What constitutes a good councillor?

 

Councillors in this country represent wards and are elected by secret ballot on a partisan basis with the exception of a few who are appointed by the appropriate Cabinet Minister to represent special interests such as people living with disabilities.

Councils play various roles in the communities where they are found. The roles range from the advisory to the administrative, with the deliberative being somewhere between the two and having also a legislative part whose output comprises by-laws.

Those by-laws are regulations administered by the council in its specific territory and pertain to the general hygienic maintenance of the physical and aerial environment as well as the protection of the council’s area against destructive elements such as veld fires.

People who wish to become municipal councillors should by and large be articulate enough in the language or languages used in the council chambers and in the minutes and records.

They should be of sound mind, usually at least be of average intelligence, reasonable education by local standards and should be without publicly known or recorded criminal past.

They should also be independent in terms of their means of self-sustenance so that they will not easily fall prey to temptation leading to theft and bribery and other forms of corruption. This is an important quality.

It is most important for a council and even a parliament, to have members whose source of livelihoods is not only well-known but also obviously adequate.

To fill up a country’s councils and national assembly with needy people is to turn those august institutions into targets of highly selfish commercial and industrial wealth hunters, ruthlessly unscrupulous people with erroneous consciences.

Experience has shown us that even if councils are run by technocrats and professionals, decisions implemented by those local government civil servants are passed by the councillors.

While the roles of some senior municipal civil servants include advising and guiding councillors, they are at times over-ruled or intimidated or even corrupted by some councillors.

The worst weakness of most of Zimbabwe’s municipal councillors is that they think that being a councillor is or should be a well paying job! It is certainly not.

To campaign to be a councillor should be a result of a very strong wish to serve one’s community not for financial gain but primarily for the “good of the public”.

Yes. Councillors should be entitled to some financial allowance, but the amounts were originally supposed to be “nominal” in the strictest sense of that word.

The allowances are meant to cater for the councillor’s transport and incidentals but not for the councillor’s family upkeep.

In the event of a financial or budgetary shortfall, and the need arises to “sacrifice” some councils’ expenditure, one of the expenditures that ought to be sacrificed are the councillors allowances and perks and such a measure would enable the council to meet its most vital obligations among which are wages and salaries of its formal employees.

It was not without very good reason that in Britain municipal councillors were popularly called “city fathers”, an expression that indicates two things: responsibilities the councillors had over their respective wards and, second, respect communities served by the councillors had for them.

We in Zimbabwe also occasionally refer to councillors as “city fathers” up to now.  We do not have to point out that it is only the most irresponsible father who cheats his children; it is only the most shameless father who dispossesses or defrauds his family.

Councillors would be well advised to bear in mind this most important fact, that is to say they are to ward residents what fathers are to their respective family members.

Incidentally, the expression “city fathers” was created by a partriachally-dominated society in which women were treated more or less as minors without a vote.

It would be wise and proper for the public media to add “and mothers” to that phrase so that it is gender-sensitive: “city fathers and mothers”, since we now have female councillors virtually all over the world except in radically conservative Islamic nations.

That apart, let us now look at what these city fathers and mothers are expected to do for their wards. It is indeed the basic duty of councillors to ensure that their respective wards are maintained in a healthy, liveable condition.

That means that garbage; rubble and sewage must be disposed of regularly and effectively, eliminating possibilities of creating areas of infectious and contagious diseases.

Whenever a disease outbreak occurs in any area, the very first persons to be consulted about its possible source should be the councillors followed by other ward authorities, especially health inspectors.

It is, by the way, a regrettable weakness in most so-called Third World countries that their political parties have in their structures personnel such as political, economic and security commissars and or secretaries but seldom, if ever, health officials.

Councillors have a bounden duty to establish and maintain healthy standards in their wards by maintaining all health hazards such as mosquito breeding ponds and marshes, and sources of contaminated or raw water.

Other responsibilities include ensuring that public roads are kept in a usable condition. Where there are none, it is the councillor’s duty to propose the making of one or some within the ward.

Medical clinics, schools and kindergartens are some social amenities that should be the councillor’s brainchildren, and so are the ward’s recreational parks, sports facilities and cultural centres.

Councillors who are truly alive to the needs of their wards keep a register of those who are destitute and physically disabled and liaise with various welfare organisations to assist them materially.

It is a sign of deficiency on a councillor’s part for his or her ward to have so-called street kids.  A councillor ought to liaise with appropriate authorities, including the police, to account for every destitute in his or her ward.

A brief anecdote may aptly illustrate what the author of this article has in mind on this particular aspect of this matter.

In 1963, a white man who had picked up a prostitute in the then Salisbury’s Kopje area and driven her at night to Warren Hills was murdered out there by the woman’s pimp, a coloured man called White.  The pimp (White) was also, in fact, the black prostitute’s live-in husband. The woman’s name was Anna. White was arrested, tried and sentenced to death.

The Kopje area was particularly notorious for its large number of prostitutes who roamed its dark alleys at nightfall. Its councillor was well-known 70-year-plus-old, Alderman Charles (Chas) Olley.  The area was generally referred to by the predominantly black-read newspapers, The (Central African) Daily News as “The Vice Mile”.

The writer of this article had coined that name while he was that newspaper’s municipal reporter. The murder story was highly sensational.

White, the convicted coloured man was duly thrown into the cell for the condemned in Salisbury’s Maximum Security Prison.

However, Alderman Charles Olley, from whose ward the prostitute Anna was picked up by the white man, decided to launch a petition to save the life of the condemned murderer.

The petition, signed only by white people, of course, was duly submitted to the governor, Humphrey Vicary Gibbs, and White’s death penalty was commuted to life imprisonment.  Alderman “Chas” Olley had used his councillor’s position to save a life. That is how powerful that position can be if it is properly used.

A good councillor can attract appropriate investments to his or her ward. The investments can either be in the field of generation of services or that of industry of various types. This is, however, outside the scope of this article.

The last but not least of a councillor’s duties is the establishment and maintenance of security in the ward.

The establishment of neighbourhood watch committees is probably the very least that any councillor should do in the wards.

He or she cannot he himself or herself police the ward. But the most important councillor’s role is to motivate the people by explaining to them the advantages of having such committees, which are in effect democracy in action: a local policing arm of the people, by the people for the people.

* Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328136 and also on email [email protected]

You Might Also Like

Comments