Online Reporter
If you ever needed a perfect, sparkling metaphor for the state of our beloved capital, the universe delivered it last week, wrapped in a bow of steaming radiator fluid and bureaucratic hubris.
The Harare City Council, an institution that treats the provision of water and paved roads as abstract concepts from a futuristic novel, decided this Christmas it would stage a show of vintage elegance.
The plan: His Worship the Mayor, Councillor Jacob Mafume, would be chauffeured to the annual lights switch-on in the city’s antique Rolls-Royce. A symbol of grandeur! A nod to tradition! What could possibly go wrong?
Well, everything. But slowly, and with maximum public spectacle. In the hours before, the council’s social media was a masterpiece of premature self-congratulation.
There were beaming officials, polished fenders and assurances so confident you would think they had just solved the water crisis by wishing really hard.
The mayor’s driver had conducted “final checks”, a phrase in the Town House lexicon that loosely translates to: “We kicked the tyres and it didn’t fall apart. Zvaita!”
At 4.30pm, the Rolls was meant to glide.
Instead, somewhere between a pothole and a pipe burst, it chose to expire.
The vintage motor, a relic from an era when things were built to last, staged a sympathy strike with every frustrated ratepayer.
It overheated and coughed and gave up the ghost right on cue.
And then came the poetry.
Faced with a mechanical crisis, what did our city’s finest produce? Not a mechanic. Not a tow truck. But buckets of water. In a move of breathtaking literalism, council staff gathered around the antique and began pouring water into its innards, like gardeners trying to revive a thirsty petunia.
The video is a classic: men in official attire sweating over a steaming bonnet, performing emergency horticulture on a car.
The symbolism was so thick you could patch a road with it. A city that cannot deliver water to taps was now desperately throwing it at a broken car.
You could not script it.
With his dignity evaporating faster than the coolant, the mayor did what every sensible Hararian does when municipal systems fail: He walked to Africa Unity Square.
Abandoning the stranded symbol of authority, he joined the pedestrians; doubtless, navigating the same uneven pavements his office is meant to fix.
The procession was now a one-man march, soundtracked by the chuckles of a citizenry that finally saw a council project they could relate to — complete failure and a long walk.
The lights did eventually go on.
But the real illumination came from that roadside tableau. It taught us that you cannot run a city — or a Rolls-Royce — on polish, photo ops and wishful thinking.
It requires actual, competent maintenance.
A lesson, delivered not in a council memo, but by a boiling radiator and a parade of buckets.
This Christmas, the biggest show was not the twinkling bulbs.
And everyone got the message, loud and clear. Governance, like machinery, needs more than polishing and photo ops.
It needs maintenance and competence.
