Public transport: Lessons from the past
FOR a country and economy its size, Zimbabwe consumes above normal average fuel. More than US$100 million is reportedly spent a month on fuel imports alone. Unconfirmed reports suggest Zimbabwe consumes more fuel than Saudi Arabia and other smaller countries with much more vibrant economies. This may be shocking, but it is not surprising as there are reasons for this.
The major reason is the lack of a public transport system. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, government has made tremendous strides in re-introducing buses by reviving the dead and buried Zimbabwe United Passenger Company (Zupco) and banning the independently-owned and operated commuter omnibuses (kombis) in urban areas. This has been one of the government’s most courageous programmes. To a large extent, the buses have provided commuters in urban areas with the much-needed relief despite the myriad inevitable problems and inefficiencies associated with the mass public transport business. Until there is a proper reliable public transport system in the foreseeable future, people will be forced to keep buying discarded vehicles from Japan just to get to work and take children to school.
Very few people, if any, use Zupco buses for daily transportation out of personal choice.
Restoring Zupco’s monopoly to being a transport system of choice is incomplete without looking at the history and evolution of the urban public transportation system in Harare. From independence in 1980, the renamed Harare United Omnibus Company plied most urban routes in and around Harare until the mid-1990s. It ran an admirably efficient system. Its gem was the exclusive school bus service. The school bus service was so efficient that it obviated the need for the tens of thousands of cars doing daily individual school runs as is the case now. Buying a car was a choice and cars were regarded as luxury goods because it was not necessary to own one.
The chaotic culture of the current Harare’s public transport system did not start with the introduction of emergency taxis and minibuses in the 1980s. In the 1950s, there was a hotch-potch of independent buses much like the present system. There were also smaller black transport operators who operated on the fringes of the city catering for black commuters. Bus wars between rival companies were commonplace. Double decker buses of that era were known to speed dangerously neck to neck on the city’s narrow roads, competing aggressively for passengers — a practice not uncommon in today’s cutthroat competition between kombi and mushikashika rivals.
Salisbury town councillors aggressively voted to end the chaos by establishing a monopoly. The municipality muscled its way into amending its by-laws which had allowed independent bus companies to operate. The bus companies challenged the move and took it all the way to the Supreme Court and won, but the council disregarded the court order and established the monopoly anyway. Thus the council became the only public transport operator in the city, providing a separate bus service and routes for whites and blacks.
The bigger bus companies went into partnerships with the city, but the smaller unregistered black operators continued to operate under the radar. They siphoned passengers away from bus stops and picked them at undesignated places pretty much like the banned kombis do today. They were called pirate taxis and that is where the name originated. They caused massive town planning and law enforcement problems for the authorities as they do today.
The council wanted a monopoly over the city’s transport system for various reasons including revenue and order. It managed to tame the chaos and bring a hitherto unknown level of efficiency that subsisted for a long time from the 1950s up to the 1990s. The council issued a pamphlet to city residents in 1952 justifying the reasons for taking over the transportation system. It argued that city mass transportation could not be provided by private operators because it was not a profit-making venture, but was an essential social service which supported the different arms of the economy.
It explained that it was the obligation of a local authority to provide cheap, continuous and reliable services for all areas in the city both rich or poor. It highlighted that not all routes were commercially viable yet had to be serviced regardless of cost and loss and that only a public utility was able to perform that service. Private commercial companies would inevitably neglect non-viable routes and fail to serve the public yet they paid rates and taxes too.
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