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Pardon Gotora, Correspondent
The governance of cooperatives is at par with lack of off-site infrastructure in contributing to the failure by housing cooperatives to deliver housing in urban and peri-urban areas.
The reality of the matter is that, in almost all housing cooperatives, there is plenty of resentment and disgruntlement among the cooperators themselves, serve for those connected to management.
Many have lost huge sums of money in the process as unearthed by the Land Commission that recently presented its findings to His Excellency.
For fear of victimisation, the cooperators would rather complain with their heads covered for anonymity or complain to some higher offices far from the cooperatives’ “home ground”.
Some have been expelled from the cooperative for their discerning voices or for daring to question any decision made by the Executive Committee.
In unfortunate circumstances, some have had their stands sold by management to third parties to punish them for disobedience, regardless of the payments made without any recourse.
Two parallel management committees are running the same cooperative.
But if you ask the Executive Committee, they will hasten to dismiss that as non-existent.
Rather, I have heard some of them arguing that they have delivered more “houses” than both Government and councils combined in the past decade.
Delivering “houses” is distinct from delivering housing.
In urban areas, a functional housing is one where the stand is serviced with water and sewer reticulation, proper roads and power, the house plan is approved by council, the house construction is inspected and approved by same.
The children have access to proper basic education and health facilities among other social amenities, and not backyard or makeshift structures.
The residents have workspaces and proper waste management programmes, among others.
On the contrary, housing cooperatives have had their membership building unapproved houses on unserviced land and makeshift schools and shopping centres.
That is not housing.
Incremental development policy, which is their trump card, stipulates that before you construct the superstructure, the cooperative or developer should apply to council for partial certificate of compliance upon completion of basic or minimum services such as water, sewer and gravel roads.
Based on this partial certificate of compliance, house plans would then be approved by council which enabled stage inspections.
But alas, most housing cooperatives simply opened the roads, no gravel dumped and compacted to various stages.
The roads are reopened after every rain season because they are often washed away.
Cooperators are encouraged to build permanent structures without even at least a partial certificate of compliance, which means no inspections.
In all fairness, one cannot boast of delivering more houses than government and council combined without the consent of the respective local authority and without the minimum expected services as stipulated in the Development Permit.
In rare instances where the roads are tarred, the tar has since been eroded by the rains.
Otherwise the rest of the roads remain at formation stage and are impassable during the rainy season.
In the previous edition, I initiated the discussion on my perception of what went wrong with housing cooperatives.
In summary, I intimated that housing cooperatives occupied predominantly virgin peri-urban land that lies far from existing infrastructure.
The bulk infrastructure for water and sewer crave for upgrading, refurbishment and even construction of totally new sewer and water treatment plants and water bodies such as Kunzvi and Muda Dams.
The magnitude of work expected on off-site infrastructure is beyond the reach of any individual entity, be it government alone, council alone, private developer alone or housing cooperatives alone.
However, there is more that can still be attributed to this than infrastructure.
Poor governance and mere greediness takes the centre stage.
If intrinsic audits were to be caused, it is my strong conviction that there is gross misappropriation of funds by the management committees of most of the housing cooperatives.
People contributed immensely from as far back as 2005-6 and prior.
The progress on the ground does not match their contributions.
Management committee members have converted the cooperatives from a social movement to a private enterprise.
Some quit their formal employment for full time cooperative (mis)management.
Cooperative societies are democratic organisations.
Their affairs should be administered by persons elected or appointed in a manner agreed by the members and are accountable to them.
The Cooperative Societies Act stipulates that cooperators should be allowed to elect their executive and have their books of accounts regularly audited.
Policy and practice are at variance in most housing cooperatives.
There are no more Annual General Meetings held.
The books are not audited anymore, where they are, the auditors are hand-picked by the management. Since there are no AGMs, “audit reports” are not presented to cooperators.
Transparency long evaded these institutions.
The major bottleneck comes from the founders of the housing cooperatives who feel that it is their birth-right to manage the cooperatives they founded.
It is more of a personal belonging than a social movement.
As the saying goes, “power corrupts”, the leadership of these housing cooperatives have resorted to being estate agents who sell cooperative stands. Some have had the tenacity to form their own estate agent companies which sell cooperative stands.
But since land is a finite resource, stands ran out and they ended up illegally subdividing state and council land reserved for other purposes.
Open spaces, school and clinic sites have been illegitimately subdivided in order to sustain the revenue streams of the management committee.
Any member who dares to question the operations of the management is, by default, expelled from the cooperative and the stand is repossessed and resold to unsuspecting individual thereby creating double or multiple allocations.
New members are expected to join the cooperative with the consent of the cooperators at an AGM.
But because of money, management on its own is admitting new members into the cooperative through stand sales.
Those who buy stands from management are voiceless compared to those who joined the cooperative at inception.
The management is also smart enough where they do not build permanent structures on their stands in the cooperatives, rather they buy properties in separate leafy suburbs and continue to stay in the cooperatives so that it appears as if they are in the same predicament as other co-operators.
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Peter Tanyanyiwa
Online Reporter