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Nobleman Runyanga

It is the election season and many political greenhorns are running around trying to put together the messages, policies and programmes which they can use to earn the electorate’s votes.

The degree of running around betrays each politician or political party’s level of preparedness. 

Talking of preparedness for the impending election, one could not help but notice the Citizens’ Coalition for Change (CCC) leader Nelson Chamisa’s reaction to the 18 helicopters which Government took delivery of from Russia last week.

Instead of celebrating with the rest of the nation the benefits which Zimbabweans are set to get from the acquisition of the aircraft, Chamisa used the issue to baselessly criticise President Mnangagwa for the acquisition.

Only those who have been in serious situations such as being marooned on a swollen river island in a remote area can appreciate the initiative. 

Every progressive Zimbabwean would welcome the advent of the fleet which is set to enhance Government’s ability to respond to national disasters and combat crime. 

It is shocking that Chamisa described the development as a wrong priority and bad intervention just because it was not initiated by him or his party. 

Those who have been rescued by army teams during incidents such as flooding will agree that the acquisition of a sufficient number of aircraft was long overdue. 

How can Chamisa’s party members go around rural areas, which are the most affected by flooding and other disasters, campaigning for support? 

One wonders how they will explain Chamisa’s disdain for the helicopters to the people who are most likely to benefit from them. 

If anything is a wrong priority, it is telling the people of Murewa, who need basic development such as the construction of clinics, roads, bridges and schools that in the very unlikely event of the opposition getting into power its government will build an airport at each rural home. 

A bad intervention and intention are a senior opposition honcho criticising an intervention that benefits the majority of Zimbabweans just because it has been initiated by his opponent. 

Chamisa’s comments exposed his shallow political mind. 

No sane politician seeking the electorate’s votes trashes initiatives that benefit the same voters. That is political short-sightedness downright tactlessness. 

Chamisa’s councillors preside over 28 of Zimbabwe’s 32 urban local authorities.

The way they have dismally failed to properly run Zimbabwe’s cities and towns lays bare their gross inefficiency and lack of basic skills to superintend over a modern urban local authority. 

Chamisa should have thought about his Harare mayor, Jacob Mafume, before tweeting his claim about alleged lopsided priorities. 

As I write, Harare is reeling from a cholera outbreak. And what is the Harare City Council’s top priority?

Town House is not losing sleep over the cholera outbreak. It is worried about completing the so-called Rufaro Stadium refurbishment to prove to no one that it barred Sakunda Holdings from undertaking the same project because it had the financial capacity to do so. 

Mafume prioritised politics at the expense of a proper job which Sakunda Holdings could have done without asking for a cent from the cash-strapped local authority. 

Mafume’s top priority in the matter was to fight the company because his party’s rumour mill claimed that its owner, businessman Kuda Tagwirei, is a Zanu PF member. 

Put differently, Mafume sacrificed a good investment in recreational infrastructure for the benefit of Harare residents on the altar of cheap political point scoring. 

The fact that Chamisa did not chastise Mafume for the bad decision and order him to do the right thing was tacit approval for the decision in the same way that he found nothing wrong with criticising the helicopter initiative despite its immense benefits to the most vulnerable members of the society who cannot afford private rescue services. 

Only last week the media paraded some substandard stadium chairs which Mafume’s gang fitted onto some sections of Rufaro Stadium to prove to anyone who cares that the project is not dead. 

The whole thing screamed shoddiness. 

Every citizen was expecting that Mafume and company would suspend the project and direct all available resources towards fighting the cholera outbreak, but Town House had different ideas. 

Instead of intervening meaningfully to arrest the disease, the local authority is asking all businesses, schools and other establishments without a reliable source of water to close down to contain the cholera outbreak. 

The world knows who is supposed to ensure that businesses, schools and other institutions have water to enable them to fight the disease. 

Mafume and other Town House occupants should be hanging their heads in shame for forcing businesses and schools to close shop because the local authority has failed to deliver on its mandate of providing basic services which include supplying clean water regularly. 

The local authority is forcing its own failure on its clients and Chamisa does not see anything wrong with that. 

One expected that the local authority would ramp up refuse collection to enhance hygiene in the city, but Mafume and company think that Rufaro Stadium refurbishment is a “national project” whose completion cannot wait, whatever the circumstances.

One reason why Harare has to contend with a cholera outbreak in this era is Harare City Council’s failure to properly treat sewage from some of its suburbs, resulting in the contamination of ground water in some areas. 

If this does not constitute a crisis meriting an urgent and appropriate response from both the Mafume-led Harare City Council and the municipality then Harareans are doomed. 

Talking of refuse collection in Harare, one is readily reminded of how Mafume, with the tacit blessing of Chamisa, fought the Pomona refuse recycling project arguing that it was linked to Zanu PF. 

Today the whole city is covered with uncollected refuse for which Mafume has no solution because he prioritised a pyrrhic political victory over the welfare of Harareans. 

He spiritedly fought the solution for problem which he has no idea how to solve. Talk of lopsided priorities. 

Mafume in his most likely small mind (pun intended) thinks everything in Harare should be about Zanu PF and the CCC. 

Harare is a broad society made of people of all political and religious persuasions.

Not all people are excited by the opposition’s small mind politics. Despite being a lawyer, he has failed to grasp the very basic fact that election into council means that getting into a civic office where one is expected to serve all Harareans irrespective of their political persuasions.

Chamisa’s failure to correct Mafume’s obsession with politics at the expense of his civic duties also exposes his (Chamisa’s) lopsided priorities which are born of his poor political mettle. 

In criticising President Mnangagwa’s very noble helicopters initiative, Chamisa exposed that he does not deserve State power.

By failing to correct Mafume’s childish excitement with politics even where he is supposed to be a civic leader, Chamisa exposed his own lack of political maturity. 

He silently sent an unequivocal message to Harareans that the opposition has failed to run Zimbabwe’s urban areas and should not be voted back into the council’s urban council chambers. 

The message has been sent and heard. The ball is now in the urban electorate’s court to rid Zimbabwe’s cities and towns of the opposition’s ineffective councillors for good.

The chance to kick them out using the power of the ballot presents itself shortly and the urban electorate should not squander it.