adminsomeone with authority in charge.
The councillors finished their five-year terms on Saturday, and Zimbabwe’s local government legislation does not have any provision for what happens between the expiry of these terms and the election of new councils, hence the neat use of the commission system, but with limited powers.
The commissions are hardly outsiders: each consists of the town clerk or chief executive of the council plus the district administrator for the area, or provincial administrator when it comes to Harare and Bulawayo.
And the commissioners cannot do anything really drastic: they cannot change rates, fees or levies, they cannot hire new staff and they cannot promote anyone.
They are just caretakers.
Presumably the chief executive knows what is going on, and can consult his department heads, and the senior officer from the Local Government Ministry has a lot of background knowledge and, in any case, can stop a town clerk going off the rails.
What they can do, and are encouraged to do, is make sure that the council administration continues to function and handle all that low level decision-making that committees normally handle such as applications to run a crèche, or build an extra cottage on a stand and the like.
Presumably they can also do something useful in an emergency.
Councils have both executive and legislative functions.
The temporary commissions have some of those executive functions but none of the legislative ones, which include taxation powers.
Harare City Council simply noted last week, without objection, the caretaker commission so no one else is likely to object.
The move thus ensures continuity, maintains a legal authority, but does not usurp the rights of ratepayers to decide, through their representatives, how they will be taxed and who will run their administration.
We hope the exceptional circumstances of 2013, with a new Constitution taking time to approve and the consequent delays in harmonised elections, will not be repeated.
But there could arise other circumstances in future whereby a council has no quorum or does not even exist.
Mass resignations, a bad bus accident, or even a mass arrest of a really corrupt council could all leave a city, town or rural district council without a legal authority until by-elections are held.
Perhaps when Parliament is next looking at the Local Government Acts it could create an automatic provision for a caretaker commission while elections are being organised.
The present bureaucratic solution of chief executive and senior local government officer would be fine, or if there were at least some councillors still in office a similar commission with limited powers of the outgoing mayor and committee chairmen could be installed instead.
The Local Government Ministry has acted wisely this time, so there is no problem, but as with all powers it is usually wise to make sure there is a standard procedure to follow in exceptional cases.
Online Reporter