Move the capital!

In my previous post, I suggested that it might be time to allow Harare suburbs to incorporate as satellite localities in the same way that Norton, Chitungwiza and Ruwa are.Today, I want to go as far as to say that the nation's capital must be moved out of Harare to some place else, probably in the central Midlands. I am no urban planner but I suspect that many of my readers will realize that the City of Harare has grown beyond the wildest dreams of its founders. Apart from being poorly managed partly because of its sheer size (but mainly due to the interfering hand of a corrupting, national political establishment), the city is basically falling apart at its very seams.Harare is crowded like a bee-hive, except that this is not an appropriate analogy, because bees do indeed, seem to thrive in their habitat. Harare, on the other hand, seems to suffocate everything and everyone, allowing only the most well connected to thrive. For example, although the current shortage of water is primarily due to mismanagement by the city council and the national water authority, the deeper truth is that in the long term, the city will be short of water for the simple fact that the sources of water will not be able to provide enough for the burgeoning population.Any future government which takes over after the prevailing fiasco must commission a study to honestly examine the viability of Harare remaining simultaneously the nation's political and commercial capital. I suspect such a study will show that the people of Zimbabwe would benefit from a major national project which would showcase genuinely Zimbabwean architectural, urban planning and engineering prowess. Such a massive project would take at least two decades to complete and would focus the nation's energy in a positive direction as the country recovers from the nightmarish malaise of the past three decades.

Break up Harare

It is obvious that Harare has grown too large to be managed as a single entity. The city fathers have neither the skills nor the resources to provide tolerably efficient services to the residents, whose numbers, one might add, are a matter of guesswork.The city of Harare is arguably among the most corrupt and poorly run city in southern Africa. Garbage still goes uncollected, water rarely runs continuously for a more than a few hours once every so often. If a city cannot provide running water to its residents, it loses its status and must revert to some other lower, less glamorous group of urban communities.In the meantime, the city's huge bureaucracy gobbles up most of the city funds, rendering the council incapable of delivering on much of its promises to ratepayers. Contracts, including such things as vending stalls, are corruptly awarded.I believe it is time to allow suburbia to incorporate into separate entities, much like Chitungwiza, with a measure of control over local affairs. Such a move would not only increase accountability in local governance, but would probably cut the cost of services and save ratepayers scarce financial resources, if not immediately, but perhaps in the long term.Incorporation of suburbia need not be done in a way as to introduce a new form of apartheid by insisting that each new entity provide a diversity of housing opportunities for lower, middle and upper income groups. It is time to think outside the cage for a solution to the seemingly endless crisis of local governance in the nation's capital. Breaking up Harare might be a good starting point.

Cut the army!

The true size of the Zimbabwe security forces is probably a state secret, but we can intelligently guess based on some figures that have been released in the past. It was reported in the mid-1990s that the defence forces were to be cut to about 41 000 personnel from about 50 000. However, given the increasing reliance of Robert Mugabe's regime on the security forces for its sustenance in recent years, I am unpersuaded that there has been a 20% reduction in the numbers of those in the military. If there have been any reductions at all, they have been more than compensated for by increased recruitment into the CIO(Central Intelligence Organisation) and the so-called youth brigades. Police numbers are believed to be a little under 25 000 and should be maintained or even increased. The CIO's ranks have been boosted significantly in recent years to a figure in the region of 4000, up from about 1200 in the mid-nineties, presenting easy opportunities for budget cutters.Even if we were to assume a figure of 40 000 in the army and the airforce, no credible argument can be made that Zimbabwe needs such a large standing defence force. While Zimbabwe may have needed a large force to serve as a deterrent in the eighties (the current numbers are partly a legacy of the apartheid era in neighbouring South Africa), she no longer has any real enemies in the region. Zimbabwe should not be preparing to fight anyone. On the contrary, Zimbabwe should be re-directing the scarce resources that she now spends on an unneeded military force towards improving social services for future generations.Zimbabwe simply cannot afford this large security apparatus in the current economic environment. It makes sense to allow the military to trim its ranks not only by attrition but also by initiating a planned force reduction exercise in order to cut defense spending to about 5% of annual government outlays.A fierce, lean, well-equipped fighting force of about 10 000 men and women, augmented as needed by a military service program for volunteers, would be more in keeping with the nation's resources in these challenging times.

IMF cash

It appears that there may be in-fighting within the Zimbabwe government regarding the IMF stimulus money. On the one hand, we have the state media triumphantly announcing the arrival of the money, so to speak; on the other, the minister of Finance, Tendayi Biti, casting doubt on the wisdom of accepting this loan.As I have suggested in these pages before, the best way to achieve sustainable long term expansion of the Zimbabwean economy is by growing the economy from the bottom up. In other words, instead of rushing abroad to "beg, borrow and spend", the government should proceed on the basis that Zimbabwe is now a poor country and that hard work will be required to get the economy in reasonable shape again. Inevitably, this means less government spending.I suggest as a starting point, that we should cut defence and intelligence spending by at least 50% (more on this in my next instalment). Loans like this latest one from the IMF simply boost the already bloated appetite for spending by those whose job it is to procure weapons, luxury cars and other politically expedient goods and services.I am not suggesting that the government should reject this offer; however, I think that this loan, in its entirety, should be made available to the private sector to acquire machinery and materials required to restore the country to its former glory as a major manufacturing country in Africa. Certainly, the Reserve bank should not be responsible for its disbursement. One does not need to be a genius to know that otherwise, this money will end up being siphoned away to the foreign bank accounts of those who have been in the business of looting the nation's meagre pickings for the past three decades.