Orderly town planning needed in Harare

EDITOR: The issue of land in Harare needs Presidential intervention. It has become a norm that every open space has to have stands pegged or people simply moving in to build substandard structures.

For quite some time on the space at the intersection of First Street and George Silundika, right in the centre of the CBD, were some illegal tuckshops that had been built there. They were only destroyed after somebody had made money through the illegal allocation of that space.

This is the kind of corruption that people are now tired of but nobody seems to care enough to adequately deal with it.

All over the city such problems continue to persist but the efforts to curb them are mild at best and non-existent at a genuine peak. Along the Harare-Chitungwiza highway is a new cemetery and a residential area on the right side towards St. Marys. The feeder roads into these new developments just open up onto the busy highway from nowhere with no proper planning visible and nobody cares.

These things are risky. Harare is a beautiful city that in the past had great town planning. But now it seems that officials don’t care about the vision for the city and the image that the city should portray.

Those with the means just want to line their pockets at the expense of the safety of residents and the aesthetics of this city. We need to do better and plan in a systematic manner.

Harare will never be the same again if what is taking place is allowed to continue. It is likely to even be worse under Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change which has ceased to be a party of organic intellectuals from the working class. They have become more bourgeoisie and corrupt and this is evident from what has taken place in Chitungwiza. Someone needs to rescue this country surely, and I believe that someone should come from Zanu-PF but there must be the political will to ensure that it happens. Cde JT Via email