SCHOOL OF ARTS , CULTURE AND HERITAGE STUDIES

DEPARTMENT OF ACHAELOGY , HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT STUDIES

Names

Dambuza Elwin M202902

Mutangirwa Tadiwanashe M204350
Muti Ilet M202491
Pori Florence w M202102
Mafinyori Nyaradzo M195393
Nzekete Lesley M205914
Chamboko Melody M201718
Muraho Molyn M201838
Marupiya Joyleen M180441
Matare Onward M205292
Eutavia Mazhambe M201721
Gutu Kelvin.S M202307

Program Development Studies

Course Development Planning
Course Code HDES123
Lecturer MR Asima
Group 15
QSN; With reference to concrete examples ,discuss various forms of decentralization in
Zimbabwe ,highlighting their major achievements and challenges since independence.

Decentralizilation has been seen as a means of promoting democracy and rationalizing the
public sector and focus of attention has turned from development committees to elected local
authorities.there many forms of decentralization which include
political ,administrative ,fiscal ,and market decentralization .between these various concept is
useful for highlighting many dimensions to successful decentralization and the need for
coordination among them,stronger ownership of beneficiaries ,closer relations and networking
with government to a few ,however there is cleary overlap in defining any of these terms and the
precise definition are not as important as the need for a comprehensive approach and there is a
lot of challenges of these forms of decentralization which includes:proper allocation of
resources is difficult ,increased costs ,potential lost of economy of scale ,effective operation for
execution of routine administrative services to mention a few .

According to Newmen ,Summer and Wairen ,defined decentralization is simply Decentralization

is simply a matter of dividing up managerial work and assignment specific duties to various
execute skills. Louis A Allen defined decentralization refers to tire systematic effort to delegate
to the lowest levels all authority except that which can only be exercised at central point .Earl P
Strong ,decentralization means the division of a group of function and activities into relativily
autonomous units with overall authority and responsibility for their operation delegate to timid
of Cacti unit .

Decentralisation has been high on the Government of Zimbabwe’s list of stated policy objectives
throughout the 22 years since the country attained political independence, but its objectives and
nature have changed over time (Wekwete and de Valk, 1990; Gasper, 1997; Makumbe, 1998;
Government of Zimbabwe, 1999; Chakaipa, 2001). During the 1980s, the main objective was to
coordinate and streamline the various agencies involved in subnational development, and
functions were decentralised to a hierarchy of provincial, district and local development
committees composed of a combination of elected and appointed officials. Since the early 1990s,
decentralisation has been seen as a means of promoting ‘democracy’ and ‘rationalising’ the
public sector, and the focus of attention has turned from development committees to elected local
authorities. A common characteristic of both periods is the fact that, as is so often the case with
decentralisation policies, there has been a major gap between rhetoric and reality. Relatively little
effective power has actually been decentralised. Although the reasons for this are varied and
complex, the basic obstacle has, as is so often the case, been the reluctance of national
institutions to relinquish power. During the last 3 years, the situation has been complicated by the
country’s deteriorating economic position and increasing political tension. The implementation
of decentralisation plans has been further delayed, attempts have been made to decentralise
functions without the financial resources necessary to execute them, and donor support for
decentralised capital development and capacity-building programmes has been drastically
reduced. This article seeks to describe and explain the successes and failures of the Zimbabwean
decentralisation experience. However, it does so not from a national perspective but from that of
one of the country’s 55 rural districts. I have chosen this approach because I recently lived for 2
years in a relatively remote part of one of the country’s poorest and most isolated districts which
gave me a unique opportunity to observe the impact of the country’s decentralisation efforts at
the so-called ‘cutting edge’.

The district on which this article focuses is Binga, one of the five districts of Matabeleland North
Province. Located in northwestern Zimbabwe, bordering Zambia, it has an estimated population
of just over 100,000 the vast majority of whom belong to the Tonga ethnic group. The district’s
ecology and economy is dominated by the Zambezi River. Fifty years ago, most people lived
near the river where they survived by cultivating in the fertile flood plain, fishing in the river and
hunting wild game. With the construction of Kariba Dam in the late 1950s, many people were
relocated to areas too dry for reliable cultivation and too far from the Lake to fish, and where
crops and people are attacked by wild animals that can no longer be hunted. The Tonga are a
minority ethnic group and are traditionally regarded by other groups, especially the majority
Shona and Ndebele, as ‘backward’. However, in the June 2000 general election, the Binga people
turned out in large numbers and voted overwhelmingly for the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change (MDC), so this attitude is changing. The Tonga are increasingly being
recognised as important in the national political scene. This article examines the impact of the
Government’s decentralisation policies on development efforts in Binga.
In the same line of thought ,Fiscal matters have proved to be a key stumbling block in
Zimbabwe’s decentralisation efforts. The tendency has been to decentralise functions without
adequate financial resources. For example, development planning was decentralised in the 1980s,
but the allocation of development funds remained centralised.Local authorities have insufficient
own revenues and, because of the central government’s financial problems, it has been reluctant
to give them additional revenue powers or to guarantee sufficient transfers to enable them to
perform their functions. There has been some recent fiscal decentralisation in Zimbabwe. The
frustrations of earlier attempts to decentralise planning led to a number of efforts to provide
funding for locally identified development projects. During the late 1990s, four sources of
funding were made available to local authorities for this purpose: * District Development Grants
(DDGs) were provided to rural local authorities through the Ministry of Local Government,
Public Construction and National Housing (hereafter MLG) as part of a donor-funded
capacitybuilding programme. * A Rural Development Fund (RDF) was established by the
Ministry of Rural Resources and Water Development to support local infrastructure projects. * A
Community Action Project (CAP) was established under the auspices of the World Bank as part
of the country’s ‘social dimensions of adjustment’ programme to provide funding for small,
community-based projects in the poorest districts.

There has been a great deal of talk about sectoral decentralisation in Zimbabwe but very little
actual decentralisation of meaningful powers has taken place. Despite attempts by the MLG, the
little sectoral decentralisation that has occurred has been on a piecemeal basis and without
adequate financial resources. The main sectors where there has been some decentralisation are
primary education, rural water supplies, social welfare/poverty alleviation and wildlife
management. There has also been prolonged discussion of decentralisation within the health
sector but this has not occurred to date. Primary education Decentralisation of primary education
has been undertaken by the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) over a number of years.
The first step was to establish School Development Committees (SDCs) to which functions
would be devolved ,composed of community members, with the head teacher and another staff
member serving ex-officio. The SDCs have, over time, been given responsibility for construction
and maintenance of school buildings, provision of equipment, determination and collection of a
‘development levy’ to meet maintenance and other costs not covered by the basic central grant,
and, most recently, the hiring of teachers. These measures have resulted in more community
involvement and control over primary schools in Binga, but problems have arisen. First, SDC
members were not well prepared for new responsibilities, so that the SDCs have tended to be
ineffective and/or dominated by the head teacher. Second, most Binga communities are too poor
to make significant financial contributions. Third, community interest and involvement are
generally low, and people are reluctant to pay development levies and contribute time or labour.
Consequently, the council does not enthusiastically support SDCs. Finally, MEC sometimes
problematically intervenes in matters delegated to SDCs, such as recruitment of temporary
teachers. Given these issues, it is difficult to argue that decentralisation has benefitted Binga’s
primary school system and it is easy to see why local people have mixed feelings about it.

Moreso, Poverty alleviation programmes Binga’s experience of the recent decentralisation of

poverty alleviation programmes has so far been confined to that of assisting parents who cannot
afford to pay school fees or (in the case of primary schools, where there is no fee) development
levies. Ten years ago, when the IMF/World Bank-supported structural adjustment programme
was launched, a Social Fund administered by the Department of Social Welfare was established
to provide, among other things, assistance with school fees and health charges. Funds became
increasingly inadequate. Early in 2001, the Government decided to introduce a modified system
in which local authorities, assisted by local officials of the ruling party and SDCs, would play the
leading role.1 BRDC was suddenly informed that an amount of money was available for this
purpose and required, in conjunction with MEC, to organise its distribution. The Council was
given no resources for this exercise, so it had to mobilise support from other organisations,
including NGOs. There also appears to be confusion over the eligibility criteria and application
procedures. A new ‘work for food’ programme has yet to be introduced in Binga, despite
widespread recent reports of food shortages. However, indications from other districts suggest
that problems are similar to the school fee assistance programme, if not worse. Wildlife
management One of the earliest, most carefully planned and most publicised examples of
sectoral decentralisation in Zimbabwe is CAMPFIRE (Mandondo, 2000; Conyers, 2002). In
practice, CAMPFIRE focuses almost exclusively on wildlife management. The Department of
National Parks and Wildlife Management (DNPWM) conceived CAMPFIRE with conservation
NGOs to reduce illegal hunting in communal areas bordering national parks and game reserves.
With increasing animal populations in unfenced protected areas, large numbers of animals in
adjacent communal lands have resulted in conflicts between people and animals. Under
CAMPFIRE, local authorities in areas with significant wildlife populations have been delegated
‘appropriate authority’ to manage wildlife under the Parks and Wildlife Act. This gives them the
financially lucrative power to exploit the wildlife for commercial purposes, including lease of
hunting concessions to commercial safari hunting companies. CAMPFIRE has been publicised,
nationally and internationally, as a major success .

Local political and institutional structures Zimbabwe’s decentralisation efforts have involved a
number of different levels and types of institution. The relative importance of these institutions
has varied over time. For example, the provinces played a major role in the 1980s but have
declined since then. At the district level, development committees were more important than
councils in the 1980s, but since the early 1990s, councils are the most important district
institution. New ward and village councils reflect an attempt to revive and strengthen the role of
‘traditional’ leaders. CAMPFIRE committees, SDCs and water point committees were created at
various points to serve specific purposes. There are some spatial variations. In some districts, for
example, CAMPFIRE committees do not exist or have been combined with Ward and Village
Development Committees. In some areas NGOs or area-based development programmes have
established institutional networks. All of the institutions listed in Table 1 exist in Binga, at least
on paper. Furthermore, a number of local NGOs have established their own institutional
structures, such as committees at the ward level. The most important of these NGOs are: * Binga
Development Association (BIDA): a membership organisation that established committees in the
district, usually at ward level, during the early 1990s. . A number of general observations may be
made about the effectiveness of these various institutions and their actual and potential roles in
decentralisation. First, BRDC has considerable potential as a decentralised development agency,
but a number of problems have hampered its performance. Many of these are ‘capacity’ problems
which should be resolvable with external support. However, recent capacity-building efforts have
so far failed to have any significant effect, due primarily to personal interest-based conflicts
between the key actors. Conflicts have been fuelled by local and national political divisions and
access to decentralised resources such as CAMPFIRE revenue. Zimbabwe’s current national
political and economic situation has also exacerbated the council’s financial problems and has
led to the withdrawal of most capacity-building support, as well as intensified local political
conflicts. Second, the rural district development committee (a coordinating committee,
composed of all government agency heads, chairpersons of council committees and
representatives of NGOs operating in the district) is relatively weak and ineffective. This is
partly because decentralisation and capacity-building efforts at district level have focused on
councils rather than development committees since the early 1990s, but there is also a long
history of tension between the council and government agencies, primarily for ethnic reasons.
The council and other Tonga-based institutions tend to regard central agencies as representatives
of ‘outside’ forces that have played an increasingly dominant role in the district’s economy at the
expense of indigenous Tonga.

Moreover, local economic development and poverty reduction have not been specifically stated
as objectives of decentralisation in Zimbabwe. Decentralisation has been regarded as a means to
promote rural development, primarily through improved service delivery with little consideration
of the implications for development and poverty. Assessing the impact of decentralisation is
hampered because relatively little has occurred to date and there are many other factors involved.
All we can do here, therefore, is to identify key factors that may influence economic
development and poverty in Binga and consider how much control local institutions have, or
could have, over them. Natural resource base Binga’s natural resource base provides
considerable potential for local economic development, but it is difficult to target it to benefit
local people. This is partly because the activities with greatest potential, such as commercial
fishing and tourism, require capital, entrepreneurship and technical skills, and thus tend to be
dominated by ‘outsider’ Zimbabweans (both white and black) from other parts of the country.
Most indigenous Tonga people remain dependent on small-scale agriculture for which the natural
resource base is (due to low and erratic rainfall, poor soils and predatory wild animals) not really
suited. Attempts to target development at the local population are also hampered by lack of local
control. For example, large parts of the district, including some of the best agricultural areas, are
designated as national parks, safari areas and forest reserves, which are managed by central
agencies and are not accessible to the local population. The only real powers administered locally
are related to land allocation within parts of the district designated as communal and general
state land. These powers do enable the council to have some control over the location and form
of development, to give priority to enterprises that benefit local people and to raise some
additional revenue. Human resources One reason why the majority of the Binga population fails
to benefit from the district’s natural resource potential is that they lack entrepreneurial and
technical skills. This can be attributed to the district’s isolation, the poor quality of education and
stigmatisation of the Tonga by other ethnic groups. Most of these factors are beyond the control
of local institutions. The area’s isolation, for example, is due to its location and the poor inter-
area roads which are a central responsibility. The main education problem is the lack of
secondary and technical facilities, also a central responsibility. levels, wage rates, inflation and
availability of basic goods and services. All of these factors are beyond the control of local
institutions. However, in a rural area like Binga, opportunities for informal sector activity are
limited and the income people can earn from them is small. The level of poverty can, of course,
be reduced by welfare policies. As noted above, the introduction of structural adjustment reforms
was accompanied by measures to alleviate the impact of such policies on ‘vulnerable’ sectors of
the populaton.

Besides that, decentralisation is advocated as a means of achieving ‘desirable’ objectives, such as

improved service delivery and local empowerment, not as a strategy for achieving dubious ends,
such as ‘passing the buck’ or increasing political control—or, for that matter, as an end in itself.
Decentralisation efforts should be judged accordingly. Decentralisation that is introduced for the
‘wrong’ reasons or is poorly designed or inadequately planned, such as some initiatives in
Zimbabwe, is unlikely to achieve the ‘desirable’ objectives and can, in fact, be worse than no
decentralisation at all. Third, the macro-level environment, both economic and political, has a
major impact on the extent to which decentralisation achieves intended objectives. The negative
effects of the current political tension and economic decline in Zimbabwe tend to outweigh or
override the potential benefits of decentralisation. In such an environment, decentralisation is
often, as the experience with rural water supply maintenance in Binga suggests, merely a means
of enabling people to survive, not a strategy for ‘development’. Fourth, the performance of local
institutions, and therefore the effectiveness of functions decentralised to them, depends to a large
extent on the capacity and, in particular, the attitudes, ambitions and integrity of the individuals
involved. BRDC is an obvious example. The importance of this ‘human factor’ is frequently
overlooked in the formulation of decentralisation policies. Fifth, decentralisation must be
accompanied by efforts to develop the capacity of local institutions. However, because of the
many different factors that affect capacity (and in particular the impact of the ‘human factor’),
capacity building is an extremely long, slow and frustrating process (Government of Zimbabwe,
1998). The problems that persist in Binga, despite major donor-funded capacity-building
programmes, illustrate this point. Sixth, although decentralisation can, if planned and
implemented properly, achieve a wide variety of objectives, it is not a panacea and the type of
decentralisation which is required to achieve one objective may not be appropriate to achieve
others. For example, the type of decentralisation under discussion in Zimbabwe (and in most
African countries) is unlikely to have a major impact on local economic development. Similarly,
the type of decentralisation over wildlife management which people in Binga would like to have
is inconsistent with national and international conservation policy. Seventh, because of the
inevitably political nature of the environment in which decentralisation occurs and in which
external funding agencies operate, the latter can be part of the problem of decentralisation as well
as part of the solution. The problems created in Binga by, initially, the lack of coordination
between the various externally supported decentralised funding program‘learning process’ which
is inherent in any development initiative. This learning process will always, sooner or later, yield
some positive benefits. At times like this, it is difficult to see any such benefits in Zimbabwe;
however, the undoubted increase in political awareness among ordinary people in Binga over the
last 2 years is, in fact, a positive example—and a very important one.

In a nutshel,.there many forms of decentralization which include

political ,administrative ,fiscal ,and market decentralization .between these various concept is
useful for highlighting many dimensions to successful decentralization and the need for
coordination among them,stronger ownership of beneficiaries ,closer relations and networking
with government to a few ,however there is cleary overlap in defining any of these terms and the
precise definition are not as important as the need for a comprehensive approach and there is a
lot of challenges of these forms of decentralization which includes:proper allocation of
resources is difficult ,increased costs ,potential lost of economy of scale ,effective operation for
execution of routine administrative serve.

REFERENCES

Chakaipa S. 2001. The Zimbabwean experience. Paper presented at African Regional

Conference on the Challenges of Decentralization and Local Government,

United Nations Capital Development Fund, Cape Town, March 2001. Conyers D. 2002. Whose
Elephants Are They?

Decentralization of Control over Wildlife Management through the CAMPFIRE Program in

Binga District, Zimbabwe.

World Resources Institute: Washington, DC. Gasper D. 1997. Decentralization, coordination,

integration: reflections from Zimbabwe in the 1980s. In Locality, State and Development,
Helmsing B, Guimaraes J (eds). Institute of Social Studies: The Hague; 51–72.

Government of Zimbabwe. 1998. Mid-Term Review of the Rural District Councils Capacity
Building Programme. Ministry of Local Government: Harare.

Government of Zimbabwe. 1999. The dynamics of the Zimbabwean local government system.

Paper presented by Hon’ble Minister J. L. Nkomo at Ministers Conference on Challenges of

Local Government in Eastern and Southern Africa, Municipal Development Programme for
Eastern and Southern Africa, Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, September 1999. Makumbe J. 1998.
Democracy and Development in Zimbabwe

Constraints of Decentralization. SAPES Trust: Harare. Mandondo A. 2000. Situating

Zimbabwe’s Natural Resource Governance Systems in Context.

Centre for International Forestry Research, Occasional Paper No. 32: Jakarta. Wekwete K, de
Valk P (eds). 1990. Decentralisation for Participatory Planning. Hants, Gower