BROADCAST: 26 February 2010

VIOLET GONDA: My guest on the programme Hot Seat is the Mayor of Harare Much Masunda talking about the issue of service delivery in the capitol city. Welcome on the programme Mr Masunda.

MUCH MASUNDA: Thank you Violet.

GONDA: Now let’s start with a general question – the residents of Harare voted for change and democracy – how have you implemented these promises?

MASUNDA: We have implemented some of them but not all of them because, I think what needs to be appreciated is that the infrastructure and other ancillary facilities had become so run down over the years that it wasn’t going to be an overnight sort of situation to get them working as they used to. But there are some tangible results that we’ve achieved in the 19 months that we’ve been in office.

But I think the starting point before we go into all these issues that are of concern to the residents and other stakeholders in Harare is just for your listeners to get an appreciation of how I got myself into the ‘hot seat’ because that is something that is not commonly understood. I did not stand for election as a councillor. What happened was, in the build up towards the harmonised elections that took place on the 29th of March 2008; amongst the many pieces of legislation that were amended was the Urban Councils Act. Now the Urban Councils Act was amended in two significant respects. The first amendment gave the elected councillors, and in the case of Harare there are 46 of them, because Harare is divided into 46 Wards. Now 45 of the Wards were won by MDC councillors – I’m talking about the mainstream MDC and the solitary Ward was won by a ZANU PF councillor.

So those 46 democratically elected councillors were given an opportunity in terms of this amendment that I mentioned, to elect a mayor in either of two ways: either they stick to the hallowed and tried and tested method of choosing a mayor from amongst their number, in other words choosing one of them to become mayor; alternatively they were given an option to go to civic society and look for somebody with sufficiently grey hairs and somebody who is a glutton for punishment and that’s how I got elected. So we then got sworn into office of the 1st of July 2008 but it’s not been easy, I will be the first to confess. But I think we have set about to focus on those critical areas and the very first one was water and sanitation.

GONDA: Mr Mayor, let me interrupt you on that – we will come to the issue of water and sanitation – but I just want to go back to what you’ve just told us about how you were appointed. Now correct me if I’m wrong . . .

MASUNDA: Elected – not appointed.

GONDA: Is it correct that mayors under the amended Urban Councils Act are appointed by the Council for one year and that technically your position is now illegal?

MASUNDA: No it’s not correct at all. I mean in the past the Urban Councils Act made a provision for the mayor to be re-elected on an annual basis but this amendment that came in, mayors that got elected in the manner that I did, and together with those that got elected in the old way, they are in office for five years. So my term will come to an end, in the absence of yet another harmonised set of elections, I’ll be in office until 2013 and that is the position. And I checked that out, I mean I’ve been an attorney for many years, and one thing I would not have overlooked was the basis upon which I’m in office. So that I think we can square it away, you know there’s no question of my term having expired.

GONDA: And you mentioned that . . .

MASUNDA: Can we just finish off the . . .

GONDA: Before we go to the issues of service delivery, just to go back again to a point you raised just now – you said you were chosen from civic society, but according to court papers filed by disgruntled members of the Mavambo/Dawn/Kusile group, they name you as a respondent, as a leader in Simba Makoni’s Mavambo. Are you part of this political party?

GONDA: No, I’m not a member of any political party, but the position as far as Mavambo is concerned is that I as an attorney assisted in the formation of the Mavambo Trust and I became one of the initial trustees as it were. You know those are two separate entities altogether. The Mavambo Trust, you know I am a trustee and that is separate entity altogether from the Mavambo/Dawn/Kusile Movement. And over the years Violet, you must appreciate that I’ve studiously and religiously and deliberately avoided getting embroiled in party politics because it was not going to be of any advantage to me as a practising attorney. Because as an attorney and as a partner at the time of Gill, Godlonton & Gerrans which is one of the longest established firms in Zimbabwe, I could not afford a situation where some of my clients could start looking at whatever advice I give them in a jaundiced manner because I’m tarred with one political brush or another.

And I have over the years I have rendered advice to all sorts of people; Simba Makoni has been one of the recipients of my legal advice, just like I’ve had a fairly close working relationship over the years with Morgan Tsvangirai and a number of members of ZANU PF.

GONDA: So what does retired Major Mbudzi mean by saying you are one of those people still in control of some of the assets and resources belonging to the Party?

MASUNDA: The assets that they are squabbling over were registered in the name of the Trust and the trustees are myself, Abiathar Mujeyi, Dr Nkosana Moyo and Dr Nkosana Moyo I think resigned following his appointment as the Chief Operating Officer of the African Development Bank and he has since been replaced by Pearson Chitando a Chartered Accountant. So we are there Violet in a fiduciary capacity. The only person amongst the trustees who is actively involved as a member of Mavambo Mavambo/Dawn/Kusile Movement is Abiathar Mujeyi. So I can appreciate the difficulty which Kudzai Mbudzi may have in appreciating the subtleties involved in all this because he is a military man as opposed to a professional man.

GONDA: OK, so let’s go back to the issue of the Harare City Council and let me start by getting your response to complaints by residents about the poor performance of elected councillors. Why is that?

MASUNDA: Before I go into that Violet, can we complete the explanation which I’ve started giving about the two significant amendments that were made to the Urban Councils Act in the build-up towards the harmonised elections? I’ve explained to you how the democratically elected councillors were given an option of choosing a mayor. What I’ve not yet explained, is how the Minister responsible for Local Government, Rural and Urban Development was given a special dispensation, prerogative in other words to appoint Special Interest Councillors in all those urban settlements in Zimbabwe and there must be about, between 15 and 19 of them, in other words cities and towns; and that dispensation says the Minister has the prerogative to appoint Special Interest Councillors, not exceeding 25 percent of the democratically elected councillors.

So in the case of Harare as I said earlier, there are 46 democratically elected councillors, so 25 percent of that in round figures is 11, so we have a compliment of 57 councillors – 46 democratically elected councillors, of whom 45 are MDC, one is ZANU PF, plus the 11 Special Interest Councillors who were appointed by the Minister responsible, and in this case Ignatius Morgan Chimhinya Chombo.

So by the time we came into office, the last time that there had been an elected councillor in office was back in 2004 when Elias Mudzuri was the Executive Mayor of Harare and then when he was hounded out of office before a series of commissions headed by amongst others, Sekesai Makwavarara and up until the time that we came into office, Michael Mahachi. And I think that it was during that period that things really got out of hand as it were.

But the actual battles that we have as local authority should not be divorced from the social economic meltdown that occurred in the country as a result of hyper-inflation amongst other things. And by the time we came to office the unemployment levels had reached an unprecedentedly high number of 90 percent plus, and people were not able to pay for the services that they required.

So to be more specific, starting with housing, which is an issue you have raised with me, there has been no more meaningful housing development for the best part of the last 20 years and the population of Harare has grown. And as things stand, there’s a relentless migration of people from rural areas to urban areas and when you look at for instance, the 58 hostels in Mbare, Matapi Hostel, Matererini and others, those hostels were built pre-Independence for single migrant workers and with the advent of Independence in 1980 we did a quick fix and sought to convert accommodation that was meant for single people into married quarters and hence the problems that we are having today.

And so I think I can tell you for instance right now that we have initiated, with the assistance and support of the Ministry of National Housing and Social Amenities, an initiative that will see a serious development in terms of houses and that development is going to involve the private sector players like Old Mutual and CABS and as fate would have it, I’m Chairman of Old Mutual - and CABS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Old Mutual and so we’re quite serious. We have, as the City Council, already identified areas where these housing settlements are going to be built.

GONDA: And also, still on the issue of housing, given this serious backlog on housing which was worsened by Operation Murambatsvina does the Council have a current housing list?

MASUNDA: Yes we have, we have but it’s not really up to date.

GONDA: What is it so far?

MASUNDA: I think there’s a backlog of between 500 000 and a million housing units – which is quite a lot. You know because these things in a normal environment are dealt with on an incremental basis, but if you have a situation like I described earlier where there’s been no meaningful housing settlements built for the best part of the last 20 years, then you’ve got a problem.

GONDA: And is it known or do you know yet how many housing units you actually own as Council?

MASUNDA: Well that’s a very good question actually; all I can say at this stage is that we have under our jurisdiction 28 housing estates. In other words suburbs ranging from high density to medium density to low density and it gets a bit difficult to actually pin point the units that are actually needed to make up the shortfall, but most of the high density suburbs – that’s where you find the units that are actually owned by the people of Harare – and have been rented out to tenants over the years whereas the majority of houses in the low density areas belong to individual house owners.

But you’ll be amazed at how much property the City of Harare actually owns. You know we have an exercise that is being undertaken at the moment that is nearing completion to just give us an indication of who is who and what’s what in the Harare zoo as it were. And not only in respect of houses and other tangible assets but also doing a similar exercise to establish the real head count of people employed by the City of Harare. And that’s something we embarked on immediately after coming into office in July 2008. We have a compliment at the moment of over 10 500 employees. We are arguably the second largest business in the country and the second largest employer in the country, second of course in both instances to government. But I genuinely believe that we could run the City more effectively from a cost point of view and service delivery point of view with less that the compliment of 10 500.

GONDA: Is it true that some former employees and also some senior government officials are occupying Council property or Council houses?

MASUNDA: Yes it is true, I’ll not deny that and, but you see, when you look at some of these senior functionaries like the Town Clerk and the other ten heads of department because we’ve got 11 senior functionaries ranging from the Town Clerk right down to the recently appointed Director of Waste Management, as part of their service contract they have over the years been entitled to occupy a council house. But what happened over the years is that some of them upon terminating their services with the City for whatever reason, they then got given the option to buy the houses that they occupy and others exercised their rights over those properties, others didn’t. But you also have other situations where certain government officials were not doing anything remotely connected with the City Council’s business, especially some of those officials that live outside Harare, they came to be in occupation of Council houses which were subsequently sold to them in pursuance of a resolution, Council resolution that was passed some time back to authorise the sale of the Council houses to sitting tenants.

GONDA: Who were some of these government officials?

MASUNDA: I can’t name them off hand because they are quite a number. And there’s a standing court case right now in which the City of Harare is seeking to evict Joseph Chinotimba from a Council house in Belvedere.

GONDA: Is he refusing to leave the house?

MASUNDA: Well the law is taking its course and we have instituted eviction proceedings, yes. In fact there are instances and I believe Joseph Chinotimba’s case is one of those instances where certain Council officials were not eligible for accommodation in certain areas, like in this case, Belvedere where for one reason or another were allowed to take occupation of these houses and they are now seeking to have those houses sold to them when in fact they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. All these things are going to come out in the wash in this exercise that is being undertaken.

I can give you umpteen other examples; you are familiar with Trafalgar Court which overlooks the Harare Gardens? That is a City of Harare asset. And we’ve got shops on the ground floor and we’ve got offices up to I believe the third floor and the rest are residential flats and there are some government employees who are in occupation of those flats and they occupied those flats in terms of arrangements that were made way back and I think we need to have a look at all those cases with a view to rationalise and normalise the situation.

GONDA: And what about the victims of Operation Murambatsvina. What is the Council doing or what has the Council done to address the plight of the victims?

MASUNDA: I will be the first to admit that very little has been done other than the Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle Project which was spearheaded by the ministry responsible and we’ve recently been asked to take over that Project and we are in the throes of doing so. I think your readers will be aware that Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle Project was hastily put together following the Murambatsvina scourge and in the course of putting all that together it’s a classic example of putting the cart before the horse. You know the structures were put up before the stands were properly serviced, in other words, there was no provision of water and sanitation facilities. But the structures are there so we need to move in there and rectify all those things and then get on with it.

GONDA: Is it true that an estimated 200 people actually faced eviction and thousands of informal traders across Harare also faced being forcibly removed without being given notice?

MASUNDA: That’s a bit of an exaggeration. I think people need to see things in context. Let’s go back to the situation that pertained immediately before and immediately after Independence. After Independence we have seen a whole lot of indiscriminate vending taking place within the City and there’s been no political will to enforce the by-laws so what my Council is at pains to do is to clean up the City in a way and have all these vendors operate from designated points; together with the commuter omnibus operators and the touts and others that have grown accustomed to doing things with total impunity. And we are engaging constructively all the key players in the transport sector for instance with a view to restoring order as it were.

GONDA: But some of your critics say that the Council is implementing policies that are identical to those of the illegal Makwavarara Commission and that with the latest threats of evictions you were actually forced to bow down or to bow to pressure after human rights organisations like Amnesty International put pressure on you to stop the latest evictions. What can you say about this?

MASUNDA: The evictions that attracted the attention of organisations like Amnesty International were evictions that had more to do not so much with vending but with accommodation. Because we have squatter camps starting up here and there especially around the Borrowdale Race Course, because you’ve got those poor folk who used to be employed by the Mashonaland Turf Club when the economy was still more buoyant than it is now. And with the down turn of the economy the fortunes of the Mashonaland Turf Club took a nose dive and a lot of those poor folk who were employed there as general workers lost their employment. They were provided historically with accommodation within the vicinity of Borrowdale Race Course and so those poor guys just spill over into the commonages that are conveniently near the Borrowdale Race Course and those are the people that we need to find accommodation for.

And I’ve met Amnesty International Zimbabwe chapter in my office together with the other human rights organisations that are understandably concerned with the welfare of the people that we are talking about, and I said right let’s find a win/win solution as far as we can do with this matter and they undertook to go there. In fact they’ve brought two representatives from the squatter camp just outside Borrowdale Race Course and we have a lady who was brought along who was representing the curio sellers at Newlands shopping centre and we’d like to have these things done properly.

GONDA: But you were going to evict them before you had actually found alternative accommodation for them.

MASUNDA: Well there are no evictions that have taken place so far.

GONDA: But you were threatening to evict them.

MASUNDA: Yes we were because we need to take into account the interests of the other stakeholders whose interests are being prejudiced in the case of squatter camps that are far too near their residencies. In the case of vendors, vending that is taking place within the city to the detriment of the legitimate shop owners who are paying rent and rates and yet they are not getting much in return. It is a matter that we have to deal with and deal with appropriately so it’s not just a question of us enforcing the by-laws willy-nilly. We have to find a sustainable solution to the problem.

GONDA: Some say given the economic crisis does it not make sense to relax building controls and actually allow people to infill stands with approved structures – and that’s provided such a process does not occur on utility lines or other problematic areas. Wouldn’t that actually solve the housing problem or the housing crisis?

MASUNDA: Sure, if that would be the answer. But I think one thing that needs to be borne in mind is that Harare is amongst the most well-planned cities in sub-Saharan Africa. You have areas that are zoned for certain types of houses, whether they are low density, high density or medium density. The moment you start allowing, bending the rules as it were to accommodate divergent interests then you are going to have a problem. You are going to create a situation that will lead to the devaluation of properties and become an untenable situation that one sees in a number of sub-Saharan countries especially in West Africa, Francophone West Africa. But we have an overall plan for the development of Harare and that plan was put together painstakingly by experts on planning issues, and unless that plan is revisited and changed, we have to stick to it.

GONDA: Let me go back to a question I asked earlier on about the residents’ grievances and one of the grievances was that of the poor performance of elected councillors; and I asked you why it was like that and you haven’t really given me an answer to that. So why is it that there’s such poor performance by elected councillors and also the residents are complaining that the councillors are not holding meetings with their constituencies. What’s happening?

MASUNDA: Yes, I think those are well-founded grievances which the ratepayers are making but the truth of the matter is that when these report back meetings are held, it’s not everybody who is able to attend them, so I’ve been for instance, since I came into office to a number of high density areas and have had occasion to address meetings with the councillors for the Wards and some of those meetings have been very well attended. I recall going to a meeting in Tafara Community Centre and the Hall was packed to the rafters. But the tragedy of the whole situation is that things had become so run down that people expect instant solutions to their problems especially the problems relating to water and sanitation, refuse removal and electricity and the fact of the matter as I keep saying, is that the infrastructure had been neglected for quite a long time to a point where the services that the residents so richly deserve cannot be provided.

GONDA: Is it your view that the Councillors, in your Council are generally uneducated and are not qualified to be in Council?

MASUNDA: I don’t think it’s a question of education as in possession of formal paper qualifications, it’s a question I think of exposure. It is true that the majority of them have never, through no fault of their own, been exposed to the every facet of the community system that is in place within any local authority and Harare City Council is no exception. But one thing that the Councillors have, especially the democratically elected councillors is courage and I take my hat off to them for the raw courage that they have for having stood up to be counted and lift their heads above the parapet and want to bring about change that the people of Zimbabwe and in Harare in particular want and so richly deserve.

So it’s a huge learning curve for a lot of them because they’ve never been exposed to this way of doing things. And what is not commonly understood by the ratepayers is that councillors don’t just rock up at a full Council meeting and start waxing lyrical about any of the issues that may have been drawn to their attention by the people who voted them into office. We have a committee system that has to work and work in a certain way. For instance we have got eight standing committees and most of those committees are fairly technical committees – we’ve got the Audit Committee, we’ve got the Finance and Development Committee. We’ve got the Environmental Management Committee, we’ve got the Business Committee, we’ve got the Procurement Committee, we’ve got the Human Resources and General Purposes Committee, we’ve got the Information and Publicity Committee and the eighth committee is arguably the largest because it encompasses health, education, housing, community services and licensing. And in all those committees you need people that have some background in the related topic that has to be dealt with and if you have amongst the councillors anybody who’s not clued up on any of those issues then of course it’s going to be a problem. But in an endeavour to plug the gaps that are there we have offered many of the Councillors capacity building programmes but it’s going to take time for them to become completely au fait with issues that have to be dealt with.

And unfortunately, the Minister responsible has not come to the party in terms of his choice of some of the Special Interest Councillors and I’ve been on record having said the Minister ought to have maybe exercised his prerogative more judicially - because when we started and having chatted to the 46 democratically elected Councillors it became apparent that there were certain glaringly absent skills amongst the 46 democratically elected Councillors and those skills could easily have been plugged by these 11 Special Interest Councillors that the minister responsible appointed.

And those skills that are glaringly absent have to do with strong accounting skills, strong engineering skills, strong entrepreneurial skills and strong business skills and anthropological and sociological skills because to have to deal with the multifaceted matters affecting a metropolis like Harare you have to have people that have got the breadth of vision, people that are streetwise, people that keep their noses and ears to the ground and their eyes wide open.