By Kundai Marunya

ONCE upon a time if one wanted to buy fresh produce, the go-to place was Mbare Musika, Market Square or Machipisa Shopping Centre.

And if you wanted to buy mazitye or second-hand clothes, Mupedzanhamo was the designated port of call. Not any more.

Now, there are little Mbare musikas and mupedzanhamos or mabhero (flea markets) dotted on every street corner and pavement, not only in down Harare but right in the Central Business District (CBD).

How did we come to this, is the ques- tion uppermost in ratepayers’ minds?

The short answer is that the opposition-led Harare City Council is to blame for the rot in the capital, for failing to provide decent facilities for informal traders to conduct their business.

The result has been a haphazard takeover of spaces across the city centre, including on pavements, leading to mon- ster human and traffic congestion.

In a bid to bring back sanity to Harare, the city council has, over the years, been engaging ZRP in joint operations to get rid of vendors from the streets.

Dissenting voices have, however, been blaming the perennial crackdown on cen- tral Government, accusing it of shutting down vendors to portray an unblemished image of the city ahead of the 44th SADC Ordinary Summit of Heads of State.

The critics, it would appear, are oblivious to the fact that Government has invested millions of dollars to clean up Harare’s rot to bring back the capital’s Sunshine City status.

This included Government taking over road rehabilitation, refuse collection as well as installation of traffic and street lights, among other responsibilities.

Truth be told, these are the bona fide responsibility of the municipality, which the City Fathers have neglected over the years due to the rampant mismanage- ment of funds.

For example, the Zimbabwe Roads Administration Authority (ZINARA) has over the years been disbursing millions of dollars towards road rehabilitation to all city councils, Harare included. Despite that, no meaningful projects have been carried out.

Vending has become so problematic that despite sporadic raids by both ZRP and municipal police, vendors are back to their ‘workstations’ within minutes.

But the National Vendors’ Union of Zimbabwe chairperson, Sten Zvorwadza, insists vendors are not to blame for Ha- rare’s vending ‘anarchy’..

Says Zvorwadza: “Whoever says vendors have enough designated trading points is not telling the truth.

“Harare has over 100 000 informal traders who work in shifts, thus the city does not have even a tenth of the required

vendors’ markets.”

The vendor’s boss accused the munici- pal authorities of abusing funds availed for the construction of vending sites.

“From 2015, City of Harare has not been open about what happened to a US$4 million CBZ loan which was sup- posed to go into the construction of the Coca-Cola market,” he said.

“If you visit the Dieppe Road site today, you will see the shacks that have been erected by corrupt council leaders.”

This is despite the fact that in 2020, Government availed US$15 million for the construction of state-of-the-art

vending stalls at the corner of Seke and Dieppe roads, popularly known as Coke Corner.

At the time of the funds disbursement, Harare Town Clerk Engineer Hosiah Chisango told a local daily newspaper that work was progressing well and that vending spaces would be completed in a matter of weeks.

“We have started the erection of the structure that we want to put up for vendors,” he was quoting as saying then.

“We received about US$15 million and more will be disbursed so that we have proper structures for our vendors.

The idea is to accommodate the ven- dors that are here and from the calcula- tions we have made, we can accommo- date between 1 000 and 1 600 vendors.

Preference will be given to vendors who are already here and we expect to start seeing them move in, as the alloca- tions are being done, in the next 10 to 12 weeks as the work has already started.”

Four years later, there is no devel- opment to justify the US$15 million expenditure.

No wonder the vendors are up in arms with the City Fathers.

“In short, there are not enough vend- ing spaces, and if they are any, they are oversubscribed,” said a visibly disap- pointed Zvorwadza, who was quick to add:

“The streets are the only available vending spaces for informal traders. Give us decent vending spaces, and we will vacate the streets.”

But is anyone listening at Town House?

However, it turns out that corruption within the municipality is not restricted to the top brass, but has cascaded down to municipal police officers who demand bribes in exchange for confiscated wares.

“When you’re arrested for selling your wares on the streets, your best option is to pay a bribe to the arresting officer oth- erwise you stand to make a bigger loss,” said a vendor who preferred anonymity.

The vendor’s views were shared by Zvorwadza, who chipped in: “Vendors are not the problem in this cancer of cor- ruption.

“What officers from City of Harare are doing, and have been doing for years, is wrong.”

Harare has been lagging behind in terms of development prior to the inter- vention of the Second Republic.

Instead of welcoming Government’s benevolent hand, the opposition-led council has been doing its best to stall development programmes for politi- cal gain while abusing both ratepayers’ money and devolution funds.

Instead of applauding Government, opposition politicians and activists have been focusing their energy on disrupting the just-ended SADC Summit by threat- ening mass action.

Now that the 44th SADC Ordinary Sum- mit is now water under the bridge, we hope the City Fathers will get their heads fixed right to attend to serious council business — that of service delivery.

However, it needs repeating here that Harare’s mess can only be cleaned with a helping hand from central Government if the capital is to march in tandem with the rest of the country towards Vision 2030.