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THE sudden efforts to convert the Sherwood and Warren Hills community gold courses into housing stands by a group on Harare City Council is the latest example of destroying recreational space without considering the costs to future generations and without consulting the people who will be affected.

All that councillors want is solid housing for kilometre on kilometre and zero open space and that is coupled with planning and development that increases the densities of housing, as is needed with more and more blocks of flats taking up the load as more and more people demand homes.

But the densification, and Mabelreign and its surrounding areas already have flat complexes and will be getting more, places an ever greater premium on open space and land set aside for recreation, even if recreational development needs to wait a decade or two.

There may well be less demand for golf at the moment. Both Warren Hills and Sherwood have declined in the couple of decades since hyper-inflation hit most households. 

The problem is that these courses, without the backing of members, degenerated almost back to raw bush with fencing being stolen and other vandalism. 

Even if growing prosperity gave rise to a new generation of golfers, a lot of money and effort would be needed to restore these two middle-income courses.

But the fact remains that these two courses are the only courses outside the north-eastern and northern suburbs and the only two courses that, in their prime, were affordable for middle-income golfers. 

When golf becomes a rich person’s sport with exclusive golf clubs fairly keen on excluding those who may actually send their children to Government schools and do not bring their clubs to the course in a late model large car, then we are doomed.

It is worth noting that the best golfer ever to come out of Zimbabwe, Nick Price, was not from a rich home. 

He learned his golf at Warren Hills and played for that club until he moved into the regional and international circuits as one of the world’s leading golfers. 

How many others come from his sort of childhood home whom the council now wishes to exclude?

Part of the cause of the decline was the council itself. It has not even made an attempt to preserve the basic assets by providing minimum security or looking for different recreational uses for the land. 

The golf courses were not specially zoned for golfers when Harare was being developed. Under some of the smarter planning rules in existence at that time, a percentage of land had to be set aside as public open space, not necessary developed as parks or golf courses or sports clubs, but kept out of the hands of builders.

Most developers, and this includes the Government who developed Mabelreign for a huge flood of skilled-worker immigrants, quite sensibly set aside the blocks of land that were not suitable for building, the vleis as they were then called. 

These are now the wetlands that everyone talks about and everyone, except Harare city councillors, wants to retain.

Wetlands were quite suitable for public open space since no one was going to build on them. A modest amount of earth moving and the planting of a lot of trees would create quite useful open space. 

By assigning bits of the land to golf clubs or sports clubs, at peppercorn rents set just to retain proof of local authority ownership, the city council and the town management boards managed to get the work done without hitting the rate funds.

Other such wetlands reserved for public space were later assigned to schools as sports fields.

While Sherwood occupies the southern wetland in Mabelreign, the north eastern wetland in the suburb was added to the two high schools. 

They had good building land along Sherwood Drive for hostels and classrooms, but a lot of the land to the east while great for sports fields was never going to give firm footing for foundations. You can see many examples in Harare of this sensible policy.

We have other examples of the city council destroying zoned public open space, or trying to destroy it and allow it to be converted into housing, with a determined effort made on a third golf course in Highlands. 

We have seen wetlands built over as the future parks nibbled away, with only the tough Environmental Management Act being powerful enough to stop or moderate the process, although there are continual attempts to get round that Act when no one is looking.

The fact that some of those able to buy the new stands appear to be councillors or friends and relatives of councillors is another factor, which explains the enthusiasm for conversion without consultation.

Mabelreign residents have already been quite vocal about other attempts to grab the public space in the suburb, when even a basketball club was sold off as a housing stand, a sale that had to be reversed in the end. 

No doubt they will mobilise against this, although probably without the support of their councillors.

The residents of the north-western suburbs need to now make their position clear. The two golf clubs are community assets. They can be restored or they can be used for other public benefit.

But it is unlikely that the residents of those suburbs are desperate for them to be covered in concrete, probably by a private developer with the right contacts. There is not that much public space left and we need to keep it.

The Harare City Council continually ignores its own stated dream of developing Harare as a world class city, and certainly totally dismisses the Government Vision 2030, of the city being the capital of an upper middle-income country. 

World class cities are not solid concrete, however prosperous, the people in the flats and small housing stands are, they are not really winning the lifestyle that goes with that prosperity if they are confined to solid urban development for kilometres in each direction. 

In time public space, and the percentage is not that high, will be needed. We can change the actual public uses over decades and develop parks, golf courses, sports fields and the like. 

But what we cannot do is take it away. And that is something the present council seems so determined to do, to create concrete deserts.