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Rugare residents resolve to dump refuse at Town House
Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA)
July 27, 2006

Rugare - Residents here today resolved to mobilise for action against the City of Harare by dumping sewer and garbage at Town House until service delivery improved.

They also demanded that until elections are held in the capital, residents will push for an independent council, renamed the ‘peoples’ council’ where decisions by the people and for the people would be made.

The residents made these resolutions and recommendations at a public meeting held this afternoon at Rugare Community Hall in the township.

Addressing the gathering, numbering over 450 people, Israel Mabhoo, the Acting Chairperson of the Combined Harare Residents’ Association (CHRA) said the high cemetery charges that were imposed on residents by the municipality should be overturned.

"Failure to address this anomaly, residents should bury their relatives at Granville Cemetery and other cemeteries without paying anything," he said. "We should stop Town House from practising daylight robbery on us. If we do not take a radical move as Harare residents, to free ourselves, we will continue to live at the mercy of Chombo."

He said the residents who have not raised a finger have allowed the entrenched corruption at Town House. Mabhoo said residents rise and claim their city.

Mabhoo urged Rugare residents to avoid borrowing money when they cannot afford to repay it but should proceed to bury their deceased.

If the municipality or whoever has a problem with this arrangement, Mabhoo said, that person or people must go and exhume the bodies and bury them where they see fit without offending residents.

The residents were delighted by this proposal and urged Mabhoo to take the initiative to take the residents’ struggle ahead and bring change to the city. Some called him ‘the Moses’ of Harare’ saying CHRA leadership must take a firm stand against dictatorship and restore Harare to its rightful owners.

They demanded that the Municipality must refund all the Rugare residents for all the money they have paid for refuse collection in the past two years, arguing that they have not seen any refuse truck in their suburb in the past years.

Joseph Rose, the Chairperson of the CHRA Membership Committee said CHRA has embarked on these public meetings with the objective of educating residents about their constitutional rights.

He said CHRA was established to enhance communication between residents and service providers like the City of Harare, ZESA, TelOne and others.

"Residents are usually afraid to express their views on issues affecting them," he said. "The emergence and existence of CHRA must be viewed as an opportunity or catalysts for change in local governance in Harare. These platforms provide residents with an opportunity to discuss issues that affect them and map the way forward as a united community."

Rugare residents said they were shocked by the huge rates and supplementary bills they have received the municipality without corresponding with the quality of services being provided.

Most of the people from Rugare are ex-employees and current employees of the National Railway of Zimbabwe (NRZ). The majority are pensioners who get a paltry allowance ranging between $80 000 and $500 000 every month.

They have received bills amounting to over $6 million but they cannot afford it, and neither can they get it anywhere else. The Municipality has failed to address their grievances and yet continue to give them unreasonable and unjustified rates bills.

The Rugare meeting became the sixth after CHRA leadership met in Nyanga on 2 July 2006 and resolved the following;

• We reject the rates being charged by the Harare Municipality as they are illegal and unjustified. CHRA resolves to intensify the rates boycott campaign.
• To pursue the legal channel over the inconsistencies on billing of rates by the Harare municipality.
• To intensify the holding of public meetings across all wards.
• Mobilise residents to submit generic letters of objections to illegal and unjustified levying of rates by the City of Harare. Residents to submit a generic letter of objection to Town House as of Monday the 3rd of July.
• The residents unequivocally demanded:
• The immediate holding of council and mayoral elections in the City of Harare.
• Participatory and all inclusive local governance legislative reform as a matter of urgency

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