Certain decisions made by our rulers can be quite amazing. Many of them are curious judgments that men and women in charge of our country make, which leave their subjects bewildered.
One such resolution made at a Cabinet meeting last week was to hand over the Harare water crisis to Finance minister Tendai Biti and his Water counterpart Samuel Sipepa-Nkomo to deal with.
On the face of it, there is nothing strange about the money minister and the Water Resource, Development and Management minister being given this responsibility, but what makes this decision ridiculous is the exclusion of Ignatius Chombo from the equation.
What more information do Biti and Sipepa-Nkomo have about the Harare water crisis than Chombo, who has presided over all the country’s cities as de-facto executive mayor and sole master of all decisions that matter in urban Zimbabwe?
The water crisis in the capital which Cabinet deliberated on and came up with Biti-Nkomo solution, is a product of acts of commission or omission by the local authority whose operations are guided by statutory instruments that give only Chombo the final say.
Leaving Chombo out of any arrangement to bring normalcy to local authorities is a mistake because the minister is the one who runs the local authority which has failed to deliver water to the people.
Why should Chombo’s actions or lack of become the responsibility of other people?
Whatever the two ministers are going to try to do in their quest to fulfill the Cabinet directive is bound to interfere with or be interfered with by Chombo’s many standing directives on the local authority.
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Unless Chombo is brought into the process, the two ministers are going to find it difficult to carry out their Cabinet task.
The city’s failure to deliver potable water for its residents is a result of a coterie of problems — man-made and genuine. Capacity of the Morton Jaffray waterworks and availability of water treatment chemicals are some of the major ones.
The Local Government ministry which is the overseer of local authorities did not learn yesterday that the capital’s antiquated waterworks in Norton are now too small to cater for the growing city. Whose fault is it that nothing has been done about it over the years?
The scandals surrounding tenders for the supply of water treatment chemicals are public secret, but we have not heard of any prosecution.
The reports inevitably reached and were dealt with at the highest office in local government, but died a natural death.
The two ministers who have taken over the city’s water burden are obviously going to have to tackle both issues of capacity and chemical availability. Is Chombo not the right person to be in this water team given his knowledge of and possible solutions to the problem?
In accepting the water responsibility, Sipepa-Nkomo said: “The onus of providing water is that of Harare City and my constitutional duty is to make sure that happens. My other duty is to ensure we intervene as government if the local authority is failing.”
What Sipepa-Nkomo does not make clear as he espouses his duties, is the definition of Chombo’s many interventions over the years in local authorities. Was he not doing so as the government?
Did he not make decisions as the ultimate law at the Local Government ministry?
Sipepa-Nkomo talks about his need for $50 million, the disposal of sludge at Morton Jaffray waterworks, the rehabilitation of clarifiers etc — things that Chombo has had on his to-do list for years.
Chombo’s hand in the running of the city and its water is visible everywhere.
Only recently, he unilaterally slashed water charges proposed by council in its budget on the grounds the charges were not affordable to residents.
He declared his ministry would ensure funds generated from the water account were ploughed back into water and sewer reticulation for its rejuvenation without an added cost to the consumer.
All these are measures the minister has put in place and whoever is going to come in to deal with the city’s water matters cannot run away from countless such Chombo standing orders.
The involvement of Chombo in the running of local authorities, including future water plans is such that he cannot be a mere observer in anything to do with cities, let alone restoration of water supplies.
Although he has literally single-handedly directed operations at all cities and towns in the country, Chombo, the shrewd politician he is, would also come out blasting councils, fighting from the residents’ corner and rejecting council budgets meant to accommodate water delivery restoration.
Lately, he accused the Harare City Council of deliberately failing to focus on service delivery and dwelling on self-enrichment.
“They are deliberately ignoring service delivery and are busy creating cartels at the expense of the residents,” Chombo said while shooting down Harare’s 2012 budget.
Apparently implying his own hands are squeaky clean, the minister accuses local government authorities of corruption, lining pockets with poor ratepayers’ money and general mismanagement.
Why don’t we have the good minister lead the water restoration mission to allow him to peharps finish off from where he has left in the many years he has worked so hard to get Harare run smoothly — to have constant supplies of clean water in the city’s taps?
