Bulawayo to incorporate neighbouring areas

Vusumuzi Dube, Online News Editor

THE Bulawayo City Council is set to take advantage of the ongoing delimitation exercise to finalise boundary changes that will see the city incorporating areas that fall under Umguza Rural District Council.

The Presidential Proclamation 15E of 2004 and the subsequent Statutory Instruments (SI) that created the metropolitan provinces of Bulawayo and Harare, metropolitan boundaries were declared as covering a radius of up to 40 kilometres and in Bulawayo most of those areas are under the jurisdiction of Umguza RDC.

However, there has been confusion over the implementation of this SI with a number of suburbs including Mbundane and Emthunzini, in the city operating without key social amenities as BCC and Umguza RDC continue the tiff over which local authority has the responsibility to connect water and sewer reticulation systems.

Umguza RDC at one point accused BCC of trying to “steal” its land without any compensation. According to a BCC report, the local authority’s acting director of town planning, Mr Wisdom Siziba revealed that the delimitation exercise was the opportune time for implementing and resolving the boundary changes issues.

This means that the city could see the addition of more local authority seats from the incorporated areas. He revealed that to date they had come up with a compensation formula for loss of revenue to the affected RDC.

“Inventory of roads to be taken over was compiled and it was agreed that valuation for compensation for infrastructure to take place at the time of handover. Incorporation process put on hold due to constitutional provisions until 2023. The city has made submissions to the Land Commission on its position for incorporations,” said Mr Siziba.

He noted that the areas for incorporation were arrived at after studies revealed that despite the fact that there exists some developable land within the current municipal boundary, the BCC Master Plan will need to allocate land outside the existing municipal boundary to meet the projected land requirements over the plan period.

“It shall be recalled that the operational Master Plan was prepared in year 2000 and approved in 2004. This was a review of the 1982 Master Plan, the first such plan to be prepared in Zimbabwe under the 1976, Regional, Town and Country Planning Act.

“It shall also be recalled that the Master Plan had identified areas falling under Umguza RDC to be included into the city boundaries. The city’s developmental goals that justify the proposals for incorporation are to ensure the availability of suitable land to meet the future needs of Bulawayo until 2034 and to establish a strong and sustainable local economic base in Bulawayo,” reads the report.

He further noted that the incorporation was to provide sustainable physical infrastructure to facilitate social and economic development and to establish a forward-thinking management for Bulawayo with adequate resources to meet the development needs of the city. 

“In terms of the Master Plan Umguza RDC and the Department of Spatial Planning and Urban Development have processed a number of layouts for residential development. 

“Consequent to the development being undertaken in Rangemore a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been entered into between BCC and URDC. The main objective of this MoU is to provide the Rangemore area with water, sewer and solid waste removal services. It is envisioned that the MoU will evolve into incorporation,” reads the report.

In terms of the areas that will be incorporated, the acting director of town planning said; “These include Reigate and Hopeville. 

There is an informal settlement at Cabatsha. Farms were also allocated near the airport on Mopane. Besides being identified for incorporation by the Master Plan, part of the area is also covered by SI 212/99 which created ward 2. 

“In the Lower and Upper Rangemore Area, the area is zoned high density residential in terms of Operative Bulawayo Master but has not yet been incorporated into Greater Bulawayo. Notable developments in Rangemore in terms of housing construction have been Emthunzini and Mbundane.”