Online Reporter
Vusumuzi Dube, Deputy Radar Editor
THE Bulawayo City Council is grappling with a deepening housing crisis, having failed for over a year to secure contractors for the development of new housing stands in the city.
Despite multiple attempts, including repeated advertisements calling for Expressions of Interest, the local authority has yet to make any headway, a move that has exposed its bureaucratic inertia.
In the past 12 months alone, the council has re-advertised the tender for housing development on three separate occasions, raising questions about the reasons behind this recurring failure.
The repeated failure is not merely an administrative quirk but a potential humanitarian crisis in the making.
With an ambitious annual target of 3 000 housing units set against a mammoth housing backlog of 125 000, Bulawayo stands on the precipice of an unprecedented urban housing emergency.
The local authority first advertised the tender for the servicing of industrial and residential stands in June 2024 (reference number; COB/ESD/20C5/2024), then re-advertised the tender in July 2024 (COB/WKD/20C5/01/2024) and again in January 2025 (COB/HSD/RR06/2024).
Council sources have revealed that the same tender is set to be re-advertised again.
Questioned on the failure to award the tenders, the local authority’s corporate communications manager, Mrs Nesisa Mpofu, said this was a prejudicial matter and commenting on it could jeopardise the tendering process.
“The questions refer to matters which are of a procurement nature. The City of Bulawayo cannot comment on this as it is prejudicial and can jeopardise the tendering process,” said the council spokesperson.
Mrs Mpofu, however, acknowledged that as a local authority, they have to provide 3 000 units per year, noting that this was not an easy task.
“The City of Bulawayo’s housing vision is to provide quality housing to its citizens, which contributes to the quality of life of the residents and ensures their satisfaction with the place of living.
“It is because of this vision that we are focused on ensuring that in the provision of housing, we provide stands that are fully serviced with water, sewerage, roads and public lighting. In our mandate for housing development, we have to provide 3 000 units per year, which is not an easy feat in light of the harsh economic environment,” said Mrs Mpofu.
Questioned on the preferred mechanism of housing stands delivery in the city, the council spokesperson said while they had various strategies, of late they had been using a public-private partnerships model.
“The City of Bulawayo uses various housing delivery strategies such as the pre-sell scheme and public-private partnerships. As a housing delivery strategy, the City in the recent past has engaged private developers to service residential stands with water, sewer reticulation, roads and public lighting.
“This is in terms of Council policy on engagement of private developers in residential development which was adopted by Council of 4 June 2014. The PPP method has been used recently as the City partners with Private organisations who have development finance to service the stands,” she said.
In the PPP housing delivery strategy, the City of Bulawayo invites developers who have development finance to service stands to submit their proposals through an expression of interest.
An Interdepartmental Committee meets to evaluate the proposals and makes recommendations to Council with council making resolutions on which companies to enter into service agreements with. These companies then enter into service agreements with Council for the servicing of the stands.
The companies would be required to obtain bank guarantees, engage qualified engineers to do the engineering designs for sewer, water and roads, which get approved by Council and also to obtain development permits before commencement of works on site.
After the formalities have been done, the servicing of the stands thereafter commences, with the stands being sold after servicing has been completed. The developers recoup their finances from the proceeds of the sales of the stands.
In 2022, when the local authority fully adopted the PPP model, it saw them, for the first time in 10 years managing to engage developers that were able to complete all their servicing requirements in less than a year.
Previous strategies had seen contractors abandoning their projects for different reasons, which has seen some of the projects to date remaining incomplete and locked in arbitration.
