Local government: focus of development

Former president Bakili Muluzi and his successor Bingu wa Mutharika were not keen to have local government elections. The last time Malawi had local government elections was in 2000. And this was after Muluzi was pressurised by civil society organisations and opposition political parties.

UDF refused to have local government election in 2004 and Mutharika under DPP also refused to have the elections in 2009. All added up, Malawi has had no local government elections for the past 14 years. This also means Malawi has had no councillors, rendering the local government ineffective. In the absence of the councillors, some of the decisions made by assemblies and municipalities have been contravening the Local Government Act.

The Tripartite Elections on 20 May will usher in councillors who are the custodians of development. However, for a country that has never had councillors for a long time and government has paid lip service to the decentralisation programme it will be a real challenge for the councillors to perform their rightful role which has been hijacked by MPs over the years. Local government is supposed to be semi-independent of central government so that city assemblies and municipalities can determine their own development activities independent of the central government.

However, the decentralisation programme has been a failure in Malawi. Government, under different political parties, has usurped the role and responsibilities of the local government. City assemblies and municipalities lack real authority to determine development activities. They are supposed to provide a variety of basic services to the residents such as sanitary sewage, grass cutting, electricity (streets), garbage collection and disposal, recreation facilities (e.g. swimming pools), day care, museums, parks and recreation, business licenses, liquor license, landscaping, libraries, public transport, police etc. A number of these services are administered through the field services of central ministries or are outsourced while some of them are non-existent. For example, the cutting of grass is outsourced and the National Roads Authority identifies contractors to do the work. Everyone knows how ugly our cities look during the rainy season.

There is need for a paradigm shift from central government in the manner it operates. It needs to delegate most of its responsibility to local government. For example, central government has no business running stadiums. This function should be delegated to city assemblies. Malawi should learn from other countries such as South Africa where decentralisation is working. For example, unless the stadiums are owned by clubs, municipalities or city assembles own them. The massive FNB stadium is owned by the City of Johannesburg while Moses Mabida is owned by the City of Durban.

City assemblies are almost in dead in Malawi. They fail to provide basic services to the people. They even fail to construct proper public toilets or take care of existing ones. Cities and townships are stinking because uncollected garbage.