands and ruin themselves. Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.”
Rotting
Mayor Mafume is chasing the window.
He should have just left Sakunda to breathe new life into that decrepit monstrosity and its environs, which could have become the new growth node of a grand urban renewal plan for the 116-year-old Mbare.
The little money that is being creamed off desperate motorists by City Parking could have been put to good use in a city that has regressed so much that is will soon become a village. It is fair to say Harare City Council has all but collapsed, just like the roads, waste management, water infrastructure, community halls and the cityscape it is supposed to administer. Where major metropolises are supposed to crystallise the values and aesthetics of a community and society, Harare represents a two-decade-old decay caused by the failures of our local politics.
The rot is just too much.
It has been painful to witness the collapse of our city under successive opposition mayors, from Elias Mudzuri (April 1, 2002 to April 2003), Emmanuel Chiroto (June 15, 2008 — ), Bernard Manyenyeni (2013 — 2018), Hebert Gomba (September 3, 2018 — August 14, 2020) to Jacob Mafume (September 3, 2020 — 2023) All these men are a joke when compared with the late “Big Solo”, Solomon Tawengwa, the Indian-educated businessman who capably served the city from 1981 until his resignation in 1999. Interestingly, the more the opposition maladministers the city, the more arrogant they have become, since they have realised that they can effortlessly profit from people’s resultant anger by blaming Government.
As weird as it sounds, the opposition now views the ruins of the once-majestic city as a source of political capital.
When Mafume was recently taken to task over festering potholes on local roads, he sought to deflect blame by claiming City of Harare was not getting enough funds from the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara), which was both disingenuous and fatuous.
Obviously, this cannot possibly explain why they are also failing to buy water treatment chemicals, spruce up community halls, recreational parks and boulevards, as well as fund onsite and offsite infrastructure in new settlements, among the many services they should be providing to the city.
Local Government experts actually argue that rates on property and land should ordinarily provide between 20 to 30 percent of total revenue, while water income should also constitute as much as 40 percent.
In addition, sewerage charges and refuse removal fees make up between 5 percent and 10 percent of total revenue.
There are other revenue streams such as fees on various users of council amenities such as schools, flea markets, bus termini, caravan parks, cemeteries and crematoria, parkades and street parking, swimming pools and licence fees (dog licences, hawker’s licences and shop licences).
Before independence, for example, beer, which was sold through Rufaro Marketing, was a major source of revenue for Salisbury City Council’s African Administration Department. In fact, beer proceeds helped build residential suburbs such as Mufakose, stadia and playgrounds, among many other critical infrastructure.
But how can council levy appropriate rates when it has not undertaken a valuation of its properties? It is even failing to capture new properties onto its valuation roll, losing a lot of revenue in the process.
And do not get the Bishop started on Harare’s failure to provide water, which is putting lives at risk. Boniface Coutinho, a chartered accountant who used to audit most of the local authorities, noticed weaknesses in the system as far back as 2009, when he indicated in a presentation that was made in November in the same year that: “Numerous inefficiencies have been noted in the collection and levying of charges related to service provision that has resulted in the inability of councils to sustain provision of these services.
These include the loss of revenue on water provision due to the inability of councils to repair water meters, and the use of estimates of, instead of actual, water consumption. Of particular concern is the fact that most councils lack the ability to properly determine the cost of providing these services by setting appropriate tariffs that are based on cost recovery plus a reasonable mark-up. There is an alarming deterioration of water services, refuse removal services, the quality of sewer, roads and other infrastructure.”
It is a mess! As Bishop Lazarus continues to say ad infinitum, something has to give.
Harare City Council, and many other local authorities, especially in urban areas, should have its books audited and adhere to best practice in terms of financial reporting.
This would not only increase transparency, but attract lenders and investors as well, as council business is inherently big business.
Therefore, there should be a legislative framework that imposes penalties for failure to present audited financial statements within a prescribed period.
Clearly, there is need for a consensus that transcends parochial political prisms in order to rescue our city from all this nonsense and create a truly world-class city.
This should be borne out of the realisation and acknowledgment that the current state of our city is untenable.
Let us not normalise the abnormal.
Posterity cannot inherit such a mess.
If need be, let us light a fire underneath or behind these conceited, corrupt and incompetent city fathers.
Bishop out!
