DEVOLUTION is not just a phrase in the Constitution or a word in political speeches but an active programme with an ever increasing budget that puts a lot more power, responsibility and resources into the hands of those who need infrastructure and development and can now get cracking.

But there is still this attitude of “let Government do it” and then complain when it does not, or at least does not do it by lunchtime. The key word in the devolution agenda is “responsibility”, that is people taking responsibility for their own communities and doing what needs to be done.

The Government can implement the Constitutional mandate, and thanks to the fiscal discipline of the Second Republic, can find quite a lot of the cash needed. It is even transferring some of the old capital budgets allocated for things like schools and clinics to the devolution funds.

This is on the sensible basis that the people who are to benefit almost certainly have a better idea than some civil servant sitting in a Harare office of where the next school needs to be built, where the next block of classrooms should go, and where a clinic is needed most, or where one must be upgraded and how it must be upgraded.

So President Mnangagwa’s weekend exhortation at the memorial service for the late National Hero Major General (Retired) Godfrey Chanakira is continuing to stress this responsibility. He wants the provincial administrations to be ever more active in working out, with the local councils and communities in their areas, what is needed and then applying devolution funds, plus what the councils and communities can contribute, to turning plans into action and building what needs to be built.

Central Government of course is not retreating from development. National programmes, and some of the really big and most expensive projects, need to be centralised. You cannot expect the four provinces crossed by the Beitbridge-Harare highway to fund that upgrade and reconstruction. The huge Gwayi-Shangani Dam and pipeline to Bulawayo needs central Government cash and oversight.

But even on these projects the provinces and councils can have input. To take Gwayi-Shangani for example: The allocation of water needs to be split between farmers who want irrigation, growing urban centres in Matabeleland North who start needing more than a few boreholes, and fixing Bulawayo’s water supply so that this city can finally grow again. This is a central responsibility but the needs are driven by what the provinces put forward.

Even something like the national borehole drilling programme, initiated and run by central Government, needs local input. We cannot drill a borehole in every village instantly, but local councils and the provinces can help choose who is first in each district, who is second and so on.

To a degree much of the legal framework has existed for decades. Municipalities have a great deal of autonomy, which they can use wisely or wrongly, and the rural district councils created in the 1980s with the great reform of local government are acquiring more responsibilities as they progress, especially with the growing wealth of rural areas. Some of their theoretical powers were not practical in poverty, but with more local wealth plus the devolution funds these are becoming real responsibilities.

Some communities and rural district councils have taken the concept and run with it. It is now fairly common in many districts for the work to start at the community level, with the villages collecting sand, stone and gravel and making bricks, and for the local council to have the plans ready to implement as soon as the devolution cash appears in their bank account.

This gives a lot more progress for the buck, with the community input of material and labour ensuring that two clinics can be built for the price of one and so development can be speeded up and every outside dollar made to work very hard.

Many of the rural district councils have also ensured that development is spread, simply by buying the minimum of road equipment, a grader and a truck, so that the rural side roads are kept open, and a decently graded gravel road is far better than most of the ignored once-tarred suburban roads in most urban areas. In fact a grader in Harare could do a lot to sort out the sort of tracks that many in the new suburbs have to live with.

Sometimes the local priorities might seem odd to some. For example, Rushinga Rural District Council pushed a new police station in a forgotten area of that district to the top of the list. But as the provincial administration noted at its commissioning, the whole point of devolution is to trust the people.

One factor that must be continuously implemented is the need to ensure that every dollar of devolution money can be accounted for, and that the province and local council has procured what must be bought properly and that everyone, from the village to the central Government, has obtained value for money.

This is important when we consider that the neither the Auditor General or the Harare City Council has the faintest idea of what the equivalent of US$200 million was spent on. There is now a Parliamentary inquiry to find out. In her report the Auditor General was not suggesting it was stolen, although the possibility exists, but instead made it clear that the accounts were such a mess no one could tell her how it was spent. And she needed to know that before making an assessment of whether it was spent properly.

At best sloppiness in accounting can waste money, and Zimbabwe does not have money to waste. At worst it allows the dishonest to hide that they have their hands in the till.

The Government’s own Treasury is more demanding and has been insisting on proper accounting for devolution funds, and even wanting to see the budgeting in advance. Devolution means the people choose, but Treasury is more active in ensuring that the financial aspects are in better shape than many urban voters demand.

That will no doubt continue, but the growing devolution seems to demand an upgrade of the Auditor General’s Office so she can step in at the first signs of sloppy accounting and work on fixing it before there is any damage. For all we know this might require a bit of extra devolution, like a couple of officers seconded to each province to catch problems early.

The extra cost is trivial compared to the national or even the provincial budget, but the benefits could be immense.

The central point that the President was making was that the provinces, districts and communities are active, mobilising their own funds and then topping up with the ever increasing sums budgeted and distributed by the central Government. That activity probably requires more involvement in the actual budgeting process itself, making their cases, and then proving they are spending all this money to best advantage.

Once again it must be stressed that devolution is not a one-way street. It requires action and the acceptance of responsibility right down the line to work, and the President was simply trying to ensure that both of these requirements were in place, everywhere. Everyone wants devolution, but it must work to give Zimbabweans what they need.

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