‘Chitungwiza had weak structures’

Chitungwiza.
An investigation found out that Chitungwiza Munic­ipality had very weak and collapsed and sometimes non-existent institutional systems leading to unprece­dented levels of fraud, waste and abuse. The councillors made uninformed and unsound decisions because the admin­istration lacked the aptitude of being diligent with its advice or neglected to do its technical work.
Fraud, waste and abuse by councillors and adminis­tration of Chitungwiza municipality was rampant. The integrity index was dismally low, both perceptively and by the number of reported cases of fraud and abuse of public resources. On one leg, you have management either deliberately not providing sound and well thought out technical expertise and legal advice to council or simply too weak or timid to explain and defend that same advice, despite earning very high salaries and ben­efits.
On the other leg, the councillors put political pres­sure on management by making flawed decisions despite the technical advise or did not seek such coun­sel on what was prudent, sustainable and permissible at law before making any decision. In this scenario, coun­cillors will be reminding management continuously that its them who were elected and therefore have a public mandate to do things their way, unsound and ethically depraved it may be.
In either cases, the system was resultantly broken down and service delivery was the most affected. The procurement and credit management polices were so dysfunctional that debts due were not collected and that which was collected was spent indiscriminately.
With this kind of rot and insanity, is the solution in giving more powers of autonomy to the local authorities or creating more processes and systems of checks and balances, accountability and transparency?
The arguments for the former are personality-based and not accompanied by the critical need of the latter.
There has been furious discussions everywhere as expression of provoked anger by those happy to see such exposures and humbling embarrassment of those wish­ing there is little or no new exposures of fraud, waste and abuse in local authorities.
It is only painful that for both sides, there has not been focus on the responsibilities and duties of the leaders and active citizenship in the access to and exercise of power by local authorities. The discussions have been too engrossed in attack­ing political figures without a critical look at the weak and non-existent institutional frame­work and exercise of power by local authorities. This has made it possible that there was prevalent fraud, waste and abuse.
The conversation has ended up stuck in partisan pos­turing with seeking scores against each other with­out a focus on fixing the broken and improving basic service delivery. What institutional framework that is there to have caused such financial impropriety? Can making the local authorities more autonomous curb that level of primitive accumulativeness that has been prevalent? How can the Government exercise oversight and responsible regulatory intervention without destroying or undermining local authorities’ technical capacity to deliver basic services — water supply, sewage reticula­tion, refuse collection, roads, street lighting, public health, well planned habitat and the stimulation of organised economic activities, etc?
A council’s actions in the above named basic services delivery have an immediate impact on people daily yet too much media attention is given to the Gov­ernment’s interventionist behaviour when there is a failure. We need sufficient interrogation of the institu­tional set-up of the local authorities’ technical capacity, funding and accountability for basic service delivery. These are the three pillars that should anchor a local authority.
Residents in local authorities elect their own council­lors who make decisions about basic service delivery and the administration implements such decisions. Accord­ing to the Urban Councils Act, the Minister of Local Government appoints Special Interest Council­lors (sub­section 1 of section 4A) who cannot be elected as mayor, deputy mayor or chairpersons of committees.
They also do not have voting powers in council meet­ings (subsection 2 of section 4A) and are not counted a part of the quorum for meetings. They are expected to provide technical input in the deliberations of commit­tees and council meetings. Local authorities place adverts for budgets or esti­mates and borrowing powers inviting citizens to inspect the relevant documentation, but there is little inspection by residents and ratepayers to make input and file objections if need be.
The Urban Councils Act allows all council meetings to be open to the public and media (section 87) and per­mits residents and ratepayers to request for min­utes of any or all of the council meetings to monitor decisions being taken (subsections 5-7 of section 88) because they have a bearing on their lives and on the use of public funds. The annual budget or estimates (subsection 2(a) of section 288 and any borrowings (section 290) should not have objections from residents and ratepayers before the consideration and subse­quent approval of the Minis­ter (section 47 of the Public Finance Management Act).
Active local citizenry (i.e. residents and ratepayers) would not have allowed the situation to have taken such a long time before corrective or remedial actions were embarked on. Unfortunately, the same local citizenry bodies are sometimes conflicted, raise issues with an eye to political office or defending cer­tain sectarian or fac­tional political interests. There has been a focus in the exercise of the Minister of Local Government’s oversight as behaviour of a horned and tailed villain. The same anger and outrage against the exercise of ministerial powers has little or no robust indignation at the negli­gent, mediocre and incompetent exercise of power by local authorities’ councillors and administrators who are then pro­jected as very weak, but virtuous and provoked victims of a good law.
Such a lack of balance amounts to malice, hate and hypocrisy. Is that the price of being a politician or pub­lic figure? Not when the alternative is being so coarse and crude with words to present arguments. This is the fod­der to despair for those who are energised by nega­tivity, anger and pain. These cannot be addressed by a consti­tutional clause or an amendment of the rele­vant statutes.
Reliable information available is that Chitungwiza Municipality management was technically qualified for the job, but had such a surprising focus on selfish gain, financial recklessness and exercised extreme generosity with public funds and resources.
Unfortunately like many employers in public and pri­vate sectors, the local authority hired for only tech­nical or professional qualifications without looking at one’s character.
According to an organisation, “Character First,” char­acter is “the inward motivation to do what is right,” and the “who you are, even when no one is watch­ing.” A “good character” is “the stable and distinctive qual­ities built into an individual’s life which determine his/her responses, regardless of circumstances.” It “is tested by a person’s response to the pressure of difficult or painful situations.”
Plato said the purpose of education is to develop a per­son’s mental capacity (technical competence) and char­acter (the “moral sense” or “integrity principle”)
We cannot constitutionalise or legislate “character,” morality or ethical behaviour. We need to fix the institu­tional systems, processes and procedures so that there is need to make the elected and administrators held accountable for their decisions and actions. This is what is found in the JCI Declaration of Principles, “that gov­ernment should be of laws rather of men,” so that we do not put our full trust in the perceived goodness of lead­ers but sound and strong institutions.
The reason why we should build functionally sound institutions is because naturally, humanity is rude, rough, raw and unrefined. This means humanity can do wrong if given an opportunity. In this assumption, humanity usually takes an easy path like a stone down a hill or water along a slope. It therefore needs strong insti­tutional systems, processes and procedures to avoid and minimise the weight of incompetence, mismanagement and ethical lapses.
This is why we have had such collapsing financial institutions, failed corporates and struggling economies in highly industrialised countries and in Zimbabwe despite being run by highly educated and professionally experienced people. For someone on the ground, I find people being short-term and narrow about the diagnosis of the behaviour of senior officials, the problems of the use of local power and the possible solutions.
It is a serious dereliction of duty for local authorities and their administrations to allow service delivery to levels that expose residents to unplanned habitats, threat of preventable diseases, an opaque and reckless use of public funds and an undermining sound economic activities. I look forward to a well-informed public dis­course and conversations so that we can continue to share experiences to shape and influence public policy. In writing this, I am not claiming a high moral ground, but I thought of humbly contributing to the public con­versation on the matter.
Our resuscitation work in Chitungwiza was not a stroll in the park and everything we touched had politi­cal webs and thorns to entangle from!
We could have prescribed what others may consider as not the best solutions to all problems and nobody ever will because public service is always work in progress requiring humility, integrity, constant review and the nerve to improve the lives of fellow citizens.

Shingai Rukwata Ndoro was a member of the Investi­gation Team in January this year and later Resusci­tation Team for Chitungwiza Municipality for the period February-August 2012.