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It seems incredible that Harare City Council is still operating without the large enterprise accounting system that it needs almost four years after dumping the supplier it was using and taking on a more expensive, but far simpler system designed for small businesses.

The local authorities sub-committee of Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has been continually scathing of this weird state of affairs after receiving reports from Auditor General Mrs Mildred Chari in 2020 expressing her serious reservations over the lack of a proper enterprise resource planning system.

This at a basic level means the council cannot accurately and properly bill ratepayers and receipt their payments, but as sub-committee chairperson Cde Dexter Nduna noted in recent Parliamentary debate, it opened doors for corruption.

He was particularly concerned that the city council had dumped Quill Associates who were running the necessary accounting system, and the one Mrs Chari wanted them to return to, when the cost had been only US$75 000 a year.

It had been replaced with Sage, a good system for small businesses, but not for a giant and complex organisation like the city council, and which cost US$300 000, four times as much.

Harare City Council has the second largest budget and financial accounting needs after the central Government itself, and so needs accounting software somewhat more advanced than that suitable for a respectable SME.

Mrs Chari was concerned in her original report that she could not verify the equivalent of almost US$190 million in funds.

She had no opinion of whether they being used dishonestly or corruptly, just that she could not tell how they were being used, and that the City Treasurer was not able to enlighten her.

Cde Nduna was prepared to speculate, suggesting that the council might well have moved into these tangled thickets so that the doors were opened to corruption and theft, and he was concerned that council staff were bringing their own point-of-sale equipment to work.

Perhaps they were just trying to make the best of it to sort out a serious mess arising from the actions of their employer, the council, but perhaps they were joining in some sort of corrupt dealing. The problem was no one knew and no one appeared to be able to sort it out.

There have been other financial problems.

Zinara, which had its own problems until the Second Republic put in a new board and management, and accepted no excuses for dishonest or sloppy behaviour, has been complaining that it finds it difficult to get the city council to account for all the money it has received from the road fund.

Zinara is basically a tax collector, centralising the toll payments and vehicle licence fees, along with some extra money from levies on those who try and break the rules and regulations, and then distributes this money to the road authorities, the Government itself plus all the urban and rural district councils.

But it is not supposed to send the allotments until an authority has satisfactorily explained what it used the last allotment for, how it spent it and who it was paid for what.

This is all very reasonable and some modest rural district councils, without the staff and sophistication of Harare City Council appear to have no problems drawing up a respectable set of accounts. Harare does.

But even if the accounting mess is just a mess, and with so many councillors and top officials remanded on bail for dishonesty that would be a major concession, it is still totally unacceptable.

Harare City Council continually complains that it is very short of funds, so short it cannot always buy water treatment chemicals, new fire engines, garbage trucks and other essentials, although seems to be able to buy fancy vehicles for managers.

Part of that problem is the fact that while it knows it is owed a lot of money, producing the details is very difficult in the absence of the proper financial system.

The council needs to have a first class finance system even to deliver a second or third class service, with other reforms required to move that up the line to something that the richest and oldest local authority in the country ought to be delivering.

It is difficult to figure out what the city councillors want to do, except perhaps to wear coloured T-shirts and continue to draw their allowances, which many of them rely on as a primary source of income rather than just something they use to buy petrol to attend meetings and buy airtime for the numerous phone calls a quality councillor needs to make to do their job properly.

Others appear to want to work the system so they can acquire assets, especially the better stands on council land, some legally and some less so. In other words they tend to regard being a councillor as way of making money, rather than a way of sort out city problems.

The old style councillor was someone who had already made their mark as a business person or a professional and instead of just complaining about their council, stood for election, won and got stuck in and did a stint on council applying their expertise for the benefit of their fellow residents.

It was not necessarily something they enjoyed doing, and they were not expecting payment for the work they did, but something they felt had to be done and at least they knew what was needed from their private and business life.

This was one reason why waterworks were doubled in size, why major dual carriageways criss-crossed the city, why garbage was collected promptly and even used as landfill to create new industrial stands, why boring bus terminuses were built so passengers could board in safety, and generally why a decent city was properly run.

And yes, and why the Auditor General was willing to sign off the city accounts as accurate and satisfactory, about as good as you get, and even if there were the odd query why these were sorted out before the next audit.

We need that attitude back, that the very best for our capital city is just good enough.