Bulawayo blues: Salvaging the City of Kings

BULAWAYO has for decades been a leader in local governance and service delivery excellence. This reputation has been gradually eroded over the past 10 or so years and in particular the past three years. Significantly, the death of at least 13 residents due to typhoid has severely compromised the stature and status of the City of Kings. Once known for cleanliness and order, the city has catastrophically and spectacularly descended into the quagmire of poor service delivery.

The water crisis which appears to be at the epicentre of the current crisis in “Blues” is largely a creation of central government which is statutorily required to provide bulk water to cities and towns. I would like to argue that the crisis Bulawayo faces is that of leadership and governance which requires urgent, decisive and proactive action.

Solutions need to be implemented soberly through reaction to the service delivery quagmire and leadership conundrums facing the city. The crisis in Bulawayo is a manifestation of a deeper leadership crisis at local and national levels.

The multiplicity of challenges facing the City of Bulawayo require the right leadership mix in craft competencies in order to navigate the city towards sustainable growth, development and sound service delivery.

In order to effectively deal with the Bulawayo leadership and service delivery conundrum, it is essential to have an appreciation of contextual issues at macro and micro levels.

This understanding not only explains the failure of the current council due to extrinsic or exogenic factors but also the type of leadership which is required to deal with the complex issues affecting the city.

It is generally accepted that the economic landscape and political architecture of Zimbabwe have destroyed local government capabilities. The state of the economy has made it prohibitively difficult for local authorities to deliver their core mandate of service delivery as well as sound local governance epitomised by responsive local government structures and processes.

This is not rocket science and we expect those who contested as councillors to be fully aware of this. It is a fact and an uncontested one that government centralised provision of bulk water through the Zimbabwe National Water Authority, but only managed to build one dam, ie Mtshabezi Dam in the early 1990s to mitigate the city’s growing water problems. It is also a fact that the state of the economy has had crippling and debilitating effects on quality of and access to service delivery.

Local authorities are also hamstrung by a disabling legislative framework which grants sweeping powers to the Local Government minister and central government.

Local government elections have become shortcuts for many opportunists and political scavengers to hungrily descend on municipalities in search for tenders, stands and freebies. The professional, competent servant and service culture of the city has been eroded in the process. In this, I lay responsibility not just on the elected politicians, but also on the executive arm or management arm of the city which is tasked with operational issues.

The City of Bulawayo needs sound, visionary leadership anchored on integrity from the councillors and an equally dynamic, craft competent management free from avarice, caprice and the trappings of arrogance. I would like to propose a number of ideas to improve the state of the city and broadly local governance and service delivery in the city.

In order to transition to stability and thereafter a sustainable path of development, the city needs councillors and technocrats who understand the intricacies of local governance, its relationship with complex economic and political ecosystems. City’s vision 2050

The City of Bulawayo needs to develop a 30-year visionary framework. This, of course, may be contained in current masterplans but I am referring to a more inclusive process of drawing up a vision of the Bulawayo we want in 30 years’ time in terms of the local economic development, town planning, renewable energy, water and sewage reticulation, recreation/park spaces, technology and so on. This vision of the Bulawayo we want must then inspire us to take the necessary policy and planning steps in five-year strategic planning cycles to achieve this broader vision. This vision will also inform the kind of leaders that are needed in order to achieve the Bulawayo vision 2050. We will thus be driven not by political parties but by the vision and desire to achieve it through deployment of competent leadership to govern and manage the city.

Vision 2050 should make Bulawayo one of the fastest growing cities in Sub-Saharan Africa within that 30year period. For that to happen, craft competence is required at the technocratic stratum of the municipality in order to effect planning and implementation and craft literate councillors to provide vision, direction and oversight.

Meritocratic leadership

Mob rule where the biggest thugs in political parties emerge victorious in primary elections at the expense of quality candidates must be replaced by a meritocratic system which provides for minimum thresholds for one to be a councillor. This refers not to academic qualifications but rather to whether one has a proven track record in leadership, management or community service at any level.