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Dumisani Nkomo, [email protected]

IT has become commonplace in Zimbabwe to expect a local councillor to be present at every funeral that happens within the community. At best councillors, both urban and rural, have become glorified undertakers whose policy-making role has been eclipsed by socially-prescribed roles. While this appears to be innocuous, it is essential for all citizens to understand what a councillor is actually supposed to do.

When an employee hires someone, what precedes the recruit is a clear job description and it is that job description which in the domain of human resource management determines the deliverables of the desired employee .To understand the role of a councillor, it is imperative to understand the legal and policy framework within which the office of the councilor operates.

Third tier of government

A functional government usually has three tiers, namely national government, provincial or state in the case of Nigeria or the USA and municipal government. Local government is the lower tier of government which is closest to the daily needs, struggles and aspirations of people. This makes local government and in turn councillors essential in good governance epitomised by the interaction between policy makers and citizens.

In terms of the Zimbabwean context, local government exists within the ambit of a plethora of laws but primarily rests under the Urban Concils Act and the Rural District Councils Act. These acts prescribe the roles and functions of rural and urban counclllors in tandem with various statutory instruments, circulars and other legal instruments which may from time to time be crafted by central government in the context of a unitary state.

What then are the roles of councillor given the myriad of socially, politically and culturally prescribed roles of councillors. I would like to draw from the above- mentioned pieces of legislation to state that councillors primarily have four functions.

Policy-making

The primary role of councillors is that of policy-making. This role is fulfilled through the various council committees that individual councillors are part of. They include committees such as finance, town planing, housing, environment as may be the case from council to council. In these committees, councillors consider key policy recommendarions from reports prepared by technocracts in council departments.

Councillors are key in determining the direction, thrust and priorities of local authorities. The formulation of policies and by-laws is thus a key component of the functions of councillors.

Councillors have to make various resolutions and decisions which become the direction in which the council wants to move. This is within the realm of policy. Sadly, councillors sometimes find themselves being bogged down in the day-to-day operations of council which is the function of council staff who are employed full time to manage the day-to-day affairs of a municipality.

One of the most crucial policy- making roles of councillors is within council committees which are responsible for policy and oversight. The committees should be able to digest and analyse technical reports prepared by council departments. An unbalanced obsession with day- to-day issues of council leads to the neglect of broader directional, macro level policy issues.

Oversight

The work of councillors is like that of board members of companies. A board is not seized with day-to-day operations of a company but rather with oversight issues. Oversight implies a role of supervising performance albeit from a macro rather than micro level. Councillors are thus not involved in the day-to- day operations of a local authority but their role is that of ensuring that local authorities deliver on their mandates through the operations of various departments.

In jurisdictions with fully functional Geographical Information Systems and other smart service delivery solutions, issues such as reporting of faults are directly addressed by technocrats in councils directly.

The lack of the above has led to councillors being daily seized with issues of sewer bursts and other daily service delivery problems which ordinarily should be addressed at operational level unless there is persistent failure to address such.

The oversight role is also carried out through the different council committees. Playing an oversight role requires councillors to be fully abreast of council actvities at a macro level at least. This must be done through thouroughly reading and understanding volumninous department reports which pass through various committees and then finally into full council. These reports which are prepared by council technocracts and presented by heads of departments (directors) must be fully scrutinised and understood by policmakers so that they make informed and intelligent contributions to council processes.

It is not the duty of a councillor, for example, to report a sewer burst or the existence of a pothole. While it is noble to do so, the initial reports must be made by individual or collective citizens to relevant council departments. The councillor in his or her oversight role must then ensure that the council secretariat addresses these service delivery issues.

However, this cannot be cast in stone and there are many instances where the councillor can immediately take the first step in pointing out a service delivery gap if she or he sees it first.

Representative role

The representative role of councillors is consumnated through this critical role in which councillors are able to bring service delivery and development issues to the attention of council management. The issues which the councillor articulates on behalf of residents can be collated through meetings, social media platforms and other forms of citizen engagement.

In a participatory democracy, the councillor does not have a monopoly of decision-making processes but the process of policy making, decision making and community development is a shared responsibility with residents’ associations, business groups, academia, women’s groups and other civil society actors.

Such actors do not exist to merely oppose council actions but to provide plaforms of engagement, to initiate bottom up development and to initiate constructive policy discourse.

l Dumisani Octavius Nkomo is a councillor and member of the Urban Councils Association Presidential Committee writing in his personal capacity.