Council right to close unlicensed shops

case of fire or other disaster and must be in charge of a fit person. The requirements are not onerous and are in shops not selling food, especially prepared food, or selling liquor quite easy to meet.
Food shops, take-aways and liquor stores obviously require higher standards but these are not impossible to meet as the proliferation of take-aways and restaurants show.
So it is difficult to understand why hundreds of small shops have opened in central Harare without going through the basic licensing process, which does not take long for most businesses. The fees are low as well, and make up only a tiny fraction of the start-up costs of most shops. The Harare City Council is quite right to close them down until they follow the simple licensing procedures.
The council needs to hold out against those who are “well-connected” and think that knowing someone influential allows them to flout the law. The law on shop licensing has been there for over a century and so no one can plead ignorance. In fact most newspapers run columns of cheap advertisements weekly from those obeying the law and seeking objections; these are very very rare and even when made are almost always spurious unless zoning regulations need to be changed or if the business does not fit into a certain sort of area.
Churches, for example, usually dislike a nightclub opening next door. But generally planners try and use rings of offices or quiet businesses around shopping centres to have a buffer against the more noisy businesses.
There is more to this. Businesses are sprouting in residential areas. This is allowed in certain circumstances, although usually shops have to stick to shopping centres, so long as the neighbours do not have valid objections, and a business with few visitors and no noisy machinery is unlikely to generate a valid objection. But the council can, and must, demand commercial rates for those business premises, rather than the lower residential rates. Business people are not allowed to get a hidden subsidy from the city council by paying less in rates than their competitors.
The council is justified in seeking higher commercial rates than residential rates. For a start commercial properties need more services from the council and secondly the council has to raise its money from someone and income generating land users are obviously better placed than most to pay a bit more.
We need to remember that generally an application for a business in proper premises in an area zoned for business must be granted if the basic conditions are met. This came up in arguments over how to enforce indigenisation requirements.
The city council pointed out that it was not legally allowed to refuse a licence when the laid down conditions were met. If the Government wanted more conditions to be met, then these would have to be put on the list that councils had to check.
So licensing is not an arbitrary process. It follows a small number of carefully listed rules and regulations that have served the city well for over 100 years and are simply intended to ensure that the business is not a nuisance, is safe for the staff and public, and is correctly zoned.
We believe that most of the businesses the council has been closing could quite easily be licensed if only the owners would apply. Sure they might be problems if subletting has got out of hand, but even there procedures exist to allow this.
The council is not opposed to business and in fact has bent over backwards to change plans and open more areas to business zoning to ensure that an expanding economy be maintained.
Many flat and home owners feel that perhaps the council is over generous to new businesses expanding into their areas, and does not take enough notice of objections.
But someone has to referee conflicting demands and an elected council with planning experts on its professional staff is the only organisation that can perform that role.