Suburban
WHEN the celebrations on the High Court ruling barring the Minister of Local Government and Public Works from interfering in council operations have died down, we hope local authorities especially the City of Harare will realise that they no longer have their usual scapegoat of central Government hampering them from delivering services.
The ruling set aside Section 314 of the Urban Councils Act Chapter 29:15, declaring it unconstitutional as it allowed the Minister of Local Government and Public to issue directives to councils or overturn their decisions.
For a long time, the City of Harare has complained raucously about how these directives and reversals of council resolutions have been affecting its autonomy thereby debilitating service delivery.
A week after the High Court ruled in favour of residents’ associations which were challenging Section 314 of the Urban Councils Act, Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume was in the press whining about how the Zimbabwe National Roads Administration (Zinara) was not adequately funding the local authority to capacitate it to repair and maintain roads in the capital city.
Mafume threatened to take legal action against the roads authority arguing that its model of disbursing money from vehicle licenses was skewed and not helping local authorities such as Harare which have a high volume of vehicular population. It appears Mayor Mafume was getting motivation from the High Court ruling.
Aggrieved parties have a right to legal recourse where they feel they are being trampled or their rights infringed. But in the cases of the Ministry of Local Government and Zinara, we await with expectation that should the municipality also get what it will be praying for in the Zinara court action, then it should use the court decisions to improve services.
This is because Harare’s own inefficiencies and incompetence are well documented. The city always squeals about low revenues but the Minister of Local Government has never stopped the city from collecting all what is due to the municipality. Besides rates and service charges from residents, the city also collects revenue from a long list of other ratepayers and businesses.
The Borrowdale Ratepayers and Residents Association aptly put in their statement, in reaction to the court ruling, when they said Harare should not get carried away celebrating the court ruling because while the decision is favourable to the municipality, it also places responsibility on the local authority to deliver services now that the perceived stumbling block in the form Section 314 of the Urban Councils Act Chapter 29:15 has been struck down.
Council must heed the advice of the BRRA when it argues that the newly found autonomy is not a ticket to furthering councillors’ political careers and fattening the pockets of senior executives at Town House.
