adminStanely Mushava Features Writer
Rush hour is setting in on twilit Copacabana. The terminus is rapidly swelling into a melting pot where a range of characters converge — home-bound workers stamping across the sluggish bays, vendors retailing wares through kombi windows, touts in a verbal tug of war for passengers, wily pick-pockets, starving street-kids, con-artists, street-preachers and a guitar-strumming blind man on the sidewalk.
Dairy carts, fruit and vegetable stalls are situated in risky proximity to the public toilet and two vast dump-sites overflowing with uncollected refuse. Customers brave a heavy stench as they wash fruits from measly trickles of water doled by the vendors.
A sickly child accosts prospective benefactors for alms with varying degrees of success.
At each turn, she conveys the proceeds to her mother and ventures into the crowds again, occasionally braving indifference and insults from miserly strangers.
A woman wearing a short skirt and revealing top passes by and touts whistle while some hoot and others shout.
In the Dzivarasekwa bay, a teen felon paces briskly through the mazes and zeroes in on a senior citizen as he boards the kombi.
He lifts a canvass hat from the aging man’s hat and passes it to a fellow before both disappear into the crowds.
Word reaches the vendors that municipal police officers are back for another swoop.
Tomatoes and other wares are indiscriminately bundled up in spatial cloths as the women flee to peripheral alleys where they stuff their wares into clefts of the pavement.
Customers pursue for their change or unrequited purchases.
Welcome to Copacabana rank in downtown Harare, where activities resemble a “mini” Mbare Musika.
This is an area, where private cabs sequent by the roadside a few metres from the main rank, charging 50c for rides to the Fourth Street Terminus for travellers loath to take the stroll to one of Harare’s more diffusive termini. People still board the cars despite recent police warnings against using private cars to fend off the risk of being robbed.
Neon lamps towering over the place have been long out of condition, lending wayfarers and city property to the power of darkness. Asbestos sheets and steel bars on the shades have been lifted by vandals, thanks to the darkness occasioned by the obsolete lights.
As the rainy season emboldens its turn, travellers have to brave showers under the vandalised shades.
Sunset strikes the gentle writer as a metaphor. Negligence seems to be rendering Harare’s sunshine status anachronistic. A Harare City
Council public relations official explains that efforts are afoot to bring normalcy to the terminus and lights will be reinstalled in due course.
“Residents must report vandalism to city authorities and the police. It is the common obligation of all residents to keep city property intact because it belongs to them.
“When property is dilapidated, their money is diverted from developmental programmes to restoring the damaged property. Residents must effect citizen arrests on vandals and hand them over to responsible authorities,” he says.
A few blocks away, at the intersection of Albion and Chinhoyi streets, a disabled, elderly woman crossing the road in crutches, is knocked over by a kombi fleeing traffic police for picking passengers at an undesignated zone. Skin is virtually peeled off the woman’s face as she is dragged over a 10-metre stretch by the fugitive kombi crew.
Apparently, a police officer had imposed an interdict against kombis plying the Mufakose route for evading the shady “I scratch your back and you scratch mine” payments when a driver tried to pass in defiance of the injunction.
On seeing a police officer ahead of him, the driver swiftly reversed, hitting the woman in his hasty flight.
Witnesses implicate the policeman in routine bribe collection to allow kombis through-fare at undesignated points, known in street lingo as mushika-shika.
As he shows up to apprehend the errant driver, an angry mob pounces on him and beats him up for causing the accident before his baton-wielding colleagues interpose to quell the chaos.
There is a trail of blood along the accident scene and shattered glass from previous skirmishes of the police and kombi drivers. The woman is taken to Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals where her condition is reported as critical.
“I just saw a woman with a gored chest and turned away in alarm. I could not gather the rest as I was in tears,” says an emotionally distraught near-by vendor who has just witnessed the dissembling scene.
“These scuffles are becoming common and it is ordinary people who are caught in the crossfire. The police must fight the kombi drivers legally and end this once-for-all other than lining their pockets at the expense of ordinary people who are falling victim to these battles,” she says.
An operation code-named “100 percent CBD Decongestion” came into force in 2010 to curtail the unsettling menace in the Central Business District where commuter omnibus crews were picking up and dropping passengers at undesignated points in contravention of city by-laws.
Since then passengers have been injured as kombis they were travelling in were overturned in scuffles with municipal and traffic officers, including cases whereby cops have thrown spikes at fleeing kombis.
Several police officers have been reportedly kidnapped, attacked and injured, with isolated cases of culpable homicide and attempted murder, during these running battles with kombi crews.
“Some police officers have a hidden interest in the chaos. They could have stopped kombis from picking people at undesignated points long ago if they seriously wanted to do so. A sustained operation should have rid the roads of this menace,” a passenger opened up during The Herald’s recent excursion to Copacabana.
“The point is if they fight the crime half-heartedly, the problem will persist and they will keep pocketing bribes from offending drivers whom they apprehend. However, it becomes a moral crisis when citizens minding their own business are caught in the crossfire. It’s so unfortunate that money should be prioritised over life,” he said.
Several police officers, most recently Admire Nyuke, Moses Makandiwa, Ranganai Pasura and Constance Musendo, have been arrested for extorting money from motorists.
Herbert Ndoro, a driver plying the Greencroft-Copacabana route said: “We are sure that the issue of picking up passengers at undesignated parking points is here to stay because there are sacred cows when it comes to the arrest of motorists. Council workers and police officers own most of the cars picking passengers along Leopold Takawira. Some senior officers are actually deploying junior officers to ensure the uninterrupted operation of their vehicles at these unlawful points,” Ndoro said.
A council official denied knowledge of the scam.
“Our position is that all such activities are illegal. If anyone is doing that they are contravening city laws and they are equally liable to apprehension and punishment,” he said.
There are also increasing cases of unsuspecting passengers who get robbed by kombi crews plying routes for which they have no permits. As students return to universities and colleges, they board kombis purportedly travelling to their destinations before the crews turn on them, prejudicing them of their fees, money for other necessities and their entire luggage.
“The sector must be normalised to account for these crimes. It must be clear who is operating on which route. Those perpetrating these crimes are plying routes for which they do not have permits, and once they commit the crime, they disappear from the area for good and return to their original routes,” Herbert Ndoro said.
“We also need a proper representative body of commuter omnibus operators. If issues to do with salaries and money paid to presiding authorities are tabled and properly deliberated in a two-way arrangement, there would be less discontent, more order and it will be easier to rein in criminal elements within the sector,” he said.
“There is so much extortion going on because the permit fees are too high. Operators end up evading them and corrupt police officers cash in on kombis they intercept, without actually ending the problem,” said Archiford Dzvaka, another Copacabana-Greencroft driver.
“Let’s just go to the root of the matter and the whole sector will benefit. US$100 per term for a permit, US$100 for a parking disc from the council and a further US$100 needed by the council for approving an application for the permit is milking the transport operators dry.
They have workers to pay and families to feed, but what do they do when they are taxed beyond their means? Corruption feeds on failure to consider such indiscretions.
“Proceeds from the hefty taxes are not being realised because the roads are out of shape. Even a casual look at the bays will show you that nothing is being done to maintain the place; potholes all over means we need extra money to service the kombis,” he said.
The current disarray gives a bleak impression on the city’s sunshine status. A joint effort is long overdue to restore normalcy to our roads.
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