IT has become commonplace in Zimbabwe to expect a local councillor to be present at every single 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. Whilst 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. 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 councillor operates.
Third tier of government
A normal functional government usually has three tiers, namely, national government, provincial or state in the case of Nigeria or the United States of America 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 Councils Act and the Rural District Councils Act.
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These legislations prescribe the roles and functions of rural and urban councillors 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 councillors 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.
The council committees include committees such as finance, town planning, housing, and environment, as may be the case from council to council. In these committees, councillors consider key policy recommendations from reports prepared by technocrats 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 province and realm of policy. Sadly, councillors find themselves being bogged down in the day-to-day operations of council, which is the function of municipal 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.
The lack of the above has led councillors to 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 activities at least at a macro level.
This, they must do through thoroughly reading and understanding voluminous department reports, which pass through various committees and then finally into full council.
These reports, which are prepared by council technocrats and presented by heads of departments [directors] must be fully scrutinised and understood by policy-makers so that they make an informed and intelligent contribution to council processes. It is not the duty of a councillor, for example, to report a sewer burst or the existence of a pothole. Whilst it is noble to do so, the initial reports must be made by individuals 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 cut 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 consummated 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. However, 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 platforms of engagement to initiate bottom up development and constructive policy discourse.
- Nkomo is a councillor and member of the Urban Councils Association Presidential Committee. He writes here in his personal capacity. — [email protected]
