POLITICS-ZIMBABWE: Harare Mayor Suspended

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Lewis Machipisa

HARARE, Feb 25 1999 (IPS) - The executive mayor of Zimbabwean capital Harare and his 40 councillors were Thursday suspended for “gross mismanagement”.

The move to suspend the council was greeted with relief by Harare’s 1.5 million residents who had been demanding the resignation of the Mayor, Solomon Tawengwa, and his entire team, for failure to provide services to the city.

Local government and National Housing minister, John Nkomo, said the move to suspend the council was necessitated by the “very disturbing problems (the city has been experiencing) which have impacted negatively on the welfare of the people.”

“The ministry shares part of the blame (for city council’s mess) in that we did not sack them fast. But we did not have enough to do what we have now done,” said Nkomo.

According to Nkomo, an interim report of investigations into the city council affairs confirms that there indeed have been rampant mismanagement of council affairs.

“The council has been facing liquidity crisis which became very acute in the month of July last year. We experienced water crisis and failure by the city council to meet salary and wages of employees,” said Nkomo.

“We had on numerous occasions given direction on matters of human resource management to no avail,” Nkomo told journalists in Harare on Thursday.

The councillors, along with the mayor, who assumed the responsibility of running the city in 1995, have been served with notices of suspension and the ministry will soon decide whether they will continue to receive their salaries and perks.

Following his suspension, Tawengwa told IPS that he “is not going to challenge the suspension.”

“I am not that type of person. I prefer to fight with my work rather than want to fight for a position,” he said. “The executive mayor position is not an easy thing, let alone being a mayor in Harare.”

Nkomo said his ministry would soon appoint a commission to run the city until the investigation team completes its work.

“We could not wait until the investigating team had completed its investigations as we could not allow the situation to deteriorate any further,” Nkomo explained.

The investigations will include an audit of the manpower to rid the city of ghost workers, as well as probe cases related to revenue collection, budgeting and management.

In October last year, some of the city’s residents went for two weeks without water forcing businesses and schools to close down.

After hearing Tawengwa’s suspension, an excited Harare resident said: “God has answered our prayers”. Another said: “Thank God”.

The decision to dismiss the city council was long overdue.

Harare’s sewerage system is about to collapse, refuse has not been collected in some suburbs for weeks, the city is now pot- hole ridden, council’s financial problems a frightening, it cannot pay its debtors and contractors.

“The mayor is held accountable in terms of the law. They have failed to provide services,” said Nkomo. “The city has become unmanageable.”

Out of a total of 90 trucks, that the City of Harare has, only seven are operational. “These are trucks that should have been used in the removal of garbage. But they gave reasons such as lack of money to buy batteries and tyres.” Out of the city’s 56 tractors, only seven work.

Nkomo also revealed gross corruption within the council.

“At the height of the October water crisis, we (ministry) volunteered to team up with the council…we gave them 76 million dollars (two million US Dollars) but what we have discovered is that part of that (money) has not been used for that purpose.” explained Nkomo.