Mafume hunts missing US$200m as services crumble

Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume says the city will pursue an estimated US$200 million flagged by the auditor-general, as public anger deepens over collapsing services, failing infrastructure and what residents increasingly view as a crisis of accountability at town House.

His pledge comes as Harare's decline is visible across the capital, dry taps, sewage spilling into residential streets, uncollected refuse and pothole-scarred roads disrupting traffic and commerce.

Central to Mafume's reform push is the restoration of an enterprise resource Planning (erP) system, the digital backbone used to track municipal revenue, procurement, payroll, contracts and expenditure.

for years, the city operated without a functioning erP platform, a lapse critics say created fertile ground for revenue leakages, manipulation and corruption.

erP systems are standard in modern municipalities because they reduce human interference, strengthen accountability and ensure transactions are traceable. Without an integrated system, Harare struggled to reconcile revenue, monitor spending and manage procurement.

In an interview this week, Mafume acknowledged the scale of the financial governance crisis exposed by the auditor-general.

"We are going to chase the missing uS$200 million that was indicated by the auditor-general. We are also going to make sure that our accounts and processes are now electronic," Mafume said.

He conceded the city had operated for a prolonged period without the basic digital infrastructure widely used globally to manage public finances.

"We did not have an erP for quite some time and we have now restored the erP," Mafume said.

He added that the city would "increasingly remove the human face within our operations and make sure that our operations can operate in the digital world".

financial experts say reliance on manual systems and fragmented databases weakens oversight and fuels irregularities.

In Harare, the breakdown reportedly affected everything from water billing to salary payments, with millions potentially lost through unrecorded collections, inflated contracts or unauthorised transactions.

The crisis has been compounded by repeated auditor-general reports highlighting irregular expenditure and weak financial controls, even as service delivery deteriorated.

Last year, the Zimbabwe Independent reported on a leaked audio recording in which Mafume described how officials allegedly attempted to disburse uS$1,5 million to a company that had no contract with the city. The company reportedly rejected the payment.

"There is a company that had to reject a credit note from the city council. They said someone from the city council wrote to them stating that the ‘city council owes you uS$1,5 million and that we need your accounts to pay that uS$1,5 million'. They then wrote back to say no, we never supplied any goods of that nature," the Harare mayor is heard as saying in the recording.

The revelations followed earlier reports that city executives allegedly siphoned off uS$200 million in 2019. about 50 finance officers are currently suspended over corruption allegations.

Meanwhile, residents continue to grapple with erratic refuse collection.

Mafume said the city would consolidate work being done through Geo Pomona, a waste management partnership tasked with garbage collection and dumpsite management.

Water shortages are the most pressing emergency. years of erratic supply have forced residents to rely on boreholes, raising the risk of water-borne diseases in a city scarred by past cholera outbreaks.

Mafume pointed to the long-delayed Darwendale project as a potential turning point, saying Harare would begin drawing water by the end of March.

"We have finished two pumps so that we will have more water and use less chemicals," he said, adding: "as you know, Lake Chivero water is dirty."