Bulawayo mayor David Coltart says Zimbabwe must consider giving mayors executive powers to enhance service delivery in the country’s urban areas.
Coltart (DC) made the call when he appeared on the platform In Conversation with Trevor, which is hosted by Alpha Media Holdings chairman Trevor Ncube (TN).
The former Education minister, who revealed that he earns US$47 as mayor, said low remuneration for councilors meant that they spent most of their time doing other work to supplement their incomes.
Below are excerpts from the interview.
TN: Today I'm in conversation with his His Worship, the mayor of Bulawayo Senator David Coltart. So David welcome to In Conversation with Trevor.
DC: I'm so delighted that you have come all the way down to your hometown. It's a pleasure to have you here today.
TN: Fantastic David. I was born here. Like I said born in Bulawayo, Mpilo Hospital in 1962. I grew up in Magwegwe when it was still called the Dark City. I went to Magwegwe Primary School, Mzilikazi High School and then the University of Zimbabwe stole me, but my heart is still in the city. My parents’ home is about two to three minutes away from here.
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So I love the city and when I heard that David was going to take over running the city with what I know about the city, my love for the city and the mess that the city is in I said; David must be crazy. Why did you take up this job?
DC: Well I think like you, fundamentally, I love this city although I can't claim to have been born in the city like you. I was born in Gweru. I have lived here since 1961. I was raised here. My entire soul is here, my family lives here, two of my children, five of my grandchildren are here and I have seen the city slowly deteriorate in the course of the last few decades and when you get to your mid-60s, you want a bit of a legacy. You want to leave something for your kids and your grandchildren and so when I was asked to do this job although I knew it was a poisoned chalice, I thought I would give it a full go.
TN: What, in your mind said to you; I'm taking this job, the biggest challenge is going to be ABCD. What were the three challenges for you as far as taking the job was concerned?
DC: Well I understood first of all that this is a ceremonial position. I'm not an executive mayor I'm a ceremonial mayor.
I'm a lawyer and I understand that there are very limited powers, legal powers that mayors have in this country now. So I understood that would be a problem.
Secondly, I understand that there's very low morale amongst councillors, low morale amongst even management because people are not paid what they should be and then, thirdly, of course, I understood that there have been years and years of neglect of the infrastructure.
The roads are simply the outward manifestation of the deeper malice in the city.
You know our water distribution network.
So, I understood all of that but I have to say that having been in the job for a year, almost a year now, I didn't realise just how bad the situation was.
TN: You didn't realise just how bad the situation was? Just sum it up for us; how bad was the situation when you came in?
DC: Well, everywhere you turn there are problems. We have eight sewage plants, they are running at 20% capacity. We need between 100 and 150 mega litres of water per day to the city.
We are only processing 10 mega litres of water per day through our sub system so that is one example. The roads are obvious. We have a huge debt; US$51 million is owed to the city by ratepayers and of course a theme that we will come back to our water situation is absolutely in a critical state.
TN: Water is going to take a bit of our time but there are a lot of other issues that we want to cover. You have raised an issue that's important for us to understand, which is you are a ceremonial mayor, how much has that hindered your being able to be effective and going forward, I mean you still have another four years or so.
How much do you think that's going to be a hindrance in terms of your ability to deliver on your passions and your agenda?
DC: Well, whilst we have got a great team, a great management team, here, the fact of the matter is that mayors in this country now have no hard power. They can't say that will be done. One has plenty of soft power, particularly, if you have got a higher profile in social media and similar forms of media.
In that way you can say what your goals are and that carries with it some weight but, ultimately, you can't simply determine this is going to be the course of action to be taken. And in that way it stands in marked contrast, for example, to when I was minister of Education. As minister you have absolute power. You control your ministry, obviously, within the confines of cabinet, whereas, here there is a far more limited power and it's compounded by the fact that for example I'm paid US$47 a month as mayor.
TN: When you first said it I didn't believe.
DC: That's the reality I'm paid an allowance of US$47 per month but our councillors are paid even less and so there is very low morale amongst councillors. It means that councillors are constantly foraging for ways of supplementing their income.
So, we spend far too much time, for example, on workshops than we do on the practical day-to-day work that needs to be done because without workshops councillors can't survive so these are problems that we face. That breaks my heart without workshops, councillors can't survive. That you are getting paid US$47, can we just dwell on that I mean what's the impact of that in the way the city gets run?
Well, one can't just look at the payment in isolation. The major problem is, in fact, the change from executive mayors to ceremonial mayors. It means that mayors and councillors have to have at least two jobs and, quite frankly, they need the job outside of being mayor as their principal source of income and the principal consumer of their time, it means that there is relatively limited amount of time that can be applied to running a city. Compare that, for example, to cities in South Africa, Cape Town, for example.
There you have executive mayors, their full-time job is running the city and it reflects in their delivery.
We don't have the same in this country and it really is something that government needs to look at.
It's something that government needs to look at but perhaps the people that are in this room ought to be pushing on that point because my sense is that local government is in the call phase of service delivery.
Therefore, we should have the best amongst us running city councils. We should have a mayor who knows what he's talking about, who's informed, who's educated and who's an expert in that kind of stuff and a group of councillors who understand that.
