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Joram Nyathi Group Political Editor—
LESLIE Gwindi, the affable Harare City Council spokesperson, is a good guy. Harare residents appear confused about where they are, where they live or stay. They forget that they are mere visitors in Harare, mere sojourners, mere tenants to be suffered by the city council. Until Mr Gwindi was forced to open up and put these importunate city residents, toiling ratepayers in their rightful place.
The Harare CBD extends beyond the city centre into the Avenues, and perhaps even beyond. The council now wants to levy parking fees of 50 Rand to motorists in the Avenues area.
This is mainly a residential area with small private businesses chiefly along Fife Avenue — clinics, surgeries, shopping centres, etc. Otherwise it is a residential area where those living in the apartments and visitors are used to parking their vehicles anywhere, any time of the day, for as long as they wish.
Everyone assumed this was a right, an entitlement even. A major benefit of staying in the periphery of the CBD as we thought we knew it, mutown.
Little did these misguided residents realise that they were not only living or staying in flats. Those flats are not floating in space. Gwindi said motorists parking in the Avenues area must comply with the council directive to pay parking fees.
This was after the residents and motorists who patronise the area demurred on the council directive because it was felt the local authority was going beyond its jurisdiction and pursuing motorists right into the bedroom.
Some of the blocks of flats in the Avenues area have designated parking space. But the issue is that nearly everybody now has a vehicle. Some have up to three per family. To then accommodate a visitor’s extra car becomes a headache. In any case, why bother. There are wide spaces by the roadside where one can park for free. Not according to Gwindi; “People are missing the point,” came his helpful reminder, “that (what we assumed was free parking space between the road and the pavement) is legally council land and we protect that land. We require that, but really in terms of ownership, it’s ours.”
Okay Mr Gwindi. So we must expect even more encroachment into all open spaces because legally it’s all council land? But this is an urban setting Mr Gwindi. We don’t only pay Zesa and water bills but also rates. We know it’s council land.
Yet this is what Gwindi tells us, without explaining how that should be consolation to the residents.
Let’s get the facts from Gwindi. Harare city council is owed $281 million in rates, water, lease rentals, refuse and sewerage charges by stakeholders ranging from government, industry to individual residents and satellite towns of Chitungwiza, Norton and Epworth.
He concluded with some drama; “This is a question of revenue to the city and like what the mayor said last week, we are on life support and need revenue.”
That’s more like the point Sir, not the arrogant tautology about council owning council the land. Council is a creature and a function of residents and ratepayers, not some disembodied gargoyle demanding its dues from invasive species calling themselves Harare residents.
The truth is that Harare residents are being punished for the city council’s combination of incompetence and malfeasance.
First, there is the issue of council officials paying themselves princely salaries just because they hold certain paper qualifications, not because they are providing a service to residents and ratepayers.
Second, there are claims of widespread abuse of council resources, including the recent Chinese loan for the refurbishment of Morton Jaffray waterworks. Part of the money was reportedly diverted to purchase luxury SUVs for council executives.
Third, there are said to be “ghost workers” who get handsome wages.
Collection of garbage and provision are extremely erratic across the city. When the water does come, it’s hardly potable. It’s no consolation for some laboratory to tell me the water is safe to drink when my naked eye can detect poison issuing from the faucet.
We are fast getting into the rainy season. All along council has been cheating its way through by covering craters on residential streets with red dust taken from the fast depleting hillock between Warren Park D and Kambuzuma. That gravel will be washed away by the first rains. Getting home from work for most motorists will soon be like an invitation to a police station to assist with investigations.
People want value for money.
Punishment number 2.
It’s not every resident who owes council the $281 million. And that kind of money is not small change; it is not like the bearer cheque of 2008. It is big money accumulated over a long period. Council was not doing its work. Where it was doing some work, it was to penalise the small fish with a bill of $20 while shielding the real criminals, the untouchables of the city. Now it is further impoverishing everyone.
Churchill speaks; “We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” A city can be a country. Industry is collapsing because people don’t have purchasing power. Harare city council is trying to lift itself up by the bucket handle.
Not yet Uhuru
Poor Africa and our love for signing! Our timidity when it comes to taking resolute action to defend Africa. We hate ourselves and love to please Europe. Is it because once one is colonised they find it hard to wean themselves of the poisoned colonial glamour?
So in August this year Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta was a happy guest of America’s President Barak Obama at the US-African leaders summit at the White House! Less than two months later he is a guest of the dubious International Criminal Court which has never heard of names like Blair or Bush?
Kenyatta this week faced the embarrassment of having to abdicate the presidency and appear before the ICC at The Hague as a “private citizen” to answer charges of what is referred to as “crimes against humanity” for his alleged role in the violence which followed the December 2007 elections. This is despite there being no “evidence”.
Private citizen Kenyatta reckoned that he was doing his people and country a favour by stripping himself of his office. The chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, would have none of it, insisting the case would be postponed indefinitely until Kenya produced evidence to incriminate its president. It is the Kenyan government now being arm-twisted, bullied, coerced even, to produce the evidence after the arraignment.
Over 120 countries are signatories to the constitutive Rome Statute, including Kenya. So they are bound by their signatures. The big guys — Russia, China and America — have not ratified it. What’s the point, even if they had, who would compel them to subject their citizens to a no-nation jurisdiction? That humiliation is reserved for leaders, not just citizens, of former colonies, all of whose constitutions are deemed by former colonisers too weak to deal with serious crimes.
Last year African leaders made some noises against sitting leaders being hauled before the ICC. Apparently nobody had the spine to stand firm. There was a lot of prevarication. Everyone wanted to be the good African.
Indeed, if President Mugabe doesn’t say it in public, you can be certain nothing will be said. Africa, stop signing blindly, and learn to object. That includes objecting to unfavourable investment or trade agreements which prejudice our nations. Contempt for African leaders by Europe won’t end so long as they are not brave enough to change the rules of engagement. And that starts by refusing to sign agreements they have not negotiated.
Online Reporter