Here is what some of you think:

It’s true, I am already doing that, I make sure every month-end I pay my bills on time.

In my own view the principal running cities and towns should put our health first. What is the use of Government subsidies in our country? If people are not able to pay rates it means all is difficult for residents. Let municipality cut on the rates and put affordable rates, which people can afford, and government intervene through the use of subsidies, and utilizing taxes they are collecting from people. Many residents are suffering from stomach disease due to unclean and unsafe water they are drinking yet our own Mayor talks about water supply as a luxury or a want just like DSTV and cell phone airtime top-up. It is not every resident that subscribes to DSTV. It is his duty as a city Mayor to care for the health of the residents. We support our principals; all we want is them to create better living conditions for the residents and raise up the standard of living of society not for another time, but Now.

It is unfortunate that we may laugh at the Mayor but he is telling the truth. People pay for their cell phones because if you do not pay you cannot phone. If you do not subscribe to DSTV you cannot view any channels. If at all there was, or is a way of doing the same thing with water and other services offered by the City of Harare I do not think we wouldn’t have anyone failing to pay for services rendered. However, the next thing would be to find a way to stop pilferage of funds because with everyone paying it means thousands (if not millions) of dollars are up for grabs.

This is a lame excuse – at least they should demonstrate their commitment by cutting down on some of their expenditures. City council fathers are well known for giving themselves hefty salaries and allowances. We have been hearing that same story for many years. If they can account for all the payments being done this can make a difference.

The Mayor was simply being Dramatic in expressing a very important point that affects everyone and people should not read too much into it and get the sense that until they start getting their priorities right, clean and regular water supplies remain a pipe dream. Being dramatic is in fact a mark of good leadership. The Mayor comes across to me saying this is a problem, which affects the public and should therefore involve the public in its solution. Simple.  So the people’s Mayor is simply putting the public problem and its public solution in perspective. Thumbs up.

If that is the case we are guaranteed of never seeing an end to these water problems. Ratepayers do not pay because there is no service to pay for NOT because they do not want water. Right now there is no guarantee that water will flow in your tap if you settle your bills, so why bother?

The UN says you cannot separate water from all the Millennium Development Goals, it thus has to be asked that in a country where water has become such a very emotional issue because of its regular absence in our taps, what then does this say about the country meeting all the eight MDGs?

But then, this question is rhetorical as it is on record that we are off the mark on many of these fronts.

I was given a jolt, recalling that water treatment chemicals have been hard to come by for big cities such as Bulawayo, and for someone to pose that question, “can you tell us if the water in our taps is safe to drink?” says a lot about the downward spiral of service provision in this country in the past decade.

The occasion was a Quill Speak at the Ambassador Hotel and it was themed “The water supply crisis in Harare – what is the solution?”

The Harare mayor, 59 months on the job he said, attempted to provide insights into the mother city’s water headaches, but like many public officials in this country never seemed to have anything new to say other than what has become a well-worn motif: we don’t have the money.

Someone asked where then the mayor expects to get the money, and it was then that for me he provided a useful insight about what has gone wrong in this once romanticized “great African hope” back in the euphoria of 1980.

Council could raise funds for its service provision obligations such as the ever-snowballing water sector migraines by issuing municipal bonds, but this last happened in the 1990s before the dollar crashed in 1997, the mayor explained.

It is explained elsewhere “municipal bonds are securities that are issued for the purpose of financing the infrastructure needs of the issuing municipality.”

But in a country where everything has been blamed on the voodoo economics of Zanu PF, municipal bonds also became a victim; simply meaning that local authorities could not sustain themselves, raise their own revenue outside payment of bills by residents.

Yet resident associations have criticized these municipalities of trying to run their cities with money collected from bills, which is an impossible proposition.

It explains why virtually every council in this country is broke, with residents being forced to live with the reality of disease outbreak right on their door steps.

We only have the 2008 cholera outbreak as a painful example, which Sikhanyiso Ndlovu claimed back then and without any hint of tongue-in-cheek was part of a biological-chemical warfare unleashed by Zimbabwe’s enemies, when everyone else knew its genesis.

Another lady asked the Mayor why she should bother paying her bills when she hardly gets any water, a question that has been asked everywhere but has not elicited any convincing response from the local authorities.

It is a telling indictment that amidst all these questions, Zimbabweans find themselves being part of the 783 million people UN Water says do not have access to safe drinking water, and these are people living not in the rural outback, but in the city of Harare!

Students in Kenya and Uganda have established an anonymous website, Not In My Country which seeks to expose acts of corruption within universities in these two countries. By acting as whistle blowers, students rate their lecturers’ performances and have an optional field to explain their ratings. These are crowd sourced to provide ratings. In South Africa, university students at Wits are using the university newspaper, Vuvuzela, to expose lecturers who engage in misconduct in their work through sexual harassment. Students all over have been using various media to expose corruption within their universities but these are only effective if the university’s authorities take up their responsibility by investigating matters reported. Systems run by students often fall short as university staff protect each other as investigations or follow ups on reported cases are not made.

The Mass Public Opinion Institute revealed these results yesterday at a dissemination meeting on the State of the Economy and People’s Survival Strategies survey. The survey covered the period from 2009 to 2012 and had a national sample size of 1200 randomly selected participants, above 18 years of age.

Politics still dominate the economic turn-around of the country. The survey revealed that 16% of people interviewed think the Inclusive Government should seek external aid and create a more conducive environment for investment. According to public opinion, state organs and institutions were performing badly regarding the Global Peace Agreement. A majority (57%) of the respondents were not in favour of increasing the term of office for the Inclusive Government. The survey data shows the general impression that Zimbabweans will vote YES in the referendum but a substantial proportion said they do not know how they will vote since some claim not to have ever heard about the draft Constitution and the COPAC process.

Perceptions on the death penalty in Zimbabwe show a contrasting view to that published in the COPAC report. The MPOI survey shows 53 % of people interviewed to be in support of the abolishment of the death penalty. The support mainly came from female respondents.

On the issue of national elections this year, Zimbabweans of voting age feel the nation is ready to hold the election. Only a small portion (25%) disagrees as compared to 68% who are in favor of elections this year. Much emphasis on the need to engage international observers from SADC, EU and UN was suggested to ensure free and fair elections. The survey projected a closely fought race between ZANU PF and MDC-T with the latter still commanding a large support base in urban areas, especially among the male electorate.

On the economic state of the nation, 58% of the people interviewed felt that availability of consumer goods had become better over a period of one year but 59% of the urban respondents lamented the worsening employment crisis. The multi-currency system adopted by the nation continues to receive nationwide support with 68% supporting the dollarization of the economy.

The survey also noted high incidences of poverty as 61% of Zimbabweans indicated that they have sometimes gone without clean water, 62% say that they have not had enough to eat, and 70% lacking adequate medicine.

The source of income for many Zimbabweans is still agriculture with a few depending on a regular salary. Others have engaged in income generating activities like cross border trading.

Via blackcontemporaryart.com

Committee of the Peoples Charter (CPC) Press Statement on Proposed Government Exit Packages:

‘Say No to the Inclusive Government’s Politics of the Belly’

Issue Date: February 08 2013

The Committee of the Peoples Charter (CPC) is gravely disappointed with the departure lounge intentions of the inclusive government’s ministers and the current Parliament to award themselves ‘exit’ packages in the form of luxury vehicles and houses, as reported in the February 8-14 edition of the Zimbabwe Independent. Such an intention is grossly hypocritical as well as thoroughly unjustified and undeserved.

In a year where the country is facing a major drought as well as deplorable social services where there is lack of clean drinking water, affordable health care and a crisis in our education system, awarding these policy makers these ridiculous exit packages would be the height of political insensitivity.

These leaders would do well to be reminded that being in government is a service to the people of Zimbabwe and not a mechanism through which they must seek to enrich themselves.  Unfortunately this latest intention is only but the latest indication of the warped thinking that informs the inclusive government where and when it comes to matters of allowances and perks for its officials.

Against better advice, the inclusive government has over the last four years had a ridiculously high foreign travel bill, a penchant for purchasing luxury vehicles for ministers and their deputies while simultaneously claiming that the country has a mere US$217,00 in its bank account. That MPs and ministers now want ‘exit packages’  is akin to severance packages in a country where unemployment is reportedly as high as 80%, can only be viewed as a demonstration of utter contempt for the suffering of the ordinary people.

The CPC strongly advises the inclusive government and parliament to show contrition and sensitivity to the people that elected them into office by not seeking to loot the national purse for personal aggrandizement.

Zimbabwe is neither their personal tuck-shop nor theirs to treat as an ‘endgame takes all you can’ country.  Where the inclusive government decides to proceed with dishing out exit packages to itself, the CPC shall mobilize all Zimbabweans against such extravagance.

Simba Dube (aged 36) is a vendor at Machipisa shopping centre. There is a public toilet just behind his stall where he and a number of women sell vegetables. The toilet hasn’t been functioning for years now and is under lock and key. But he says that this has not stopped folks from shitting on the toilet’s doorstep. It is symbolic perhaps: the logic seems to be, “this is a public toilet and we will shit here even if it is locked!” There are a number of public toilets in the suburb but Dube says none are functioning. The story is the same everywhere: they are all littered with faecal matter outside their entrances. It is worse for the vendors, he says, as the convenience of a public toilet is no longer there and he has to rush home every time he wants to answer the call of nature. “It has now become like a landline (telephone). I can only answer the phone at home and nowhere else,” he quips.

Zenzo Moyo (aged 33) is a kombi driver in Bulawayo CBD. His kombi rank is at TM hyper, one of Bulawayo’s busiest commuter omnibus ranks. Drivers, touts and commuters previously used the public toilets at TM Hyper but now, because of the water shortages, the loos are under lock and key. What is now available are pay toilets, at R5 per visit. “That’s money I cannot afford,” Moyo says. “It means my tout also has to dip into the day’s takings to use the toilet and there is no telling how many times one may want to use the loo,” he says matter-of-factly. Typical of these chaps known for all sorts of adventures and misadventures, they have turned alleyways into latrines, creating an odour the Devil would be proud of. “What do they (the municipality) expect us to do? Paying to use a toilet for me is like paying to drink water,” he says, expressing a common sentiment.

Jairos Ngwenya (aged 29) is a cleaner at a cocktail bar. Folks never seem to run out of cash, they have money to burn as they patronise the joint everyday of the week and business is brisk. But this comes at a price for Ngwenya. No running water for days on end means the pub is also affected, and the laws of necessity have meant even without running water, the pub still remains open. Just because there isn’t any water doesn’t mean the patrons don’t shit, and Ngwenya knows this painful truth is a part of the job. “It’s a tough call anyway, expecting tipplers not to piss or shit,” he says rather grudgingly. He has even found human waste on urinals after some drunk defecated where others piss. “I wonder what time they do this,” Ngwenya muses. I jokingly suggest that maybe one patron stands guard by the door to stop others from entering while his friend shits by the urinals? He laughs: “That’s possible.”

Marko Phiri and Chumile Jamela writing for Kubatana.net

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