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Give Municipal police more power

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THERE is a general outcry throughout Zimbabwe’s town and cities. People are mourning that today in most urban areas there is no more law and order.
The vast majority of the citizens in the towns and cities are disgusted at seeing law breakers, cooking sadza in sanitary lanes, at bus stops; rampant illegal street vending, selling vegetables and various merchandise from car boots, construction of illegal housing settlements on parklands, illegal connections to water lines and sewer lines etc.
What is frustrating to most law abiding urban residents is that the people that are committing the above offences are never apprehended and incarcerated and yet municipal police forces are in abundance in the various towns and cities throughout the country.
Below we would like to show that while there has been rapid and unprecedented rural to urban migration in Africa and Zimbabwe in particular recently, municipal police forces in most cities in Africa and in Zimbabwe as a whole have not been given powers of arrest and detention to enable them to tackle the huge problem of managing large populations now congregated in the urban areas.
No wonder offenders in Zimbabwe and elsewhere have been left to go scot free.
The national police forces have too much on their plate to help out the municipal councils.
It is asking too much to expect the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) to have enough time and manpower to help Harare City Council with the enforcement of its numerous byelaws and the general policing of its massive Municipal area.
Let us first look at what the situation regarding urbanisation is in Africa and Zimbabwe.
Africa Business (Jan 2015) says, “The march from rural to urban centres (in Africa) is relentless and accelerating by the year.
“Cities are both becoming denser as well as expanding outwards while brand –new satellite, towns and cities are springing up.
“About 430 million people now live in African cities which is about 42 percent of the continents population and this figure is growing by an average of three percent a year.
“That is 13 million new urban residents every year. This is very rapid urbanisation by most standards.”
The above is very true of Zimbabwe.
In the last decade because of the hammering the Zimbabwean economy suffered from sanctions and the destruction of the Zimbabwe dollar, there has been an influx of people to cities and towns in search of a better life.
But unfortunately the municipal police who are supposed to police these people do not have enough powers to effectively police them.
It is our submission that to end the chaos, confusion and the general breakdown of law and order in Zimbabwe’s towns and cities we need to give municipal Police powers of arrest and detention.
After all from way back and if we look at our present constitution we find that the police that serve the municipal councils must have arrest and detention powers.
“The first effective town planning in Zimbabwe was by sanitary boards (councils) with powers to make bye-laws and levy annual rates from landowners.
“The earliest boards were established for Harare and Masvingo in 1892.
“In 1897 Harare and Bulawayo became municipalities’ with wholly elected councils and in the same year a Municipal Ordinance was enacted which empowered the councils to provide water, electricity, sanitary services and housing for Africans.
“All the early settlements had layouts surveyed for them and physical planning was achieved mainly through bye-laws and public health ordinances.”
What is important for our story is that all the ‘ordinances’ and council bye-laws were enforced by the British South Africa Police who reported to council and the company.
As a matter of fact in 1892 for example, there was no ‘government’ in Zimbabwe in the proper sense and the councils commanded the police just the way government commands the ZRP today.
What this meant was that the police that served the councils had arrest and detention powers.
Later with the passage of time, there were created what were called ‘Town Police’ who were from the British South African Police (BSAP).
These police forces were highly empowered.
It is therefore difficult for us to understand why today’s municipal police lost the arrest and detention powers which their forebearers had in the early days of municipal councils.
This brings us to today’s constitution.
This is what the constitution says about the functions of local authorities.
“Subject to this constitution and any Act of Parliament, a local authority has the right to govern, on its own initiative, the local affairs of the people within the area for which it has been established and has all the powers necessary for it to do so.”
Furthermore, the local authority is given power “to make bye-laws regulations or rules for the effective administration for the area for which it has been established.”
Now the above provisions do not envisage a situation where a local authority’s police force cannot effectively enforce its bye-laws or regulations because that police force has no powers of arrest at detention.
Surely if a local council is given the right by the constitution, to govern on its own initiative the local affairs of the people, we do not expect outsiders to come and do the effective policing for the local authority.
The effective policing should be done by the municipal police who should have all the police powers of arrest, detention etc.
It is absolutely ridiculous to say a council has power to pass a bye-law which is later gazetted and becomes part and parcel of the laws of the country, but the council has no power to police that bye-law.
That another tier of government should come and police that bye-law for them.
It does not make any sense at all.
Municipal police must be given powers of arrest and detention. An Act of Parliament should immediately be enacted to that effect.
Let us take a leaf from the City of Nairobi, Kenya who have now introduced municipal courts where those who violate the city’s bye-laws are tried and sentenced.
Even ‘kombis’ and ‘matatus’ are now behaving because of the existence of municipal courts and the powers that police have in Nairobi.
We can also learn from China.
“China has experienced the biggest mass migration in human history from rural to urban in the past three decades as people flocked to the cities with the backing of the government.”
The Chinese government has empowered all the cities whose police forces have powers of arrest and detention which has brought about order in the towns and cities.
If we want law and order back to our towns and cities, let us give municipal police powers of arrest and detention.
And at the same time set up municipal courts to try all cases emanating from the violation of council bye-laws and regulations.

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