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Decentralization and Local Government in the Zimbabwean Constitution

By Dele Olowu, Africa Europe Foundation, Netherlands

Paper prepared for the Constitutional Conference, Zimbabwe, October 26-29, 2009, Rainbow Towers, Harare, Zimbabwe

Introduction

Local community governance is essential not only for the practice of good governance but also of economic growth and development. For this reason most of the developed countries of the world, irrespective of their political or economic systems, have a robust system of local or community governance. This also explains why many developing and former communist states have made solid efforts to enhance the capacities of their systems of local governance since the third wave of democratic revolution swept through the world in the 1980s and 1990s and the results have been quite impressive. Africa may be the only exception to this general principle even though there have been some progress as well in some countries. Unfortunately, Zimbabwe has not been part of the good news as far as the effort to enhance the capacity of local governance is concerned. It is ironic that over time, the resilient institutions of local governance that were inherited at independence have deteriorated over time-both in the cities or in the rural areas. It is even further ironic that though community organs were crucial during nationalist struggles in the countries in which political independence involved military engagement between occupying powers and nationalist forces, the story of local governance has been lack-luster in these countries in Africa (Mozambique, Uganda, Angola, Ethiopia) once the nationalist party emerged victorious.

Local government, a statutory not a constitutional issue in many British influenced traditions have become de jure and de facto constitutional in many developing countries towards the end of the last century as they sought to strengthen their local government systems. Examples of countries that have written local government into their national constitutions include the following within and outside Africa: India, China, Indonesia, Philippines, South Korea, Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria and South Africa (Kersting et al 2009).

It is also significant that research to-date shows that all through Africa, when people are allowed to freely express their preferences in Africa’s emerging democracies, the people have often sided with the opposition rather than the governing forces at the central government level (Olowu 2005).

In this paper, we highlight why local government is essential for economic development, democracy and good governance as well as the challenges confronting local government in a country like Zimbabwe and the approaches that have been adopted to tackle such challenges. Finally, we take a close look at the provisions of the various Zimbabwe constitutions and constitutional drafts. However, we start with a clarification of the relationship between decentralization and local self-government.
Decentralization is the process of transferring planning, management responsibilities, resources, and authority and/or accountability arrangements from the central to sub-national or local organs of governance. Decentralization can take different forms: the dispersal of central government responsibilities through de-concentration or field administration or the delegation of specialized authority to manage executive agencies to a management team or via devolution of responsibilities, human and fiscal resources to locally governing bodies that are semi-autonomous from the national government, normally referred to as local authorities or government. The totality of local governing (government, private, civic, community) organs in a community constitutes the local governance architecture. Specifically, this paper is subdivided into the following subsections:

1. Local Governance, economic development and good governance

2. The Place of Local Government in the Zimbabwe constitution and constitutional drafts.

3. Some Remarks

4. Conclusion

1. Local Government, Economic Development and Good Governance

1.1 Local Government and Economic Development

Local governments make five important contributions to local economic development.

First, in most countries, they are assigned with the authority to provide the main local basic services that facilitate private economic production. Second, as a result of this first role, they set standards for other institutional actors to operate within their respective communities. Thirdly, they may contract other institutional – public, civil society and private, local and central government – actors to produce basic local services. Sometimes, they compete with the local organs and at times collaborate with them and with one another to ensure that local citizens are provided with quality services. Fourthly, they also serve as agents of central government for the delivery and management of a wide variety of services. Finally, as a result of all these they contribute greatly to the integration of different types of local and public services and hence, to integrated local development. By their actions or inactions, they serve to attract or repel local economic actors (private and public, traditional and modern, domestic and external) into their domain (Olowu 1988, Bennett 1994). For these reasons, local governments are responsible for the most basic (and not-so-basic) local services in industrialized countries and are responsible for up to 60% of the total government expenditure in some OECD (Nordic) countries whereas comparable figures in developing countries is lower –average of 23%. The exceptions are China and some of the federally and quasi-federally–governed developing countries[1].

There is some controversy in the literature on whether local governments can promote pro-poor outcomes. There are those who hold that of the three economic functions of government, i.e., allocation, stabilization and distribution, local governments can have the least impact on redistribution, which is the essence of poverty reduction (Jutting et al 2005, Smoke 2006). In the World Development Report of 2004 however, the World Bank (2004: 74-75, 186-189) argued that decentralized organs could promote pro-poor development through direct action by sub-national government (when there is devolution), by acting on service providers (through deconcentration) and through direct links between service providers and clients when there is a delegation to special purpose agencies. How this operates is a function of the nature of the services (whether easy or not easy to monitor), nature of politics (whether pro-poor or clientelist) and type of the community (whether homogenous or heterogeneous). Much of course depends on whether the national government adopts policies to empower local governments and/or the people and also whether local governments in turn empower other institutional actors and the citizens.

Pro-poor or not, local governance organs are critical to the development of basic services that are essential to economic and political development in all countries.

2. Local Government and Good Governance

Local governments contribute to improved governance in some five important ways.

First, they help to increase participation in the governing processes, as more people are able participate (both formally through voting and informally through citizens’ complaints etc) than would be the case if all that existed were national organs. It is also possible for local representatives to represent more people than national representatives and thus increase the people’s voice in governance. On the other hand, it is possible that local government would lack so much lack capacity and would thus not be a respected or reasonable voice. We return to this point later on.

Second, local communities form the basis of representation in national assemblies and legislatures and thus further give voice to the local population even at the national level. One of the two organs in most bicameral legislatures are constituted on the basis of local representation—even in Zimbabwe the National Assembly is based on constituencies based on local community structure.

Thirdly, local governments by dint of their relative proximity to the people should at least theoretically be more accountable than national entities. Citizen access is likely to be easier both in terms of physical and socio-psychological distance but the reality may be different for a variety of reasons, which we review later.

Fourthly, local governments promote solidarity with community members and are particularly effective in involving marginalized groups such as women and handicapped and youths. Many countries have actually mandated quotas for the representation of such marginalized groups in local government—e.g. India reserved a third of all local government seats for women and caste groups. This led to dramatic improvements in the visibility and extent of popular participation. Two states with the worst schooling and literacy rates recorded 20% increase in schooling and literacy between 1991 and 2001. More girls were also able to attend school than was possible in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (UNDP 2002). Similar experiences have been recorded in other countries. Similarly, decentralization and local government have become an important part of conflict resolution in many conflict–prone societies such as the Sudan, Nigeria, Ethiopia citing only examples from Africa.

Finally, local governments provide a framework for experimentation and innovation, partnership with other institutional actors and for citizenship. They could also help to promote information dissemination and citizenship education.

Prospects vs. Problems and Challenges

In essence, there are four main reasons why many central governments in Africa especially since the 1980s have given prominent emphasis to the importance of effective local governance (Millett et al 2006):

• MDG progress requires effective local institutions to manage the delivery of basic services such as primary health, primary education, water & sanitation, etc.;

• Poverty is caused as much by powerlessness as by lack of incomes and access to services, and participatory local institutions contribute to empowerment of the poor[2];

• Local governance can deepen democracy and strengthen the legitimacy of regional and national institutions[3];

• Effective governance, both local and national, requires “bottom-up” strengthening of capacity for accountable decision-making, resource management, and monitoring service delivery.

But there are also serious challenges and they include the following:

2. 1 Sustaining Support for Decentralized Governance

The fundamental problem of decentralized local governance in developing countries is the fear of national leaders that the transfer of power represents a zero-sum game in which local leaders (who might also be politicians in a different party) gain power and resources at their expense. This could be a real problem in view of the nature of highly personalized nature of politics especially in many African countries and the tendency for the opposition to gain in strength in the major especially capital cities.

Those who initially supported democratic local governance may therefore develop cold feet and are not able to sustain the process. This is worsened by the extent to which the administrative elites are able to provide the details that make decentralization feasible as a positive–sum game in which all players win and the ability of community elites to demand and make downward accountability from local governance actors effective.

At the end, as Table 1 attempts to summarize the process perfectly, the state of decentralized governance often is the product of the balance between the forces in favor and against it in a country. Unfortunately, in many countries and in Zimbabwe in particular, the forces in power have been more against it than for it. The current struggle is however suggestive that there are latent forces for decentralized governance as well.

Table 1: Roles and Influence of Key Stakeholders in Initiating and Sustaining Decentralization

|Phase |Political elite stakeholders |Bureaucratic Stakeholders |Community Stakeholders |
|Engaging Decentralization |Strength of Elite Political |Technical & Pol Insight to the |Strength of bottom-up pressure |
| |consensus for DG |complexity of DG |for DG |
|Detailing Decentralization |Consistency of DG details with |Articulation & implementation of|Extent of involvement of CS and |
| |political intent |DG support requirements |CBOs in technical details |
|Sustaining Decentralization |Balance between pol. |Balance btw bureaucratic |Capabilities of communities, CS |
| |Recentralizers & Decentralizers |recentralizers and |and CBOs in enforcing downward |
| |in power |decentralizers |accountability & supporting DG |

Source: Adapted from Ndegwa & Levy 2004: 286

2.2 Disconnect

There is a disconnect between the national and local levels. Such disconnect between micro and macro, upstream and downstream aspects of economy and society fosters a less effective development process and overall development outcome—even though the local level may actually experience a deeper, more focused development impact (UNDP 2006).

In fact, in many developing countries, absence of or weak local capacity has been used as the reason why decentralization is doomed to fail. Hence policies designed to support their sustenance beyond an initial period have been put in place by only a few governments. Fortunately, there exists widespread international experience within developing countries that demonstrates the fact that decentralization and the building of local level capacity cannot only occur simultaneously but can be mutually reinforcing. Some national examples are highlighted in this paper.

2.3 Elite Capture and Corruption:

A number of decentralization programmes have simply transferred power, authority and resources from a group of elites at the national to the local levels. Such elites might be traditional or conservative and against all forms of modernity or change or they might be transformative or corrupt. This simply fuels greater corruption at the local levels and there are fewer constraints against corruption and violence at these levels as effective rules against financial and human resource management corruption are weak if existent at all. The Bolivian bold attempt at decentralization in the late 1990s is one such example in spite of some positive advantages in a few localities.

2. 4 Inadequate Human Resource Incentives

Weak individual (human resource) incentives put available capacities out of reach of district and community level authorities. For instance, the remuneration packages for staff at local communities are often set at levels lower than at the national government. But national governments are themselves also disadvantaged compared to other sectors –private and international--in the competition for scarce skills. In the age of globalization this has assumed a challenge of enormous proportions. While the conventional explanation that individual incentives are not exclusively monetary is correct, it hides the reality of the sharp disparities that exist between wage levels within the various sectors and also that workers at various levels lack the essential salary and non-salary incentives as well. That human resources constitute the crucial element in the strategic management of any organization is well accepted in all organizations today, public as well as private. It is quite clearly important for organizations engaged in local level development and local governance. Unfortunately, this issue fails to receive the critical recognition it deserves in capacity development initiatives by development partners, although this might be changing –see below. Rather, there is preference for workshops and training rather than providing appropriate individual incentives. The result is workshop and training fatigue in many such situations. It is therefore instructive that a World Bank initiative in Uganda on capacity building relied on market forces that led to the return of substantial number of Ugandans both within and outside the country to return to work in local communities (Box 1).

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Another study noted the movement of many high level personnel to local communities in Nigeria following the bold reforms of the system of local government including massive inflows of revenues and tax sources (Adamolekun 1984, World Health Organization 1992). A Zambian case, supported by the Dutch Foreign Development Cooperation is also provided in the box below (Box 2):
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On the whole, local governments’ share of GDP is 12.7% in OECD countries but only 5.7% in developing countries[4]. This pattern is also reflected in human resource levels—OECD local governments have more personnel than their central governments and also double the global average for local governments. (See Table 2).

Table 2: Government Employment as % of Population

|Region |Sample Countries |Total Gov’t |Central Gov’t |Local Gov’t |Teaching & Health |
|Africa |20 |2.0 |0.9 |0.3 |0.8 |
|Asia |11 |2.6 |0.9 |0.7 |1.0 |
|E. Europe |17 |6.9 |1.0 |0.8 |5.1 |
|L.America |9 |3.0 |1.2 |0.7 |1.1 |
|MENA |8 |3.9 |1.4 |0.9 |1.6 |
|OECD |21 |7.7 |1.8 |2.5 |3.4 |
|Total |86 |4.7 |1.2 |1.1 |2.4 |

Source: Schiavo-Campo 1998

A more recent survey of local governments in OECD countries by Wollman and Bouckaert (2006:17) showed that even though local governments have suffered attrition in the Western world since the 1980s as a result of private sector like innovations (the new public management), their operations remain sizeable. Table 3 below shows the percentage of total public employment that the respective local governments were responsible for by 2000:

Table 3: Total Public Employment for Local Governments in selected OECD Countries

|Country |% |
|United Kingdom |52.4 |
|Sweden |82.7 |
|France |48.4 |
|Germany |88.5 |
|Australia |88.8 |
|Belgium |65.6 |
|Canada |86.9 |
|Italy |42.1 |
|Netherlands |25.8 |
|USA |86.5 |

Whereas local governments existed before national governments were created in most industrialized countries and have continued to be important political and economic entities, developing country national governments have sought to create prototypes of the Western local government structures, but they lack the essential powers, authority and resources. It is important to note that some developing countries have successfully improved the capacity of their respective local governments—in Asia (India, China already cited above, Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia, Japan etc). Schiavo Campo and McFerson (2008: 178) note that the most important change that has taken place in the world of local government employment has been the increase of local government employment levels in Latin America to the same level as at the central government. A few countries in Africa—Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Zambia-- have also increased their levels of local government employment in Africa (ILO 2001).

2. 5 Institutional incentives

A third challenge therefore for local level development is the nature of institutional incentives. Organizations function the way they are because of the institutional incentives, which exist or are missing. Organizations provide opportunities for cooperation among individuals and the organizational rules determine the response of these individuals to either cooperate or shirk. Hence, institutional incentives are those elements that make people who work in or with these organizations – as leaders, officials and clients – to display diverse behavior modes that either support or undermine local development.

When local development organs possess the following critical attributes they are able to improve development outcomes:

▪ clearly defined boundaries

▪ equivalence between benefits and costs

▪ collective choice arrangements

▪ effective monitoring

▪ graduated sanctions

▪ conflict resolution mechanisms

▪ existence of multiple layers of nested enterprises

These principles have been distilled from the experience of differing local organizations across time and space in the differing cultural contexts (Ostrom 1990).

Since these principles are at the heart of poor performance of local governance organs especially in developing countries, it is necessary to elaborate briefly on each principle.

▪ Clearly Defined Boundaries:

The boundaries of the service area and the individuals and/or households’ rights to use these services must be clearly defined. This is the foundation for organizing collective action and for building a sense of community. Without this, community members do not have a clear sense that ‘outsiders’ would not reap their investments. Boundaries define who is entitled to benefit from collective action activities and it is also best if each community is as homogenous as possible as this lends strong credence to a ‘subjective’ feeling of community that is crucial to effective collective action activities. For instance, the use of arbitrary principles of size (presumably to ensure adequate number of persons to support service provision) to demarcate local communities has actually weakened African local governance as the resulting local authorities were not empowered to deliver basic services even though largest by comparative global standards. In some cases, such large size led to serious conflicts and at times intra-community violence (Olowu 1988). For instance, the South African government spent considerable resources to incorporate black and white citizens of the new South Africa in the same municipalities but even then the sense of community remains weak within the new municipal system (Pycroft 2000). In Nigeria the effort to ensure that all local authorities have a minimum population of 150,000 since 1976 resulted in many long-standing communities being lumped together, including subjugating local community chiefs to more powerful ones, leading to arson in different parts of the country.

▪ Equivalence between benefits and costs:

The strongest economic argument for local level governing organs is that they ensure that potential users bear the costs of services they demand. Communities may decide to assist poorer or neglected members as to promote solidarity but this must be explicit with a clear sense of expectations from those being assisted.

▪ Collective Decision-Making:

A substantial number of persons within the community must be involved in setting the rules for services enjoyed within that community—so as to ensure that they tailor the rules to their local circumstances. The cost of changing the rules should also be kept low; otherwise they would not be able to change them with changing circumstances.

▪ Monitoring:

Effective monitoring is important and hence those who monitor should be objective and should be accountable to the community. Unfortunately, financial audits in many developing countries are organized by national governments and even when well done (as in Chile) they rarely feedback into the local community (Nickson 2008).

▪ Graduated Sanctions:

There must be a certainty that community members who violate rules receive graduated sanctions from other members of the community depending on the seriousness of their offense.

▪ Conflict Resolution Mechanisms:

Community members have access to low-cost, local arenas to resolve conflicts between one another and between members and officials. There should therefore be a system of dispensing justice cheaply. This is a major problem in many communities as the cost of using the official systems of social adjudication are beyond the capacity of ordinary citizens. They therefore resort to violence or to informal mechanisms. In some extreme cases, long-enduring systems are used that are already out-of-step with the modern day challenges—e.g. traditional systems that forbid women to be seen outside or not to be able to participate in the local economy, etc.

▪ Nested Enterprises:

Different types of institutions are required to meet different needs. Public institutions provide services whereas private sector and voluntary organizations are often effective in producing services. Even within the same sector, there are lots of opportunities for contracting and partnership. These often help to enhance capacity for local communities especially when the communities are not sufficiently financially mature to hire their own personnel.

The absence of these conditions has often meant weakened local governing organs, which are then mistaken for the absence of capacity. The problem is that the local governing organs have not been well constructed and no amount of infusion of fresh capacity would provide any changes until the fundamental issues relating to the institutional infrastructure are addressed.

For all of these reasons, many developing countries already have in place programmes of decentralized governance that are meant to enhance the capacity of local governing organs to enable them deliver on basic services and local level development. But the outcome has often belied the intention and huge resource inputs in pursuit of such CD objectives.

Some of the more effective strategies for containing these problems and challenges include the following:

• Effective Intergovernmental Arrangements especially covering political, administrative and financial support to local governments on a sustainable basis. How this is provided is perhaps the most crucial.

• Support for Capacity Building—human and institutional incentives, structures and processes

• Constitutional Protection of Local Government

Due to time and space considerations, we take on the last one for a more elaborate discussion.
3. Constitutional Provisions on Decentralization and Local Government in the Zimbabwe Constitution and drafts

I have gone to these lengths to help the conference delegates to understand why the constitutional provisions for local governments can become important in developing countries. Also to correct the impression that constitutional protection alone are not sufficient to ensure virile local governments.

In the constitution, the following are critical points to watch as far as local governments are concerned:

1. Status of local government and its protection from arbitrary central government encroachment by legislation or other actions 2. Boundaries and limits of local communities and areas 3. Functions and financing of local government 4. Human resources management for local government 5. Accountability arrangements for local government—importance of multiple accountability structures—upward, downward and lateral

As we cannot have an exhaustive discussion of these issues here, we use the above-mentioned issues as a framework to analyze the provisions on decentralization and local government in the current Zimbabwean constitution and proposals for change.

* * *

Like other African countries, Zimbabwe inherited a fairly well decentralized governance system from her colonial powers but within a short after independence, these countries have transformed themselves into highly centralized states. Zimbabwe represents the example of a country that once had very robust institutions of local governance especially in the urban centers but the powers and resources of these institutions have systematically degraded over time as a result of political developments at the national level. A 1994 study by this author found the Zimbabwean city of Harare and Kariba to manifest all the indicators of a sound local governance system at par with similar capital cities in RSA (Cape Town and Durban), India (Bombay) and Canada (Toronto). In fact, in some important respects, the two sample Zimbabwean cities were better managed than some cities in India (Delhi and Hydebrad) and Nigeria (Lagos and Kano) (Olowu 2004). Within a decade, most of these elements of good governance had been eroded as a result of the power struggle at the national center, one of whose elements is what I now understand to be major constitutional amendment on municipal government to neutralize the growing power of the opposition to the ruling party especially in the cities of Bulawayo and Harare (Nyati 2009).

1. Status of Local Governments in the Constitution

The present Zimbabwe constitution contains no provision on local government. One might have thought that this was a legacy of the British colonial inheritance as local government is regarded as a statutory not a constitutional issue in erstwhile British colonies. In contrast, however, traditional chiefs and provincial and district governors i.e. the apparatus of the central government’s field administration system receive copious mention and provisions in sections 111a and b respectively. It is instructive that chiefs and provincial, district and regional governors are all to be appointed by the President of the country. It is not surprising that one commentator on the Zimbabwean constitution observed that ‘devolution was one of the rallying points of the constitutional review debates of the 1999-2000 period’.

It is also instructive that the proposed draft Constitution of the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) as one of the seven reasons they rejected the draft constitution of the Constitutional Commission issued by the Zimbabwe government that was rejected in a referendum in February 2000.

This new draft by the NCA contains perhaps the most elaborate provisions on devolution especially when this is taken with the proposed amendments to the Model constitution (MC) by the Zimbabwe Lawyers Association (see Nyathi 2009).

The NCA draft believed that its provision was to answer the call by ‘many Zimbabweans for the devolution of governmental powers to people in provinces and other levels’ It thus provides for a system of provincial governments with a provision for an elected executive Governor and a provincial assembly- chapter 13 and local governments –chapter 14 that separates urban from rural areas. The proposed modifications to these provisions in the Model constitution are also well thought out.

In the first steps towards a Power Sharing agreement (PSA) in 2007 the Kariba draft was developed. The Kariba draft does not go as far as either the NCA draft or Model constitution. Nevertheless, the Kariba Draft in section 11 (4) states that ‘the policies of the state must be guided by the principle of devolution of governmental functions and responsibilities and the provision of the necessary resources to the people at appropriate levels’.

Regrettably, the MDC’s proposals on the constitution are completely silent on the issue of devolution and local government. May be it is because the party believes that the provision in the draft NCA in which it has participated is adequate.

On the whole, there is an emerging consensus that Zimbabwe would continue to be a unitary state that uses federal principles to organize its provincial system of government. Local governments remain a national institution and the relationship between the national government, provincial local governments remain unclear. There are also differences in terms of how the provincial government would be constituted. The Kariba Draft expects provincial executives (governors) to be appointed (section 247) while the NCA would have this office elected by the Provincial Assembly at its first sitting (section 146, 3). The Model Constitution (MC) on the other hand would want this office elected by the electorate (Section 165). These differences give an insight on the understanding that the various stakeholders have on the type of decentralization that the future Zimbabwe should have: federal, quasi-federal or devolved unitary government.

3.2. Boundaries and Limits of Local Communities

Among the different entities supporting decentralization the issue of how many provincial authorities should exist is one of the most crucial differences between the parties. The present constitution as amended did not contain any specific reference to provinces or local governments only to communal lands. From the other proposals it is evident that Zimbabwe has 10 provincial areas. Kariba Draft specifically lists these ten provinces (section 244 (1)) and stipulates that the number of provinces in Zimbabwe must remain fixed at 10 except by an act of parliament, when it has consulted the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (244 (2)). NCA reduced the numbers of provinces to five but MC queries the rationale for reducing these provinces and concedes only that Harare and Bulawayo continue to exist as urban provinces and hence not part of the rural provinces (sec. 161). Hence, MC makes a case for eight (8) provinces.

Surprisingly, only the Kariba Draft makes a distinction between urban and rural local authorities and expects that different classes of local authorities would be created in the rural and urban areas respectively (section 248-249). All the proposals have relatively brief provisions on local government.

3. Functions and Financing of Decentralized Governments

The present constitution has nothing on local governments. Its provisions on provincial governors do not stipulate the functions of the provinces either (sec 111A). The Chiefs and Deputy chiefs are appointed by the President to preside over ‘tribespeople’ (section 111 1-3).

The Kariba Draft is more elaborate on the responsibilities of ‘Traditional leaders’-disputes resolution, allocation of communal land, upholding cultural values’ (section 252). Most of the proposals concur with these provisions. NCA stipulates that traditional leaders should be incorporated into the local government structures. MC does not agree with this provision and separates traditional rulers from the local government system.

The various constitutional proposals are also quite elaborate on the responsibilities of provinces. Essentially these include mainly serving as planning and development agencies of the national government and of their constituency, management of tourism and natural resources etc. (Kariba Draft sec 246). The NCA adds public transport and roads, housing and rural development, soil conservation and provincial tax, although this is not further clarified. MC has a more ambitious role for provincial government. He adds education, health and water management to their functions as well as shop and liquor licensing. These latter would make provincial governments really important and major players in the new Zimbabwe state.

Again, all the proposals are less elaborate on local government functions. Indeed only NCA and MC mention local government finances—and neither of these in any elaborate form. Section 153 (2) of NCA states that ‘an act of parliament will provide for the establishment and powers of local government, including by-laws and regulations and to levy rates and taxes’.

MC is also quite elaborate than other proposals on the financial bases of decentralized government, especially of the provincial government- sections 176-182 (including the provision for expenditure authorization and control etc).

4. Accountability Arrangements for Decentralized Governments

The proposals make decentralized organs to be self-accounting. Elaborate provisions exist on the powers and roles of provincial governments. The provincial parliament is expected to hold the Executive accountable. As usual, the provisions in this respect on local governments are minimal or non-existent.

Kariba Draft makes Senators and Members of the National Assembly in the province automatic members of the provincial council (sec 245b). Similarly, a provincial governor becomes automatically a Senator on his/her election (sec 247, 3). Moreover, the National parliament may actually assign some or all of the functions of the provincial government to the national government, if it judges this to be in the interest of efficiency and good governance (sec 246, 2).

This is meant to propose closer intergovernmental relationships but also ensure that provincial governments are responsible and accountable in their actions, decisions and programmes. However, such provisions such as these could become troubling for the autonomy of the decentralized organs. In the first place, decentralized governments are not created exclusively to promote efficiency but higher levels of citizen participation and legitimate and accountable governance. Besides, individual national politicians may hold a province ransom, especially if there are strong political differences between the national and provincial governments.

NCA did not therefore support the idea of automatic membership of the Provincial council. Rather, all members some 30-50 in all, must be elected on the basis of proportional representation (sec 158). MC agreed with this principle of election, except that it opts for a combination of constituency based and proportional representation. In addition, MC makes provision for provincial attorney and auditor as well as the right, as the NCA, of the President and the Governor to dissolve the provincial council if they can muster the necessary three-quarters and two thirds majority respectively in their respective parliaments (sections. ). In contrast, MC also provides that the Provincial assembly can legislate a vote of no confidence in the provincial government.

3.5. Human Resources Management in Decentralized Government

Neither the present constitution as amended nor the proposals make any provision for the management of human resources in decentralized organs—at the provinces or the local authorities. The only exception is MC. In sections 185 it makes provision for a Provincial Public Service that would be professional and meritocratic. It follows this with the provisions for a Provincial Police department – an innovation in the discussions (section 186). As in all other respects even MC has no provisions for local government human resource management.

4. Some Remarks

It is evident that the Kariba Draft is cautious on decentralization and how strong decentralized government should be in Zimbabwe. One therefore finds that NCA’s (with further elaborations by MC) provisions on decentralized government to be more robust.

Zimbabweans must therefore reach fundamental choice concerning decentralized governance –would they prefer a limited or a more robust form of provincial government. A more robust form would help to resolve some of the serious conflictual issues among the groups, as each group would be able to pursue its cultural and socio-economic agenda. On the other hand, the costs may be high in terms of financial and human resources to drive such a more full-fledged three-tier system of governance. Nevertheless, it is important to point out that these multi-tiered approach with robust autonomy for decentralized governance has been adopted in most developing countries that were serious about decentralization—Uganda, Philippines, India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, RSA just to mention a few (please see Kersting et al 2009 for a good review).

The rationale for this choice is that a strong bulwark is needed to discourage and restrain the inevitable proclivities towards recentralization of powers and resources by central governments of their decentralization agendas.

A second observation is that a number of crucial provisions are still missing even in the most advanced of the proposals on decentralized governance. These include the following among others:

Intergovernmental Financial Resource Sharing: There is a need for a more elaborate research and discussion of financial resource sharing to support the ambitious decentralization programmes that some of the proposals contain. Many decentralization programmes have floundered because there were not sufficient financial resources to underwrite decentralized responsibilities. This arises because of what is referred to as the intergovernmental paradox whereby financial resources can be more easily collected centrally whereas the logic of effective services delivery is that they be handled by the most proximate institutions to the people who need those services. What most industrialized countries – and increasingly the decentralizing developing and transitioning countries—have done is to devise mechanisms for resource transfer from national to provincial and local authorities. This takes the form of general and specific transfers and loans. There also needs to be more elaborate and structured discussion of the taxes available to provincial as against local authorities.

Power of Decentralized Organs to make intergovernmental and inter-organizational contracts: Decentralized organs are semi-autonomous agents. They need to be able to make contracts with governmental and non-governmental bodies especially as non-governmental organs are playing ever more active roles in delivery of services. The separability of provision from production of public services has further facilitated this process as is globalization and increasing roles of civic and community groups in service delivery around the world.

Citizenship: It is surprising that even though there is evidently a serious and continuing debate in Zimbabwe on citizenship, it is amazing that this is not linked directly or indirectly to provincial or local community areas. It is likely that this is an oversight and would still emerge as an important issue in future discussions on the subject.

Recall: The Zimbabwe proposed constitutions all stipulate recall at the national level but not at the local level. Recall has been used positively and successfully in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Uganda.

Conclusion

It is impossible not to commend the sacrifices of the Zimbabwe people across the social spectrum to reach out to one another in fashioning a constitution for themselves. One commend in particular, the role played by the civic groups that included opposition politicians, trade unions, churches of all hues and in particular, the international community that have consistently maintained a principled stance on the sides of the people of Zimbabwe in trying times.

The proposals for improving governance as they pertain to decentralization are quite sensible but they need to be further refined and broadened in some specific areas as discussed in this paper.

REFERENCES

Adamolekun, L (1999) ‘Decentralization, Sub-National Governments and Intergovernmental Relations’ in L. Adamolekun Ed Public Administration in Africa: Main Issues and Selected Country Studies, Boulder, Westview Press, pp. 49-67

Ayee, J (2004) ‘Ghana: Top-Down Initiative’ in D.Olowu & J.S. Wunsch, Local Governance in Africa Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004, pp. 125-154

Bennett, R (1994) Local Government and Market Decentralization: Experiences in Industrialized, Developing and Former Eastern Bloc Countries Tokyo, United Nations University Press

Churches of Zimbabwe (n.d) Position Paper on the Constitution Making Process and Key Content Issues for Churches of Zimbabwe. Processed.

Commonwealth Local Government Forum (2006), Commonwealth Local Government Handbook 2006 London, UK Publications

Constitution of Zimbabwe (2008) Annexure B to Power-Sharing Agreement Processed

Constitution of Zimbabwe (2000) As Amended to No. 16 of 20 April 2000. Processed.

Fiszbein, A (1997) ‘The Emergence of Local Capacity: Lessons from Colombia’ World Development Vol 25, No. 7, pp.1029-43.

International Labor Organization (2001) The Impact of Decentralization and Privatization on Municipal Services JMMS/2001, Geneva

Jutting, J, E. Corsi, A. Stockmayer (2005) ‘Decentralization and Poverty Reduction’ Policy Insights No. 5 Paris OECD

Kersting, N, J. Caulfield, R. Andrew Nickson, D. Olowu & H. Wollman (2009) Local Governance Reform in Global Perspective, Urban and Regional Research International, VS Verlag fur Socialwissenschaften

Mitra, S (2001) ‘Making Local Government Work: Local Elites, Panchayat Raj and Local Government in India’ in A. Kohli Ed. The Success of India’s Democracy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 103-106.

Millett, K, D.Olowu & R. Cameron Eds (2006) Local Governance and Poverty Reduction in Africa Tunis, Joint Africa Institute

Narayan, D, D, R. Chambers, M.K. Shah & P. Petesch (2001) Voices of the Poor: Crying out for Change’ New York, Oxford University Press

National Constitution Assembly (n.d) Proposed Draft Constitution for Zimbabwe

Ndegwa, S.N & B. Levy (2004), ‘The Politics of Decentralization in Africa” A Comparative Analysis’ in B. Levy and S. Kpundeh Building State Capacity in Africa: New Approaches, Emerging Lessons World Bank Institute Development Studies, pp. 283-322.

Nyathi, M (2009) Background to the Model Constitution, Processed.

Olowu, D (1988) African Local Governments as Instruments of Economic and Social Development The Hague, International Union of Local Authorities, Publications 1415

Olowu, D & J.S. Wunsch (2004) Eds Local Governance in Africa: The Challenges of Decentralisation Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers

Ostrom, E (1990), Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action New York, Cambridge University Press

Ostrom, V, R. Bish & E.Ostrom (1988) Local Government in the United States San Francisco, Institute of Contemporary Studies

Ostrom, E. L. Schroeder, S. Wynne (1993) Institutional Incentives and Sustainable Development: Infrastructure Policies in Perspective Boulder, Westview Press

Pycroft, C (2000) ‘Democracy and Delivery: The Rationalization of Local Government in South Africa’ Public Administration and Development Vol. 19, No.3, pp. 233-245

Schiavo-Campo, S (1998) ‘Government and Pay: The Global and Regional Evidence’ Public Administration and Development Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 457-478

Schiavo-Campo, S & H. M. McFerson (2008) Public Management in Global Perspective, New York, M.E. Sharpe

Shah, A (2006) Local Government in Developing Countries Washington D.C, The World Bank, chapter 1.

Smoke, P (2006) ‘Fiscal Decentralization in Developing Countries: Bridging Theory and Reality’ in Y. Bangura & G. Larbi Eds Public Sector Reform in Developing Countries: Capacity Challenges to Improve Services New York, UNRISD, pp.195-227

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World Bank (2004) World Development Report 2004 Making Services Work for Poor People Washington and Oxford University Press

Wollman, Helmut and G. Bouckaert (2006) ‘State Organization in France and Germany, between Territoriality and Functionality’ cited in N. Kersting, J. Caulfield, R. Andrew Nickson, D. Olowu & H. Wollman, Local Governance Reform in Global Perspective, Urban and Regional Research International, VS Verlag fur Socialwissenschaften, 2009, p. 36

-----------------------
[1] China -51%, South Africa-27%, Indonesia-24%, Nigeria-23%, Brazil-20%. Shah 2006; Olowu & Wunsch 2004
[2] A series of studies were conducted under World Bank auspices that underscored this conclusion, see Narayan, D et al, 2001 and World Bank 2004
[3] An important study on India showed that the population perceived local government structures as more effective and responsive than national and regional (state) entities. See Mitra, 2001
[4] This does not include China whose local governments control 51% of the country’s consolidated public expenditure, 10% of GDP and are responsible for 89% of total public employment.

-----------------------
Box 1: Using Incentives and Market Forces to Get Results in Local Government

Uganda’s Ministry of Local Government took the lead in setting the standards and incentives that drove capacity development at the local level. Among the key features were the following: ▪ Established service standards for local government functions ▪ Developed generic training materials to reinforce service standards ▪ Encouraged LGs to prepare their own capacity assessments ▪ Conducted quality and performance reviews on training provided ▪ Conducted LGs performance and published the results ▪ Encouraged the use of local providers

Short-term results were outstanding within one year and included: ▪ LGs that produced their final accounts by year’s end rose from 10 to 69 ▪ Professional accountants increased from 10 to 15 and accounting technicians from 120 to 180 ▪ Stronger adherence to budgets, better information and access to records by public ▪ Movement by LGs from ad hoc training with unclear goals to standardized training, staff certification system linked to M& E ▪ Budget and performance assessment processes moved from centralized, top –down to participatory processes that were effectively disseminated.

Source: M. Nelson, ‘A Market Based Approach to Capacity Development: How Uganda’s LGs are Breaking New Grounds’, CD Briefs, Issue No. 22, 2007.

Box 2: Re-attracting Zambian doctors abroad to Local Health Facilities in Zambia

A few years ago it became clear that almost 10% of the Netherlands bilateral budget in Zambia was spent on the deployment of Dutch medical doctors. It was calculated that each doctor cost an average of ¬ 130.000 a year, while a Zambian doctor would cost about ¬ 5000 annually. The embaIt was calculated that each doctor cost an average of €130.000 a year, while a Zambian doctor would cost about €5000 annually. The embassy started a dialogue with the Ministry of Health to find out under what conditions Zambian doctors working in neighbouring countries would be ready to come back and work in their own country in the rural areas. The Ministry developed a tailor-made package containing amongst others better housing, transport- and study facilities, which cost an equivalent of €7500 per person. When it was launched many Zambian doctors returned to their country, filling all the vacancies in the rural areas in no time. The scheme has been integrated in the Zambia’s sectoral health programme, which has made it sustainable. There are still risks however that doctors will be ‘lured’ to work in one of the many HIV/AIDS projects funded by US-based organizations, for a much higher salary.

Case contributed to ‘Capacity Building and Brain Drain’ by Ms. A. Goses, Dutch Foreign and Development Cooperation Ministry, 2007 to UNDP Discussion Forum

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