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REQUEST FOR EXTENSION OF PUBLIC EXHIBITION OF THE DRAFT CITY OF HARARE MASTER PLAN [2025-2045]

 

30 September 2025

Hon. Daniel Garwe - Minister, C/O Dr. John Basera - Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Local Government and Public Works Makombe Building, 1" Floor, Corner Leopold Takawira Street & Herbert Chitepo Avenue, Harare, Zimbabwe

 

Dear Hon. Daniel Garwe,

Re: Request for 60-Day Extension for Public Exhibition of the Draft City of Harare Master Plan 2025–2045

We, the Highlands Residents’ Association (HRRA) on behalf of all the undersigned residents of Harare, request a 60-day extension to the public consultation period for the Harare Master Plan 2025–2045. This extension is critical to ensure meaningful public participation from whole-of-society to address fundamental gaps in the proposed plan.

The justification for an extension are based on the following:

1. INADEQUATE PUBLIC CONSULTATION PROCESS - The current consultation format has consisted of presentation-style meetings rather than participatory workshops employing human-centred design and scenario planning. Genuine consultation requires diverse city residents to problem-solve together in workshop formats, not merely receive information. There has also been confusion regarding submission deadlines, with conflicting dates of 3 October and 16 October publicised, which further undermines an already rushed process.
2. OUTDATED LEGAL FRAMEWORK – The Master Plan rests on pre-Independence laws, outdated bureaucratic procedures, and obsolete minimum development standards that are unresponsive to today’s challenges. In a post-Covid, climate-constrained world where the Global South has no remaining carbon budget for “business-as-usual” urbanisation, this weak foundation will undermine the city’s ability to guarantee minimum decent living standards and deliver human-centred, sustainable planning that reflects the lived realities of Harare’s citizens between 2025 and 2045.
3. LACK OF PUBLIC ASSET TRANSPARENCY – Chapter 6.3, which should detail public assets, is blank. Without this information, it is impossible to assess the city’s wealth, impossible to analyse existing assets and available public space before proposing new development, impossible to design effective land value capture and understand the available financing mechanisms, or plan for a circular and sustainable retrofitting of publicly owned derelict or underused spaces to deliver rapid, affordable housing in tandem with social infrastructure for Harare’s housing crisis (Case Study: Bogota’s Care Blocks: https://www.citieschange.org/updates/spatial-dynamics-and-architecture-in-a-care-block-the-first-bogota-freetown-technical-exchange/).
4. OUTDATED ROAD INFRASTRUCTURE (1990s TECHNICAL STANDARDS) - Zimbabwe’s road infrastructure is still implemented using outdated 1990s technical standards that fail to incorporate people-centred design principles necessary for addressing critical urban challenges and repeatedly ignoring gold standard regional and global practices (https://globaldesigningcities.org). The current approach neglects air pollution mitigation, local mobility prioritisation, investment in mass transit, and investment in non-motorised transport, and this oversight to revise the technical standards exacerbates poor road safety in a country with one of the world’s highest road crash death rates. Furthermore, the plan reveals siloed institutional operations that miss valuable opportunities to coordinate the simultaneous development of crucial infrastructural upgrades including water, electricity, ICT, drainage, and sewers (see point 5).​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
5. DISCONNECT BETWEEN NEW DEVELOPMENT AND EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE CRISIS - Harare currently suffers widespread service delivery failures from aged infrastructure installed in the 1970s (over 50 years old and well beyond design lifespan) with collapsing water and sewer systems, unreliable electricity networks, crumbling roads that serve car-centric planning, and non-functional stormwater drainage. The Master Plan’s focus on new development and economic growth in specific corridors ignores the infrastructure crisis in established neighbourhoods, creating a two-tier city where new zones receive modern infrastructure while vast existing areas remain trapped with failing 1970s systems. This approach deepens spatial inequality, abandons existing communities, wastes resources building new infrastructure while old systems collapse, and fails to leverage existing assets that could be upgraded more cost-effectively than building from scratch. A sustainable Master Plan must prioritize comprehensive place-based infrastructure upgrades across the entire city, not just in designated economic growth areas.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
6. ENVIRONMENTAL RISKS – Gazetted wetlands are not overlaid on the Master Plan map; Harare’s looming water crisis has been overlooked with inaccurate problem identification and poorly calculated technocratic fixes; and ecological systems (soil, blue/green infrastructure) are not properly understood to ensure nature-based solutions are protected and used as a fundamental resource to city building and sustainable design systems that support human life.
7. EXCLUSION OF LIVED REALITIES – The plan has overlooked a study on human behaviour of its residents and how the city is used. The plan largely benefits large-scale developers and middle-to-upper income groups while ignoring a majority of residents who rely on an informal economy, informal transportation, informal housing, thus representing the majority of Harare residents in the middle- to low-income socioeconomic groups.
8. GOVERNANCE CRISIS, FRAGMENTATION, AND LACK OF TRANSPARENCY - A fundamental contradiction undermines this Master Plan where the City of Harare operates under central government control and lacks autonomous authority to plan and govern its own city, yet the plan proposes creating a new Department of Urban Planning and expanding PPPs. How can a Master Plan be implemented when the responsible entity has no genuine decision-making power, key services have already been outsourced to private entities beyond municipal control, and there is no public organogram showing how the City of Harare operates and is managed? The introduction of a new department will further fragment already-fragmented services, while PPPs create additional layers of accountability gaps and corruption exposure. Without a clear organogram, transparent budgeting processes, and public accountability for how the city functions – residents cannot assess whether proposed governance structures will improve outcomes or deepen dysfunction. With roads, water, waste management, and other critical services already privatised, with a council lacking fiscal autonomy or planning authority, this opaque governance model guarantees implementation failure, and private extraction of public goods. How can a city be planned if it doesn’t have the power to govern, and how can services be coordinated if the city doesn’t control service delivery?
9. NO CLEAR OUTCOMES OR TIMEFRAMES – The Plan lacks explicit priorities, staged actions, and implementation processes, making it aspirational rather than practical. There is no reference to how the implementation process will be measured in a way that will make meaningful change to every citizen, there are no references to decent living standards, or outcomes that secure basic human rights within the city.
10. ANACHRONISTIC RESIDENT ENGAGEMENT PROCESSES AND TECHNOLOGY DEFICIT - The council’s requirement for physical letter submissions to engage with planning processes in 2025 represents an archaic, discriminatory barrier that systematically excludes vulnerable residents, including those with mobility challenges, low-income individuals unable to afford transport, working people constrained by office hours, and digitally-native younger generations, while favouring well-resourced developers who can afford legal representation and repeated physical visits. This technological deficit is compounded by the complete absence of functional online infrastructure for electronic submissions, status tracking, viewing council responses, or engaging in meaningful dialogue about development applications, resulting in months-long delays (or no response at all), lost submissions without accountability or proof of engagement, and issues escalating into crises before residents can effectively participate. The archaic process creates significant time, transportation, and accessibility costs that prevent meaningful public participation in an era when digital communication is the global standard, and these same barriers will undermine the Master Plan’s implementation when residents inevitably need to raise objections to specific developments impacting their lives but face identical obstacles to making their voices heard.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

 

For these reasons, we believe an extension of at least 60 days is necessary to allow:

• Whole-of-society workshops involving diverse communities,
• Proposal to find solutions to the underlying social, technical, governance, legal, and environmental flaws, and
• A plan that reflects the real needs of Harare’s people.

 

We, the undersigned, respectfully submit this petition on behalf of the residents of Harare, and request your urgent intervention.

Yours faithfully,

 

Highlands Residents’ Association (HRRA)

jacque@androent.com; +263 7 79163400

 

Cc:

• Deputy Mayor – Councillor Rose Muronda, Town House, Harare – Councillor for Ward 7
• Town Clerk – Engineer Moyo, Town House, Harare
• Director of Urban Planning – Cleveland House, Harare
• Honourable Senator Charles Tawengwa, Minister of State for Provincial Affairs and Devolution