The Sunday News
THE Bulawayo City Council (BCC) and the Umguza Rural District Council are entangled in a land dispute that could endanger service provision for areas on their boundary, amid allegations by the rural council that the city was seeking to fraudulently acquire land under its jurisdiction.
The impasse comes despite Presidential Proclamation 15E of 2004 and subsequent Statutory Instruments that created the metropolitan provinces of Bulawayo and Harare.
In both cases the metropolitan boundaries were declared as covering a radius of up to 40 kilometres.
Bulawayo Mayor, Councillor Martin Moyo, laid the blame on Umguza RDC officials and land developers, whom he said were building houses close to the border between the two councils and expecting BCC to provide services to these areas.
However, under normal circumstances a local authority even within the metropolitan province, if interested in incorporating certain sections of another council’s land, should approach the council and pay a certain amount, with the approval of the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing.
In the latest development it has been alleged that BCC has been arm-twisting land developers that were interested in constructing houses close to the boundary of the two councils on the side of Umguza to seek voluntary incorporation for the council to award them subdivision certificates and connect them to the city’s water and sewage reticulation.
The city council has instead approached the RDC requesting the incorporation of areas that have heavy industries, including Delta Beverages and Pretoria Portland Cement, at the expense of bare land for probable residential stands purposes.
The areas targeted by the city council are known cash cows to Umguza.
Ironically, when Delta Beverages — through its brand Chibuku — initially applied for land within BCC, this request was turned down with the local authority wanting to protect their municipal undertaking — Ingwebu Breweries.
Sources close to the impasse have, however, alleged that the matter had been escalated by the development of Mbundane and Emthunzini suburbs, whose incorporation into the master plan of Bulawayo have courted controversy as neither of the local authorities wants to accept responsibility of both suburbs.
“What BCC is saying is that they cannot be forced into expanding into areas that they have not planned for because there are a lot of implications, which include water and sewage pipes, at times it becomes too costly to incorporate an area that has no services at all.
“So the city is simply saying they acknowledge that they have to expand but at the same time this has to be planned expansion,” said the source.
Clr Moyo laid the entire blame on developers and Umguza RDC. He said some developers built suburbs like Emthunzini, which the local authority was meant to offer services, so close to the boundary between the two councils that it became a hassle.
The mayor said the onus was on Umguza to approach them and come to an understanding on how to handle such matters and not BCC’s responsibility.
“In terms of the Local Government Act, no one is supposed to build or do any development works close to the boundaries as this might give both councils serious problems but you find in many a case developers who purchase land from the RDC are building right on the boundary and people in those suburbs now expect us to offer them basic services like water and sewer, which is not our responsibility.
“So I believe the onus is now with Umguza to approach us because it is not really our problem, it is not us telling people in these peripheral parts that services will be provided by Bulawayo,” said the mayor.
He acknowledged that the city was fast running out of land to expand to but said it was much simpler to talk to land owners with land in the peripheries as dealing with land that belongs to other authorities created problems.
“What I know is that in 2008 we tried taking that route in terms of incorporation but those talks ended abruptly. I am not sure of the reasons why they did not have any tangible outcomes, so as council what we are doing now is talking to private land owners so as to get voluntary incorporation.
“Through experience I believe where that land belongs to another authority it becomes difficult to incorporate,” said Clr Moyo.
Umguza RDC chief executive officer, Mr Collen Moyo, however, said BCC was not sincere in its drive to expand the city and incorporate areas that are in Umguza into their boundaries.
He said BCC was not only going behind the back of Umguza to seek voluntary incorporation from private land owners but was approaching the RDC for land where there was production already taking place instead of bare areas where they should construct residential houses to ease their accommodation woes.
“What I should emphasise is that we are not fighting with BCC, we have no reason to because we are just a small, poor council and if Bulawayo wants to expand we have no say in this and cannot block them but the queer thing is that they don’t want places to construct or develop but they are instead targeting areas that are already a known cash cow, like PPC and Delta Beverages, this showing that they are solely interested in boosting their financial resources.
“They are not moved by the desire to build but they just want money from these established companies through rates and rentals. They are also going to land under private developers and giving them a condition that for them to chip in with their services the owners should come to us and request voluntary incorporation, which I feel is unfair and very much insincere,” said Mr Moyo.
The CEO said they had maintained an open door policy with the city council but instead BCC had chosen to take the back door approach in resolving the matter.
“What we have said is that they should engage us because this is not a difficult matter, besides we are too much of a small RDC and do not have some of these powers that is why when this matter was initially dealt with we sent the resolution to our superiors in Harare but recently we were told to revisit the issue.
“The truth of the matter is that there are some areas we cannot even manage to provide services even if we wanted to, so if these people were sincere we could even come up with a scenario where they develop these areas like Mbundane and Emthunzini and the people there could be paying rates and rentals to them not us, that is how simple this whole issue is,” he said.
BCC and Umguza have for the past years been locked in a number of land disputes mainly with regards to both Emthunzini and Mbundane. The two suburbs, while under Umguza, are also part of Bulawayo’s masterplan as approved by the Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and National Housing.
