Service Delivery and Accountable Governance in Urban Zimbabwe: the Issue of Policy Implementation
Service Delivery and Accountable Governance in Urban Zimbabwe: the Issue of Policy Implementation

Summary/Abstract: The role of urban local government in Zimbabwe in producingpublic goods and services such as water supply, solid waste management,primary health care, road construction and maintenance and others isbeyond contest. In generating these services that ordinary urbanitescannot do without, urban local government has become not only afrontline service provider but an indispensable subnational governmentplaying a crucial role in improving the quality of human life. Yet, servicedelivery is seemingly characterised by chronic backlog that appears tosuggest that urban councils are not dispensing their duties as well as theyshould but that they are also failing to meet the expectations ofcommunities in their jurisdictions. The explanations for the policy failuresinclude the inability to collect revenue due a municipality, notablelegislative weaknesses, and possibly inter and intra political frictionimpacting urban service delivery. With the assistance of a hypotheticalprocess model, the article focuses on the lack of implementation capacityor the inability to implement policy as one of the major reasons that isoften overlooked or ignored when explaining policy failure at the localsphere of urban government

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