At the edge of the northern side of the capital city of Zimbabwe, Harare, nestled in between a golf course, wedding venues, and a growing middle-class neighborhood, is the city’s primary landfill site called Pomona. This site has become the ground for the latest political tussle in Zimbabwe which pits the ZANU PF-led national government against the opposition-led local government and brings to the forefront the nascent political issue of the environment and climate change. Amid corruption, poor service delivery, and the fight for democratic space, there is the possibility of creating a decentralized, organic compost system that is community-owned and supports Harare’s sizeable urban agriculture.
Dirty City
The genesis of the matter is that Harare has a significant refuse collection crisis. Twenty years of deteriorating service delivery resulted in Harare City Council (HCC), at the beginning of this year, having only seven refuse trucks servicing 46 wards and a city with a population of two million people. Waste dumpsites instead of being the exception have become the norm, particularly in high-density suburbs that cannot afford private refuse collection services that have sprung up over the last decade to fill in the service gap left by the City Council. Be that as it may, the Pomona dumpsite has been filling up progressively over the years, becoming a fire hazard as well as an environmental problem.
To deal with the growing waste problem, HCC sent out two bids through a public tender process in 2016 and 2018. The first tender fell through because interested parties questioned the Council’s ability to uphold their side of the potential agreement which was to deliver enough waste to the dumpsite. The problem was not insufficient waste in Harare, but the earlier mentioned logistical issue of the lack of operational refuse trucks. The 2018 tender collapsed after the Council failed to receive clearance from the State Procurement Board.
In 2021, the National Government decided to get involved in trying to find investment for the dump site. A Dutch-registered company called Geogenix came into the fold. Without a feasibility study being conducted an agreement was signed that had the Town clerk, Office of the President, the Central Bank, and Ministry of Local Government representatives as signatories as well as councilors from MDC-T. According to reports, the contract is stipulated to be valid for 30 years. The City of Harare will pay US$40 per tonne to Geogenix. In the first year of the contract, the City of Harare is obliged to pay US$8.03 million. By the fifth year of this contract, the figure would have risen to a minimum of US$14.6 million annually from the year 2027 until 2052.
Dirty Politics
On the surface, the above explanation appears to be a simple issue of a city struggling to raise investment funds and the national government coming in to save the day. However, a dark undercurrent of dirty politics has been at play with the awarding of the contract to Geogenix. Since 2000, there has been a toxic history of animosity between the national government and urban local government in Zimbabwe. At the turn of the century, urban city councils became political havens for the main opposition party, MDC as they tried to wrestle power away from ZANU PF. As a result, the ministry of local government under the ZANU PF government turned from being in the lower rungs of political power and became very powerful and important.
Successive local government ministers have abused their oversight powers over local urban councils. In the 2000s, Former Minister Ignatius Chombo suspended Harare mayor, Elias Mudzuri. In 2007, the mayoral executive powers were stripped which in turn gave more powers to the local government minister as well as the town clerk who was appointed by the minister. In 2013, Minister Saviour Kasukuwere suspended Mayor Bernard Manyenyeni. Since 2021, the current local government minister July Moyo has suspended Mayor Jacob Mafume four times. This has occurred alongside urban councils losing the administrative autonomy they previously held over some service provisions such as power supply, water, and management of roads. The 2013 Constitution in Section 264 entrenched devolution into the nation’s laws but the national government has purposefully delayed aligning acts of parliament, in this case, the 1995 Urban Councils Act to extend their control over urban councils.
In this context, the awarding of the Pomona Dumpsite contract by the National government is an act of authoritarianism designed to enrich individuals linked to the corridors of power. It has been established that Geogenix belongs to a controversial Albanian businessman, Mirel Mertiri who is also linked to the Paradise Papers. Mertiri’s Zimbabwean business partner is Dylish Nguwaya who has links to the Zimbabwe National President Mnangagwa’s sons. Nguwaya was charged with fraud after a leak came out over a contract he received from the Government of Zimbabwe to supply drugs and equipment worth USD$60 million was grossly inflated. The Pomona dumpsite deal appears to be another attempt to fleece money from citizens through a government contract. It is also telling that the day when the Pomona dumpsite contract was signed, Mayor Mafume who has been a vocal critic of the National government was serving a suspension from his position which was later overturned by the courts. Mafume has expressed his anger repeatedly arguing that as the local council, “we have lost our power station, our roads and now Pomona. We can’t keep on losing.”
Dirty Black Gold
Mayor Mafume has managed to halt the Pomona contract awarded to Geogenix and he has staunchly refused to pay the bill of USD$780 000 that is due for May only. This is a noble effort; however, Harare still has a waste problem even after successfully halting the GeoGenix deal. Only seven functional refuse trucks are operational, and the council is relying on private sector involvement which is not accessible to all. While Mayor Mafume fights against the authoritarian measures from the National Government, there is a need to provide alternative solutions that deepen democracy, increase citizen engagement, and go a long way to solving the waste crisis in Harare.
One such solution that can be adopted is the city council establishing a ‘City Compost Program.’ City Compost Programs are when cities actively adopt a plan to establish composting sites in as many areas as possible within the city usually based at community centers, schools, hospitals, or farmer’s markets. Over 50% of municipal waste in most average developing countries is organic meaning it can be turned into compost. City compost programs have the benefit of diverting food waste from landfills, reducing methane emissions, and producing compost. The last point of producing compost is key because compost is a key addition in Harare’s economic ecosystem. About 10% of land in Harare is used for urban agriculture. Due to the Ukraine war, global synthetic fertilizers prices have increased by over 100% which means most urban farmers will not be able to afford fertilizer in the upcoming farming season. Compost fertilizer costs about seven-nine times less than synthetic fertilizer. This will create a virtuous, environmental cycle in which citizens are responsible with their waste to create dirty black gold.
Additionally, establishing a city composting program has the chance to decentralize and democratize how Harare deals with waste. Structurally speaking, the reason Geogenix is interested in the Pomona deal is because a city of about 2 million people structurally relies on dumping all their waste in one area. This is a conducive structure for monopolization of an industry that elitist capitalism relies on to maximize profits. Establishing decentralized compost programs that compost at the source of waste, reduces the economic viability of projects such as the Pomona Dumpsite which as a result will weaken the national government’s hold on the city councils. A decentralized waste system will increase citizen participation in an important issue, cultivating democratic structures of social ownership from below. It is easy to imagine each of the 47 wards in Harare, depending on population having at least two compost sites and other compost sites at famous farmers’ markets such as Mbare Musika.
Conclusion
Like most nations with an authoritarian regime in power, the state has been transformed into a leeching institution that is a halfway house for corruption and self-enrichment. In this case, the state has combined this ambition with trampling on any local government rights. The common citizen and the environment have the most to lose. Any change that comes should therefore have decentralized democracy at its core. This will have the dual effect of increasing citizen empowerment and forming social, economic, and political practices that limit state-centric power and bring back power to where it should primarily reside, local communities and their citizens.