Council faces implosion

In the lead up to the 2013 elections, President Robert Mugabe of ZANU-PF ordered all municipalities, including power utility ZESA Holdings, to write-off arrears that were owed to them by rural and urban dwellers.

This populist gesture endeared his ZANU-PF party to the electorate, resulting in it posting an overwhelming victory against its main challenger, the Movement for Democratic Change party, led by former Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai.

An estimated US$2 billion that was owed over a period of four-years, between February 2009 and June 30, 2013, was written-off as a result.

Since then, ratepayers have been dodging paying their bills, expecting another debt-forgiveness ahead of the potentially explosive general elections next year.

Nyanga Rural District Council chief executive officer (CEO), Zefania Jaravaza, revealed recently that ratepayers who used to settle their dues religiously were now reluctant to do so in anticipation of similar directives from the ruling party towards elections.

“Our problem mainly started when the (then) minister of local government (Ignatius Chombo) just wrote off the debts in 2013. It really gave us a big dent because those who were loyal ratepayers, who paid their rates on time, began to think that council had been unfair to reward people who had not been paying. So the loyal ratepayers were like, well, we will also stop paying our rates because we know at some point the minister will come again and say we are writing off debts,” said Jaravaza.

In his recent submissions before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Funds, acting town clerk for the City of Mutare, Donaldson Nyatoti, said rates payments have declined to 55 percent from over 80 percent before the directive was issued.

As such, the eastern border city is now struggling to meet its financial obligations.

A member of the committee and legislator for Mabvuku-Tafara constituency, James Maridadi, said the debt cancellation was one of the biggest blunders ever made by ZANU-PF.

He said the money that was written off amounted to US$2 billion which not even councils in the developed world could absorb.

“Some people were up to date when that directive was effected. We had people who had not paid anything for the four-year period and when the write-off was effected they benefitted. And then somebody who had just cleared their arrears did not benefit,” he said.

“So people said from 2013 going forward we will not pay our rates because going into an election government will write off debts, and when that happens we will benefit. So effectively writing off debts sent the signal that: ‘Do not pay your rates because come election time government will write off debts.’ You cannot run a government on such populist decisions.”

In his submissions before the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Public Funds, Mutare Rural District Council CEO, Shepherd Chinaka, said although they were aware of the consequences of the government directive, there was nothing they could have done.

He said: “There was nothing that we could do after we received the directive from the minister. We knew this could affect our operations, but there was too much political pressure and we had to comply.”

In the case of the second city of Bulawayo, they wrote off US$47 million, compounding their financial crisis.

Zimbabwe Local Government Association president and Bulawayo mayor, Martin Moyo, said their core mandate, which is service delivery, was affected directly by the slump in   revenue collection.