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Harare is not just the largest urban authority in the country in terms of both area and population, it is also the one facing the widest range of major problems, many arising from the deliberate decision of recent councils to ignore every master and local plan.

Sometimes the ignoring of the appropriate plans and regulations was simply due to incompetence, such as when officials did not realise until it was too late just what the land barons were doing.

Sometimes, as the criminal court cases show, we had councillors and officials taking bribes or actively involved in illegal businesses and were making their money by organising the bypassing of plans and regulations.

Things were quite different in the past. For example, in the 1990s major Borrowdale property developer Sam Levy twice ran into serious planning problems as he developed his large village property complex of shops and offices and an unmoving council insisted that he went back and sorted out the short cuts he had taken.

He was, by all accounts, a bit reluctant until he was told that the only other option was to watch his unapproved development demolished.

So he had to pay for a new local plan for southern Borrowdale, and then wait while this went through the normal public process and was accepted before he was out of one set of woods, and even then he had to pay towards the extension of the main sewer north, needed with the development and increase of densities the new local plan allowed.

Other developers took note and did the heavy lifting in advance, drafting new local plans and then waiting, while the council advertised for objections, or suggested changes, and finally approved the last draft.

But for almost quarter of a century we have had a council that seems to care nothing for planning rules and has councillors and officials keen on destroying wetlands and public open spaces if they can make a dollar.

In any case they have been refusing to enforce the plans in existence or, where there are good grounds for changes, to make changes to the plans, a process that involves consultation with those affected since the planning law in Zimbabwe gives a great deal of control to those who have to live with the planning.

At this time Harare had a strong planning department, the second largest in the country after the central Government, and had no problem building up its own master and local plans, and keeping these up to date as needs changed and new development ideas were innovated.

But again the planners made sure that those affected were properly consulted, and the views of those who wanted little change were considered along with the views of those who wanted maximum change. In many cases it was possible to get reasonable consensus when adequate safeguards were put in place to maximise the benefits and minimise the problems, and professional planners liked doing it that way.

In 1993 there was the culmination of a major master plan not just for the city, but for the whole of the greater Harare area and stretching deep into the surrounding rural district councils and National Parks land, as far as Norton and Mazowe for example, as decisions were taken by all authorities involved over how the metropolitan area would develop, where the water sources would be, where the sewage treatment would be and how that affected the densities of development.

Those planners were strongly against the idea of an almost continuous sheet of concrete stretching for kilometre after kilometre and worked out how to break this up. The failure of their successors to force the councils to follow that plan is obvious to all.

President Mnangagwa a year ago ordered all local authorities to produce new master plans to guide them in their development.

Once these had been prepared and largely accepted, there would obviously be some detailed work to connect neighbouring plans together, especially important in Harare Metropolitan and its surrounding areas where these days just a back garden wall can separate two houses in different provinces.

The whole process directed by the President would have allowed the accelerated development of the Second Republic in all respects, but especially in industry, business and housing to proceed rapidly without creating a new swathe of problems similar to those that the Government was now trying to sort out in many urban areas, but especially Harare.

For all sorts of reasons, Harare needed a decent master plan more than anyone else, for though the council was unprepared, the city’s private sector was big enough to be generating a lot of its own growth and needed a reasonable master plan to see where this growth would be. Harare City Council did nothing for more than seven months then called for tenders for a master plan from professional planners less than four weeks from the deadline for the completion of the process.

Not surprisingly it has taken a lot longer and while 90 of the 91 local authorities now have their master plans, Harare is the missing 91st.

Among other problems it needs more than US$1,1 million to pay its planning contractor. Local Government and Public Works Minister Daniel Garwe had no option, but to make it clear to the city council that regardless of how unimportant it regards the planning process, President Mnangagwa and the Government think it is vital that it is done and done properly, and he wants the draft plan on public display by November 20, or the entire council and eight senior officials in the top tier will face disciplinary action.

We would have thought the city council would have grabbed the opportunity presented by the President’s challenge to have moved forward fast, making sure the new master plan incorporated the unplanned mistakes and errors that had occurred by refusing to follow proper planning processes and then working on solutions.

At the same time, with the results of ignoring planning rules very apparent, we again would have thought that the city council would have welcomed having the backing of Presidential muscle to ensure that this time the plan would be created and then followed, with changes and updates going through the proper laid-down processes to make sure that they were acceptable.

It seems we and everyone else was wrong and the council regards planning as an optional extra. Minister Garwe has disabused them of this, although probably has not changed the underlying attitudes, but at least we are now likely, at an incredible price, likely to get a draft plan this month and then the public can have their say.