THE talk about town, as the year turns into the next half, has been the staggering deals that have involved Local Government and Public Works minister July Moyo.
Three of these come to mind quickly, namely the Pomona waste management project, the Morton Jaffrey/Victoria Falls water pipes and the fire tenders from Belarus.
Let’s begin from the beginning. Everyone knows Harare is a mess. That edifice called Town House looks deceptively solid from outside yet inside it is just squirm of maggots eating away at its rotting heart.
In the past 20 years, what used to be the seat of a functional local government, has been desecrated and turned into a horror show.
What used to be referred to fondly as the “City Fathers” are now the zombies that purportedly run the circus.
It is easy at face value to blame as incompetent the opposition parties that have run the city councils for two decades now. But at the heart of the matter has been that the central government has not given local councils around the country a fighting chance to put their houses in order.
The reason for the continuous undermining of these councils has obviously been envy.
If Zanu PF cannot run the councils, then no one should, seems to be the thinking in government.
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Harare City Council has now gone years without substantive leaders in key positions.
This in itself speaks volumes of the intentions of the central government, particularly the minister responsible whose philosophy seems to be: “Keep the city in the mud and then cook up deals that wring it dry. This kind of smash-and-dash tactic was practised by philandering pirates of yesteryear knowing they had little chance of return.
Our cities, particularly Harare, need modern waste management systems. The environment has to be rid of rubbish and the rubbish has to be disposed of in modern ways that do not pollute the air and aid climate change.
But at what cost?
This violated sick woman called Harare has to be dragged into a deal that will cost it half a billion dollars in five years!
Harare needs a working water reticulation system.
The infrastructure the system is running on presently is more than half a century old and was meant for a handful of people; now it has to cater for several millions. But do the costs of refurbishment have to be inflated fivefold?
And the fire tenders, a simple search on the internet shows the same can be procured from elsewhere at less than a fifth of the cost.
But why hasn’t anyone in high offices nudged Moyo and said these deals are not good for anybody, particularly not for those who will seek public office next year? The day of reckoning is nigh. To borrow from satirists: “The trouble with short men is that they can’t see the point!”
