THE Urban Councils Association of Zimbabwe (UCAZ) has challenged the government to give local authorities the necessary support required to achieve their goal of ensuring quality services for residents and ratepayers.
Government this week revealed that local authorities were the worst-performing sector in its 2025 performance contracts, weighed down by structural and operational challenges that continue to undermine service delivery across the country.
According to the government evaluation, most urban and rural councils failed to meet key performance targets under the government’s performance management framework, highlighting persistent weaknesses in revenue collection, ageing infrastructure and service delivery systems.
Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet Martin Rushwaya said overall government performance in the past year had, however, shown steady improvement, although local authorities remained the weakest link.
He said both urban and rural councils continued to struggle to meet performance targets, with most falling below set benchmarks, although within acceptable variance levels.
However, UCAZ president Jacob Mafume said local authorities were aligning with the central government results framework to enhance service delivery, adding that supporting local governments was important in achieving national goals.
Keep Reading
- Fire guts Pomona dumpsite
- HCC violates Pomona deal
- Police smoke out Mbare violence leaders
- Harare mayor demands autonomy of local authorities
He said the move was aimed at improving coordination and effectiveness between central, provincial and local governments, with a focus on implementing the 10-point plan and boosting minimum service delivery standards.
In an interview with NewsDay, Mafume said central government must recognise that supporting local authorities was key to achieving national goals and implementing the 10-point plan.
“We have a lot of areas that we have to improve, we have got a lot of areas that we need to tweak, minimum service delivery, 10-point plan and now that we are part of the results framework of central government, there is a realisation by central government that in attacking, in not assisting local authorities, they are not assisting their legs, so to speak,” he said.
“Once we are part of the same results framework, it then shows that even the government knows that it is supposed to assist us to achieve the goals, because we are one body and we are one delivery vehicle.”
Mafume said the government should support local authorities to achieve shared goals.
“There is no use in attacking the wheels of your vehicle when you want to use the same vehicle to move from point A to B; you repair the wheels.
“So that is what is happening and that's why we need to have the same results framework, so that we can all function at the same level, central government, provincial government and local,” he said.
Meanwhile, residents yesterday put the blame for local authorities’ failure to perform, on central government, saying authorities played a significant role in the underperformance of the councils.
Harare Residents Trust executive director Precious Shumba yesterday said the government was complicit through direct interference in key policy and decision-making by local authorities.
“For example, the government has not enacted empowering legislation for devolution implementation, which is clearly provided in section 264 of the Constitution,” he said.
“It has been 13 years since the new Constitution was enacted, but Chapter 14 has largely remained unimplemented except for the removal of Members of Parliament and Senators from the provincial and metropolitan councils and the manner of electing the chairpersons of provincial and metropolitan councils.
“They also enacted a provision on the removal of mayors, chairpersons and councillors of local authorities from office through an independent tribunal. These are peripheral issues.”
Shumba called for the release of the report of the Justice Maphios Cheda Commission of Inquiry to the public which revealed damaging information about corruption in Harare City Council.
“The tragedy of Zimbabwe's local authorities is that central government bureaucrats and members of the executive branch of government want land and contracts for companies linked to them in local authorities,” he said.
“The first step in weakening the capacity of local authorities to deliver public services was the recall of elected councillors and mayors and replacing them with their proxies, who are willing tools in the looting of council resources, especially land and tenders.
“Therefore, the poor performance by local authorities was always coming and there is no end in sight to the deterioration in service delivery.”