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Accountability: The core of good City of Harare leadership
Harare Residents Trust
January 05, 2011

Leadership has been described as the "process of social influence in which one person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task". Effective leadership is the ability to successfully integrate and maximize available resources within the internal and external environment for the attainment of organizational or societal goals.

In this respect, the City of Harare councilors have failed. The ushering in of the current City of Harare leadership brought with it so much enthusiasm, expectation and hope among the residents of Harare in March 2008 during the harmonised elections. Leadership is a process of leading people in the right direction in order to achieve desired goals. It motivates people to excel in the field they are working.

Great expectations were thrust on the current councilors by residents who predicted a major shift in service provision, after their experiences with the illegal commission running Harare ahead of the elections. It should be borne in the mind of the councilors that accountability is a prerequisite of good leadership. In politics accountability refers to a scenario whereby a leader is answerable, blameworthiness and liable.

In leadership roles, accountability is the acknowledgment and assumption of responsibility for actions, products, decisions, and policies. This includes the administration, governance, and implementation within the scope of the role or employment position and encompassing the obligation to report, and explain and be answerable for the consequences. There is a serious lack of accountability among the City of Harare leadership due to rampant corruption within their system which has been evident through poor, incompetent and ill-timed decisions by the leadership.

Good leaders apply leadership attributes such as values, knowledge and skills to implement processes in any organization. Accountability is one of the most critical attributes of a good leader. Lack of accountability by the City of Harare councillors is dragging back all developmental and recovery efforts by council which are expected by the communities they represent.

Councillors should realize that they should be accountable for any of their actions to the people they claim to represent. The utterances by Ward 30 Councillor Victor Chifodya from Glen View, also the Chief Whip of the MDC-T councillors, on the occasion to mark the International Anti-Corruption Day, organised in the Africa Unity Square by the Transparency International Zimbabwe (TIZ) on Saturday 11 December 2010 left us in the Harare Residents' Trust seriously concerned. When asked how they had come up with an anti-people 2011 City Budget despite being elected by the residents, this councillor raised his voice and threatened us with unspecified action if we tried to stop the budget.

The HRT challenged him to explain the US$132 million that is reportedly owed to the municipality by residents, business, industry and government departments, to which he said: "Those people who are not paying money to the council do not think and they are ignorant."

The HRT noted the level of arrogance and decided to investigate him and his colleagues. It is important for the citizenry and other major stakeholders of the City of Harare to note that city councillors have become so obsessed with wealth and power that they have ceased to care about residents concerns. Insiders at Town House reveal that the majority of the councillors are making a killing out of Harare Municipal Medical Aid Society (HMMAS) and the NEC where they sit as board members, awarding themselves hefty allowances and have become involved in a scandalous lending scheme where some councillors were allegedly lent an average of US$20 000 which they have to return on concessionary terms.

While we are not in the business of succumbing to these hostilities from Town House officials and councillors, this came as a surprise to us, this coming from a representative of the people, trusted with making rational decisions on behalf of the people. Councillors were put in the leadership role by the residents of Harare with the expectation that they would deliver results to the citizenry; therefore leadership should be a responsibility rather than a privilege.

Even Israel was the Lord's chosen nation but this entailed more responsibility rather than a privilege. The same should also be a driving principle of the City of Harare leadership. It is amazing how much possessions and wealth the City of Harare leadership is amassing and has acquired to date. One wonders if such possessions are being acquired through the meagre US$180 dollars that councillors claim in allowances from the ratepayer every month. It is time that the councillors make a full disclosure of their wealth to the residents, who struggle every month to pay rentals, approximate water consumption rates, electricity and other essential financial obligations. They should start by disclosing what they owned at the time they were elected into council and what they now have. In the public interest, the councillors have to let everyone know if their US$180 monthly allowances are so miraculous as to multiply every time they receive them, otherwise this country should not be experiencing and witnessing the go-slows and industrial actions by civil servants who earn around the same figure as salaries every month. As argued earlier, effective leadership entails the maximizing of the resources available in the internal and external environment to meet the organizational goals.

In this case the HRT sees no justification for the sharp increase in the rates that residents are obliged to pay to council on a monthly basis. This can be exemplified by water, refuse collection, clinic, rental and other fees, that have been unjustifiably increased, deepening the levels of indebtedness to the City. Considering that the City of Harare is the local arm of government in the implementation of the eight United Nations Millennium Development Goals which among other objectives aim to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger by the Year 2015.

This implies that communities remain vulnerable to poverty as the proposals in the 2011 budget are beyond their reach. There is a danger that residents are bound to resist payment of rates to the City of Harare. There is no doubt that the announced 2011 City of Harare budget is a sharp contradiction to the residents' suggestions, as captured during the stage-managed pre-budget consultative meetings, spearheaded by the Chamber Secretary's Department and the City Treasury.

Added to this, the HRT notes with grave concern that the "budget consultation" meetings that were held in Harare by the City of Harare were characterised by massive confusion and thus there was limited or no participation from the communities. This is a clear indication that there is a serious lack of accountability on the part of City of Harare. Based on this it is recommended that the councillors should accept that accountability is a core ingredient of leadership and should be observed in their executions as leaders.

Recommendation:

• The Prime Minister's Office and the President's Office should investigate the conduct of all councillors who sit on these boards and see if what they are doing is consistent with the Zimbabwe Government's thrust of empowering the citizenry.
• The Minister of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development should not accept the 2011 Proposed City Budget as it fails to recognise the income levels of the citizenry, and disregards the legitimate input of citizens during the pre-budget consultations.
• The Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Local Government should take the matters raised by city stakeholders seriously and monitor the implementation of Acts of Parliament within local authorities.
  

Contact the HRT on 0772-869294/ 0772-771860 or email us on hretrust@yahoo.com

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