Decentralisation, harmonisation of development
DECENTRALISATION has been emotively weaponised as an absent feature in Zimbabwean governance by certain sections of civil society and the opposition.
To this end, all the incompetences of local authorities have been pinned on alleged central Government interference.
To the contrary, most local authorities have enjoyed the autonomy they have in their jurisdictions to the extent of not being accountable for their poor service delivery and excessive expenditures.
The discourse of decentralisation has been mostly politicised to conceal local government incompetences.
If anything, Zimbabwe has suffered from excessive decentralisation owing to the central government’s generously entrusted power to local authorities.
The footprint of poor local government management is predominant in most metropolitan jurisdictions compared to rural councils.
This raises a concern as to why the effects of alleged central interference have an adverse effect to a single section of local government management.
In the context of the given circumstances, it is imperative to understand the urgent need to rethink what decentralisation entails and its overall effect on consolidating a national agenda for inclusive and holistic development.
A genuinely decentralised system allows all local authorities to set sustainable policy priorities which develop the livelihoods of the citizenry from the ward and every constituency.
This trajectory paves way for infrastructure development, competent public goods and services delivery for all Zimbabweans.
Rethinking decentralisation The State’s unsupervised model to decentralisation has given normalcy to poor service delivery.
The public has been prejudiced of the right to various social amenities, basics like consistent access to water, waste management and a responsive public service system.
This makes it highly unsustainable for the central Government to ignore the administrative chaos, especially in our towns due to a normative inclination to be seen to be deploying a hand-off approach to local authority affairs.
It is irresponsible for any Government to conform to normative conventions on how affairs of the State must be managed.
Herein lies the paternal role of the State to perform what serves the aspirations of the public instead of conforming to “how things ought to be”.
Therefore, Government must give direction to the running of local authorities.
This is important in harmonising and synchronising national development.
In terms of apex fundamentals to statecraft, fiscal consolidation and macroeconomic stability is being realised.
In terms of infrastructure development and other indicators of economic growth, Government continues to perform at its best to fight poverty.
However, a failure to address the structural challenges in local authorities will only result in a monolithic growth of our political-economy.
Addressing local government problems brings harmony to the national development agenda which is predominantly driven by the Central Government.
The success of the Emergency Road Rehabilitation Programme is key in demonstrating central Government’s corrective intervention to the shortfalls of local authorities. A call to action: No compromise to service delivery This virgin blueprint sets out the “First Stage of Interventions to Modernise the Operations of Local Authorities towards a 2030 Vision.”
Pursuant to the seminal premise of this submission, this new policy repositions Government to its rightful paternal role to address the perennially ignored flaws of local authorities.
It’s long term impact will be realised through a holistic development framework which delivers on grassroots aspirations as part of the broader agenda to humanise politics.
This humanistic paradigm to power must advance equal access to basics for the rural child and the one in Borrowdale.
This can only be achieved if the daily public service needs of our people are met. As such this important policy will eradicate: ◆Revenue collection leakages and poor management of the collected revenues; ◆ Insubordination to corporate governance and disregard to local authority administrative legislative imperatives; ◆ Property devaluations for the benefit for advancing leasing and selling of the same below market rates.
Growing a patriotic
private sector
The commissioning of the Geo-Pomona Waste Management Site by President Mnangagwa recently is a welcome development in terms of magnifying the decentralisation scope underscored here.
In terms of expanding its mandate of delivering innovative solutions to social needs, Government must create an enabling environment for a private sector whose interests are aligned to the national development vision.
Geo-Pomona Waste Management Private Limited is one such fledging entity.
The company rescued Harare City Council from its gross failures to manage waste in the past decades.
Prior to the innovative novelty performed by this private player at the ex-Pomona Dumping Site, Harare’s metropolitan stature was heavily compromised.
There was no clear waste management model by the city fathers of our capital city.
This undermined the expected reputable character of any modern capital city by all minimal standards.
Therefore, long term waste management model offered to Harare by Geo-Pomona Private Limited is only instructive of the need for decentralisation to prioritise use of innovative ideas by patriotic private sector players especially in cases where lethargy is the main feature of local authorities’ service delivery.
The long term plan for the Geo-Pomona Waste Management has been laid out by chief executive Delish Nguwaya.
He states that Geo Pomona Waste Management offers sustainable environmental solutions through: ◆ Managing and sorting waste, thereby reducing environmental pollution and health hazards. We will have three landfills; one for municipal waste, the other for ashes and the last one for hazardous waste.
◆ Transforming the city from just burying waste to utilising waste as a resource through recycling and hence income generation. Incinerating solid waste to generate electricity that will be fed into the national grid.
◆ This is complementing Government efforts to ensure all Zimbabweans have electricity. The waste-to-energy plant will be constructed in the third year of the project.
◆ As part of our corporate social responsibility agenda, we will be installing state-of-the art recreational facilities on site — a soccer field, two basketball courts, two tennis courts, changing rooms and a restaurant.
The fruition of this waste management master plan should motivate Government to extend this initiative to other provinces considering that our local authorities are struggling to deal with issues of waste management.
This is yet another model to accelerating decentralisation by mining deep on the innovative capabilities of a patriotic private sector.
Decentralisation must not be approached from an emotive political grandstanding premise to conceal service delivery failures by local authorities.
Government’s intervention to curtail incompetences of local authorities is also very key in harmonising central government milestones with grassroots development needs.
The blueprint aspirations of “A call to Action — No Compromise to Service delivery” offers a panacea to local authorities’ corruption and absorption in illegalities.
Its impact will be realised through the modernisation of our local authority services delivery across the country.
◆ Richard Runyararo Mahomva is the Director for International Communication Services in the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services.