The Sunday News
Mbuso Ndlovu, Sunday News Reporter
“THE city belongs to residents,” the Bulawayo City mayor Cllr Solomon Mguni was recently quoted saying in our sister paper Chronicle, apparently in response to the query by fellow residents as to why the mayor, his councillors and managers seem to think the town is their private property where residents are unwanted loathed tenants.
This is because since the city was established by the great King Lobengula it has never been exposed to such insensitive leadership where sons and daughters of the city are regarded with disdain as second-class citizens who are ignorant of what’s good for them.
The current city fathers and their managers seem to think they are superior to fellow residents by virtue of occupying offices that by the way don’t seem to be productive in any way given the deteriorating standards evident everywhere around.
Instead of coming up with ideas on how to arrest the fast decline in standard of living, resuscitation of children’s playgrounds, parks, vocational centres, swimming pools and gyms, the councillors and management meet weekly with one agenda in mind: how to milk residents, how to cut deals for personal gain, looking at new revenue streams.
It’s not about service delivery any more, it seems everyone is tasked to brainstorm and come up with innovative ways of milking residents of the little money that they have.
The city fathers and their managers genuinely believe the city is theirs. Otherwise, how could they come up with regulations that don’t touch them.
For instance, they are exempted from paying the new steep parking fees. Are residents aware that all councillors and managers have access to free parking throughout the city, at city hall as well as revenue hall? They deny other workers free parking at their work places while enjoying free guarded parking at council offices.
They deny city flats dwellers parking by their homes while council employees enjoy free parking at council flats by the tower block.
Do residents know that councillors and management skip the queue for residential, commercial and industrial stands and to add salt to injury they pay a fraction of the price?
They even exempt themselves from paying rates for life in most instances while annually raising rates and service charges for fellow residents.
Taking a cue from the bosses junior council officers have become arrogant too. Council drivers disregard all traffic regulations.
They park anywhere and anyhow. Robots don’t exist as far as they are concerned. They cruise at breakneck speed that Lewis Hamilton can’t match as they chase after errant kombi crews, endangering the lives of other drivers.
Office workers are the worst. While councillors who don’t pay rates think it’s possible to get served at council offices within 30 minutes it is impossible even in four hours.
How are we expected to pay for parking for four hours while in a queue to pay rates at revenue hall? If you use mobile banking you will still have to visit the tower block one day as the records are never up to date.
In fact, you may be asked to produce proof that you have been paying. One is then shuffled from one office to another for hours just to convince the cashiers that they have been paying using the details provided on the walls in the revenue hall. And the mayor thinks it takes only 30 minutes of parking!
The leadership at council is divorced from reality. Most have never lived in a city flat and don’t realise how it feels to have your vehicle away from the window in case there is a medical emergency at night.
In any case how does a patient at the medical centre for instance, tell a doctor to hurry up before “my one-hour” parking is over.
Is refuse being collected, are potholes fixed? Where l live Woodville Park Road was last repaired in the 1980s when it was the preferred way to and from the airport.
That was before the switch to the more direct RG Mugabe Way. This is despite the fact that we religiously pay rates, which the decision makers don’t pay, even though roads to their homes are being constantly attended to.
We saw that when only a short distance of Woodville Park Road always received attention when both the mayor and deputy mayor were from neighbouring Mahatshula suburb.
The council workers would only work on the road up to Mahatshula leaving Woodville Park unattended. That probably explains why the mayor has to leave his beloved Nkulumane to be with fellow managers so as not to spread the good cheer to every jack and Jill out there.
You see developing Nkulumane means more people will benefit and that’s outrageous. Nonetheless, that same Mahatshula road is now a mess, since no mayor or deputy mayor lives there anymore.
There are many other examples to show that the leaderships are only there to satisfy their interests hence they have to disregard the views of fellow residents.
The way forward is for all residents to accept that we are all equal stakeholders in the city and that way nobody can impose their will on others while exempting self from the same.
There is no way residents would have said the whole city is a fee paying parking zone without free zones at all. There is now way that residents would accept that rates go up annually without corresponding service delivery while council employees go for months without salaries.
And when such junior workers then indulge in corruption they are charged and fired while the bigwigs get away untouched and have the audacity to spew insults that those who can’t afford parking fees might as well walk to work.
Do flat dwellers and city employees have to leave then? All that said by someone who is not affected by the said fees. A while ago Harare used to have a mayor whose car had a siren as he was uncomfortable at intersections which notoriously take hours to clear especially at peak periods.
He forgot that one day he would leave office, which he did. Instead of attending to the traffic jam he temporarily blissfully thumbed his nose at residents as he wasn’t affected by the congestion.
City fathers beware, one day you will be with us on the periphery with your street lights, road, garbage unattended to. There will be nobody to pay for your fuel and car services even though you will enjoy free rates services.
The fact that both residents’ associations and political parties like Zanu-PF, Zapu and CCC have all condemned the way the city is being managed must surely carry weight unless as expected arrogance carries the day.
