Municipal Service Delivery Challenges of Sub-National Governments in Zimbabwe:  An Exploration of Gweru City

The study critically presented in this intellectual output, explores the service delivery system in Zimbabwe‟s sub-national levels using Gweru City Council (GCC) as a case study. It is guided by the following four specific objectives: (i) to examine the service delivery challenges of sub-national governments; (ii) to explore the political and administrative systems and mechanisms required to broaden the scope of sub-national governments for improved service delivery; (iii) to explore the indicators of efficient service delivery at sub-national level and; (iv) to identify and discuss options for addressing service delivery challenges at sub-national level. Guided by this set of objectives, the study engages a case study methodological approach. The study makes use of descriptive, interpretive and explorative research methods. Data were collected from in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The focus group discussions were particularly focused on gleaning the perceptions of the communities on the quality of council services such as provision of water and refuse collection. For secondary data, the researcher collected council minutes, budgets and other policy instruments for over four years which were useful in understanding the operations of the GCC. The researcher utilised secondary information for service delivery: newspaper reports and journal articles that were considered important sources of information for the study. The study has brought to the fore the fact that while the structure of sub-national governments could be different, the majority of sub-national governments are designed in a way that advances the interests of the central government or respective political parties with the majority in the local government elections. Service delivery challenges range from institutional, policy-related, environmental and financial challenges. The study establishes that the following measures can be taken to address service delivery challenges; special service districts, inter-municipal cooperation, privatisation and the reform of legislation and improving service delivery governance. Issues such as corruption, mismanagement of funds, political interference and compressed fiscal capacities have been seen to be stifling service delivery in the GCC. From the responses, it is highlighted that the reasons behind failure of the public to pay service charges to the local authority was largely linked to the public‟s perception of the state of service delivery in the Gweru City Council. Furthermore, the public professed that the local authority was reneging on their responsibilities in terms of service delivery and implementing unilateral decisions without consulting the residents on issues that affects their constituency. The study has found that the residents view service delivery as the responsibility of the local authority with the residents and the government assuming the watchdog positions. The study recommends that there is need for public participation and participatory budgeting. Furthermore, local authorities should be capacitated in all aspects while politicians could also be given the powers to monitor the operations of the local authorities without interfering with their processes through such acts as overriding decisions.