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Opinions, Comments and Submissions
June 23, 2002

The Mudzuri mansion

Eric Chikono
May 23, 2002

The Harare mayor does not need the mayoral mansion and the expensive Mercedes. Driving an expensive car and staying in a big expensive house does not enhance in any way his ability to make better administrative decisions. The mayoral mansion should be let out and not sold. The mayor should stay among the poor people who elected him so that they will be able to present their problems to him anytime whilst he will be driving around. If some people truly want to harm him, they can harm him anywhere and staying in the mayoral mansion cannot prevent that. He should resign and pave the way for those who are ready to die for democracy and the people.

Margaret Nyarota
May 21, 2002

As things in the economy stand, I do not think the new mayor will have the opportunity of entertaining that much. No one (in the world) wants to visit Zim at the moment. Therefore, there is no need for such a big house. This issue has been debated for a long time and the Harare residents want that house to be sold. The longer they take to sell the house, the more they loose. Chiyangwa at some stage offered to buy the house. It makes more sense to receive income rather than spend what you do not have. Then you end up with a debit balance. I have also noticed that 7th Street is being resurfaced. My suggestion would be to first of all, close ma potholes ari all over the place. Kana paine mari yasara, then 7th Street can be resurfaced. When you compare other roads with 7th Street, this street is much much better. Let us have our priorities right.

Patricia Kasiamhuru
May 21, 2002

The mansion seems to have become a political house where each party is using it for its own benefits or downfall of the other. During Tawengwa's mayorship us Harare residents/ratepayers criticised the then Council for building such a white elephant at the expense of the rate payers with rates being increased to partly cater for the mansion. the Opposition used this to denounce unwarranted spending by the then Council which was dominated by the ZANU PF party.

Now the MDC has won the election it seems to me that ZANU PF silently wanted the Mayor to occupy the mansion in the hope that they would say to the urbanites most of whom are believed to be supporters of the MDC look at what your party is doing how can they occupy the big mansion when the city residents were suffering etc.

My honest view about the Mansion is - in the first place it was not prudent for the then Tawengwa Council to embark on such a big project meant for self aggrandisement by some people who thought that they would be in the mayorship forever. Yes we need a Mayoral House yes but we could have bought one in one of Harare's resident areas and renovated it into a Mayoral House that is if we did not have one before. Okay after the Mansion was built without any consultations with us the rate payers and the many criticisms levelled against such a project we should agree as a city on the next step. I think honestly that we cannot maintain that Mansion as a city right now as there are many pressing activities that we need to deal with in our city. eg. road maintenance, garbage collection, provision of housing, general maintenance i,e, cleanliness of our city centre(I think the city is becoming filthier by the day), proper facilities for vendors, lighting system in the city and Harare suburbs. With all this endless list I think we need to fully plan our budget as a city and make savings where we can. We should however maximise on the Mansion and not leave it uninhabited forever. Maybe we need to rent it out to one of the Diplomatic Missions in return for hard cash. Whilst it is important for our Mayors to have decent accommodation - the present Mansion should be rented out and we get decent accommodation for our honourable mayor elsewhere.

I also think that the Mayoral Benz concept should be re-looked at. Do we really need a brand new Benz for the mayor irrespective of their political affiliations. As Zimbabweans we should learn to live within what we can afford. This is the problem in the whole of Africa where we say we do not want colonialism and yet we are busy imitating the colonial practices and yet sometimes we cannot afford these luxuries because we have so much that we need to cater for the multitude of our people who were disadvantaged before. I think a new 306 or 304 or such car would be fine for our Mayor but as always starting from central government to the lowest levels of government the bigger the car the better even if we cannot afford them. If I were Mayor Mudzuri I would set up an example and live within what the Council budget permits.

Tim Symonds
June 04, 2002

When any politicians takes up a lavish life-style paid for by the taxes of the people (or corruption), the politician immediately loses the contact between the people and himself. This brings about a bad psychological relationship, and eventually increases the chances the politician will
resort to undemocratic means to continue in office and live lavishly.

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