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New Harare Mayor Herbert Gomba has one of the hardest jobs in Zimbabwe and to run the nation’s capital he needs to be tough, diplomatic, visionary and pragmatic — an unusual combination — as he faces existing problems and seizes the opportunities that rapid economic growth present.
The problems of inadequate water supplies, ancient pipes, bad suburban roads, poor rubbish collection and main highways that need to be upgraded and widened can be ameliorated if council has money. It is owed many millions in unpaid rates.
There seems to be a reluctance to be tough in collection, perhaps because no one wanted to irritate MDC-Alliance voters. With five years before the next election now is the time to adopt the hard-hearted Zimra attitudes to collect the money.
With cash flow, Mayor Gomba can start on some easy solutions to ease congestion. The central business district has just four exit lanes to the west (two in Samora Machel Avenue and two in Jason Moyo Avenue) and six to the east (two each in Samora Machel, Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe).
Simply by extending the six-lane section of Samora Machel Avenue from Park Street to Rotten Row and east from Simon Muzenda Street to Enterprise Road can eliminate two major bottlenecks and increase the western exit lanes by 25 percent. This work could be done in two months.
Next he could dig out the colonial era plans, buy out the six run-down properties at the west end of Nelson Mandela Avenue, extend that avenue as an east-running one-way street right across the CBD and so adding two more exit lanes to Jason Moyo to the west.
At the same time he could take back the old polytech building between the Simon Muzenda Street car park and bus terminus, negotiate for a return of a sports field from Raylton Sports Club and have Jason Moyo Avenue running the full width of the CBD. All this could be done in a year.
While all this is going on, the mayor can move fast on something providing a permanent solution that helps all and does no harm to anybody for those two major problems: streets clogged with kombis and vendors. Here he needs a vision and a lot of diplomacy.
As the councillor representing Glen Norah, Mayor Gomba must have a fairly detailed understanding, perhaps denied his two predecessors, of the needs of the ordinary Harare resident. Many rely on public transport and need a cheap single-leg journey to work, so buses or kombis need to run into the CBD.
Secondly, he must know that vendors are providing for their families and cannot just be dumped somewhere.
The main problem is that there is no central bus station in Harare. So kombis clog the 12-block area known as “Copacabana” and if they are replaced by larger buses then these will clog those streets.
But we believe there is land for this vitally needed infrastructure, on the railway land between the railway station and Seke Road. The National Railways of Zimbabwe is now being rebuilt so this is a perfect time to arrange for a land swop so the new railways infrastructure is done properly elsewhere while needed CBD land next to a railway station is used to build the central bus station.
And that bus station can be designed with space for several hundred market stalls. Vendors largely sell to people walking to the places where their kombis load, so the central bus station seems an obvious place for a proper regulated market.
Unlike other ideas this central bus station would be really central, yet mean fewer kombis driving on CBD roads and none parked on CBD verges.
So far as we can see this is feasible, but the mayor is going to be involved in lengthy negotiations with the Railways, the Local Government and Transport ministries, representatives of transport associations and representatives of commuters and vendors. But the advantages are so great, and since no one will be seriously inconvenienced, this could be the great memorial to his five-year term.
As Mayor Gomba noted, fancy multi-level road junctions are not on the financial cards right now. A lot can be done with more mundane improvements, but perhaps the 1970s’ freeway plans can be updated as a guide to development.
But one junction is urgently required, at that intersection of Kenneth Kaunda Avenue-Charter Road and Julius Nyerere Way-Seke Road. Extra land will be required, but the police have recently moved CID from the old station and could be persuaded to surrender that land for alternative land, perhaps next to the Magistrates Courts, while keeping the more modern central police station.
A small commercial block will almost certainly have to be bought out as well. But unclogging the main southern and south-western exits from the CBD will be worth the costs.
What we are trying to show is that Harare’s problems are not insoluble. It can and must remain the economic centre of Zimbabwe, but it needs a mayor who knows where to push, where to argue, where to plead and where to grab new ideas and new visions.
We wish him well.
Online Reporter