The action taken by Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo to reinstate suspended town clerk Tendai Mahachi barely 72 hours after he was suspended by Harare mayor Bernard Manyenyeni confirms that the major problem affecting all councils in Zimbabwe is the presence of two contradicting centres of power.
NewsDay Editorial
Whereas the mayor and his councillors, referred to as the city fathers, have power vested upon them by city residents through a popular vote, the responsible minister represents a central government that is, for political control and patronage, wary of devolving power to local authorities.
Mahachi was suspended for negligence and failure to give effect to a council resolution on the disclosure of management salaries which the city fathers were investigating in the face of obscene salaries unearthed in other State-linked organisations.
Documents had shown the town clerk and his cabal of managers was living on the gravy train while service delivery was worsening.
Chombo’s doublespeak in which he reverses the mayor’s disciplinary action at the same time imploring the same town clerk to obey the mayor shows that he wants to be seen to be the one calling the shots at Town House.
But, by so doing, he has cultivated a culture of insubordination in which city managers become unanswerable to their employer, but only to him. He has undermined the representatives of the residents of Harare; in other words he has subverted the authority of the voters.
When city managers disrespect elected councillors who are supposed to superintend service delivery on a day-to-day basis and pander to the whims of central government, service delivery suffers; managers do as they please because the minister has guaranteed their impunity.
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High wage bills that are not in tandem with the Urban Councils Act have always been cited as one of the major causes of poor service delivery.
Because of the high wage bills, councils find themselves hamstrung financially resulting in lack of adequate funds to service ratepayers’ needs.
The wage bills in most of the local authorities do not conform to the legal 70%:30% ratio for service delivery and salaries respectively.
It boggles the mind then when the minister seems bent on frustrating those who want to correct this anomaly which results in local authorities failing to effectively executive their core duties.
Chombo should let those who are behaving in a manner that compromises service delivery in town councils face the music.
If Mahachi is innocent of any offence, investigations would have exonerated him.
It raises a stink when the minister blocks moves to probe such people who defy full council resolutions in order to hide bad things within public entities like city councils.
