Analysis of 2025 Zimbabwe Local Government Performance Scores

Reconsidering Local Government Failure in Zimbabwe: A Response to the 2025 Public Sector Performance Scores

Leopold Bhoroma

Zimbabwe’s 2025 public sector performance results have produced both moments of excellence and moments of concern. It is important to recognise both with equal clarity. First, congratulations are in order. Blessing Chafesuka, Town Clerk for Mutare, has been deservedly recognised as the country’s best-performing Town Clerk. This achievement reflects not only personal leadership, but also solid vision, institutional effort and a commitment to navigating complexity in one of Zimbabwe’s most dynamic urban environments. Dr Lucia Mkandla, Town Clerk for Kwekwe City, the winner in 2024, emerged as the first runner-up, an equally commendable recognition of leadership in a challenging city with a failing iron and steel industry that once drove the economy. Consider Kubiku, Acting Town Secretary for Chiredzi, takes the position of second runner-up, demonstrating that even in resource-constrained environments, pockets of excellence can and do emerge.

These recognitions matter to the Zimbabwe local government sector. They show that performance is possible, that leadership matters, and that local government, even under constraint, can produce results.

However, beyond these individual successes lies a more worrying national picture of local government in Zimbabwe. The statement issued during the awards pointed out that local authorities, as a sector, remain the worst-performing in government. This raises an uncomfortable but necessary question: Are local authorities failing or are we asking them to succeed in a system that is structurally designed for underperformance? The way the performance evaluation is being interpreted risks reinforcing a diagnostic error in Zimbabwe’s local governance system. The case in point may not be simply a performance problem; it may also be reflective of system design and capacity problems manifesting as performance failure.

Before delving into a deeper analysis of the performance of local authorities, it's prudent to acknowledge, candidly and without qualification, that several local authorities in Zimbabwe are grappling with internal governance and operational challenges that directly undermine service delivery. These include leadership deficits, weak financial management practices, slow uptake of digitalisation, poor land management systems, political patronage, and, in some instances, corruption. Such issues erode institutional credibility, constrain efficiency, and diminish the capacity of councils to respond effectively to citizen needs. Any serious conversation on performance must therefore confront these realities, even as it interrogates the broader systemic conditions within which local authorities operate.

A Pattern That Cannot Be Ignored

A deeper analysis of the performance data reveals a consistent pattern: Only a small proportion of local authority leadership met their performance targets. The majority fell below target, albeit within acceptable variance. A smaller but significant portion fell below both the target and variance. The report noted several systemic challenges affecting councils, including poor revenue collection, high levels of non-revenue water estimated at 45%, ageing water and sewer infrastructure, lack of equipment and machinery, as well as a growing culture of non-payment of rates and service charges by residents and organisations. 22% of mayors and council chairpersons met their set targets, while 68% fell below the target and 10% were below both the target. 28% of council chairpersons of RDCs, met their targets, 63% were below target and 9% were below target. 23% of rural local authorities met set targets, 74% were below target and 3% were below the target.  In the town clerk and chief executive officer category, 22% met set targets, 70% were below target, while 8% were below the target and variance. 

Crucially, this pattern is uniform across the sector. This is not a story of a few failing councils. It is a story of system-wide underperformance. When underperformance becomes systemic, the question must shift from “Who is failing?” to “What is failing?”

The Silent Assumption Behind Performance Contracts

At the heart of the current performance management system lies a powerful but largely unexamined assumption: That local authorities possess the fiscal and institutional capacity required to meet the targets set for them. It then means performance evaluation can be reduced to a single variable: leadership. This assumption is rarely interrogated. Yet it is central to understanding the current crisis. Local authorities are expected to:

·     Maintain and expand water and sanitation systems

·     Deliver roads, refuse collection, and public services

·     Manage infrastructure and urban renewal

·     Drive local economic development

·     Uphold governance and accountability standards

All of this requires financial depth, economic activity, and institutional capability.

But in many cases, these conditions simply do not exist. Local authorities, as public administration entities, spend a significant portion of financial and material resources on their existence. Employment has become a major local government expenditure item, averaging 70-80% of the actual revenue collected. The Ministry of Local Government gave local authorities a directive to maintain a 30:70 ratio of employment to service delivery and capital expenditure. However, this has only been done on budget and not on the actual costs.  The ratio of employment cost to total expenditure breaches the 30 percent benchmark across all local authorities. Employment and other administrative costs are compromising service delivery and disadvantaging ratepayers and the vulnerable communities who are expecting more from their government.

The Geography of Constraint: Rural District Councils

Territorial realities of local authorities is a development and performance challenge that requires a deeper understanding. The sheer geographical scale under the jurisdiction of many local authorities, particularly Rural District Councils (RDCs) is an often underappreciated but decisive constraint on performance and development. Unlike compact urban municipalities, many RDCs in Zimbabwe such as Chiredzi, Zaka, Chivi, Chirumanzu, Nyaminyami, Gokwe North, Rushinga, Hwange administer vast, sparsely populated territories, where settlements are dispersed and infrastructure networks are thin. This spatial reality dramatically increases the unit cost of service delivery. Providing water, roads, waste management, and administrative services across long distances requires more infrastructure, more mobility, and more operational resources—yet these councils operate with limited revenue bases. Distance, in this context, is not just physical; it translates directly into higher costs, weaker supervision, slower response times, and uneven service coverage. This creates a fundamental imbalance that can be expressed simply:

Available Development Resources < Spatial Service Delivery Requirements

In many RDCs, the fiscal envelope derived largely from rates, development levy, license and fees, service charges, and small-scale economic activity is insufficient to match the geographic spread and infrastructure demands of the area. The result is predictable: infrastructure is under-maintained, service delivery is uneven, and development becomes concentrated in a few accessible nodes, leaving large portions of the territory underserved. Performance frameworks that do not account for this equation risk penalising councils for outcomes that are structurally determined.

This imbalance is further compounded by historical patterns of exclusion. Many RDCs are located in areas that were deliberately marginalised during the colonial period, designated as Tribal Trust Lands (TTLs) with minimal investment in infrastructure, industry, or commercial agriculture. These areas entered independence with weak economic foundations, limited formal property markets, and low levels of monetised economic activity. Decades later, this legacy persists in the form of narrow and fragile taxable bases, where the majority of residents operate in subsistence or informal economies that generate little revenue for local authorities.

In effect, RDCs are expected to perform modern governance and service delivery functions in territories that were historically structured to be economically peripheral. Without deliberate fiscal equalisation, infrastructure investment, and local economic development, the gap between geographical responsibility and financial capacity will continue to widen, undermining both performance and the broader goals of equitable national development.

Urban Authorities Without Economic Engines

Urban authorities in Zimbabwe face a fundamental structural contradiction: they are expected to function as fully-fledged urban systems financing modern infrastructure, supporting spatial growth, and delivering high-quality services, yet many lack the economic engines required to sustain these obligations.  Small urban councils such as Mvurwi, Plumtree, Hwange, Chipinge, Karoi, Chirundu, Gokwe and Lupane operate in contexts with limited industrial activity, weak commercial bases, low property values, and high levels of informality. This creates a mismatch where expenditure demands are high and rising, but revenue-generating capacity remains low and stagnant. The result is a persistent cycle in which inadequate infrastructure discourages investment, weak investment limits economic growth, and low economic activity constrains revenue, ultimately trapping these councils in structural underperformance.

Addressing this challenge requires a shift from viewing local authorities purely as service providers to recognising them as active drivers of local economic development. Councils must be supported and capacitated to leverage tools such as territorial profiling, digital systems, and value chain facilitation to unlock local economic potential and expand their revenue base. However, this transformation cannot occur without complementary policy reforms, including targeted fiscal support, differentiated performance expectations, and stronger partnerships with central government and the private sector. Without building viable local economies, efforts to improve performance will remain limited, as sustainable urban governance is ultimately anchored in economic substance, not administrative form and performance.

 

The Emergence of “Administrative Compliance”

When expectations exceed institutional capacity, organisations often adapt not by improving outcomes, but by modifying behaviour. It is at this point that a more subtle danger emerges. Local authorities begin to concentrate on satisfying reporting requirements, optimising performance scores, and prioritising short-term, visible outputs that can be easily measured and displayed. Over time, performance management risks degenerating into an exercise in administrative compliance rather than a driver of developmental transformation.

This phenomenon is not unique to Zimbabwe. It is well documented in public sector systems where the demand for measurement outpaces the provision of enabling conditions such as funding, systems, skills, and managerial support. In Zimbabwe, however, the danger has been particularly acute. The experience of Integrated Results-Based Management (IRBM) illustrates this clearly. In many cases, local authorities treated IRBM as a compliance obligation rather than a genuine management tool. Considerable effort went into completing templates, often with fictitious figures, outputs, and outcomes that bore little relation to approved budgets or everyday operations. The overriding concern was not whether the system improved planning, service delivery, or accountability, but whether the completed forms had been submitted to the Office of the President and Cabinet. In effect, IRBM became a parallel reporting ritual, disconnected from the lived realities of developmental local governance and service delivery.

Acknowledging the Hard Truth: Not All Failure is Structural

It would be analytically weak and intellectually dishonest to attribute all local authority underperformance to structural and systemic constraints alone. While the institutional environment matters greatly, not all failure can be explained by unfunded mandates, legal limitations, fiscal stress, or central interference. Some of the weaknesses affecting local government performance are behavioural, organisational, and leadership-related. There are councils that continue to operate within business-as-usual cultures, display weak financial discipline, tolerate governance lapses, and fail to innovate even within narrow margins of discretion. These realities must be confronted directly.

In some cases, the problem is not simply lack of capacity, but lack of seriousness, urgency, and institutional commitment. Poor work ethic, complacency, weak enforcement of internal controls, indifference to service standards, and tolerance of mediocrity can become normalised within councils. Decision-making may be delayed not because systems make action impossible, but because of risk aversion, bureaucratic lethargy, poor supervision, and an absence of performance-oriented leadership. In other instances, councils do not suffer only from resource scarcity, but from weak prioritisation, poor planning discipline, failure to follow through, and a culture of excuses that externalises all blame. Even in constrained environments, leadership quality, organisational culture, integrity, and administrative discipline still matter.

Behavioural challenges also manifest in more subtle ways. Some local authorities resist change, avoid learning, and cling to outdated administrative routines even when new tools, partnerships, or management approaches are available. Others exhibit weak revenue ethics, poor debtor management, casual procurement practices, and limited transparency in financial decision-making. In some councils, innovation is stifled not by law or policy, but by fear of scrutiny, internal politics, lack of initiative, or unwillingness to depart from familiar routines. The result is that available room for improvement, however limited, remains underutilised.

This is why accountability must remain central. Performance management systems exist for a reason, and public institutions must be held to standards of responsibility, discipline, and results. However, accountability must be applied within a realistic understanding of capacity and context. Where failure is behavioural, it must be named and corrected. Where failure is structural, it must be addressed through reform and support. The danger lies in collapsing these different causes into one. If all underperformance is blamed on the system, institutional complacency is excused. If all underperformance is blamed on individual actors, structural injustice is ignored. A serious performance framework must be able to distinguish between incapacity, constraint, and negligence.

The challenge, therefore, is to develop a more intelligent accountability regime: one that protects the principle of responsibility without becoming blind to context. Accountability should not become a punitive instrument that punishes institutions for lacking powers, resources, or autonomy they were never given. But neither should structural limitations become a blanket alibi for poor leadership, weak discipline, or avoidable dysfunction. Transformative local governance requires both systemic reform and behavioural change. It requires a state that enables performance, and local institutions that choose to perform.

The central point is that performance failure in local government should neither be moralised simplistically nor structuralised absolutely. It must be diagnosed properly. Where local authorities fail because the system denies them power, resources, or coherence, reform must target the system. Where they fail because of weak discipline, poor leadership, low integrity, or resistance to change, reform must target institutional behaviour. The future of local government performance in Zimbabwe depends on the ability to make this distinction honestly. Without that clarity, accountability becomes unjust, reform becomes superficial, and performance management becomes an exercise in punishing symptoms while ignoring causes.

The Deeper Problem: Measuring Without Enabling

The current performance framework is technically robust in its design. It is structured around outputs, targets, indicators, and reporting requirements intended to improve accountability, standardisation, and oversight across local authorities. In formal terms, this represents an important advance. It signals a state seeking to measure performance more systematically and to demand results from local institutions. However, the framework suffers from a deeper conceptual weakness: it measures performance without adequately accounting for the conditions required to produce performance in the first place.

At present, insufficient attention is given to the enabling environment within which local authorities operate. Performance is assessed largely at the level of visible outputs and target achievement, yet these outcomes are profoundly shaped by factors that lie beyond the immediate control of individual councils. These include fiscal capacity, local economic base, settlement patterns, territorial scale, population dispersion, infrastructure deficits, administrative capability, and the wider system of intergovernmental fiscal relations. Where these variables are weak or uneven, the ability of local authorities to perform is also uneven. A framework that overlooks these foundational differences risks treating performance as if it were simply a matter of managerial effort, when in reality it is also a function of structural possibility.

This creates a fundamental disconnect. Local authorities are expected to deliver services, meet standards, and achieve targets without equivalent attention being paid to whether they possess the resources, revenue authority, institutional space, and developmental conditions necessary to do so. In effect, the system assumes performance before building its foundations. It demands results without sufficiently addressing the productive base from which results must emerge. This is the deeper problem: we are measuring performance without enabling performance.

The implications of this are significant. First, the framework risks confusing symptoms with causes. Poor service delivery, weak revenue performance, missed targets, and administrative non-compliance may appear as failures of institutional effort or discipline, when in fact they may reflect low fiscal capacity, limited revenue bases, inherited infrastructure backlogs, sparse settlement structures, or weak transfer arrangements. A rural district council with low economic density, scattered settlements, limited commercial activity, and a narrow tax base cannot reasonably be assessed in the same way as an urban authority with concentrated population, stronger property values, denser infrastructure networks, and greater opportunities for own-source revenue mobilisation. To do so is not neutrality; it is analytical distortion.

Second, the framework risks producing an overly moral interpretation of performance. Councils that perform poorly may be labelled ineffective, uncommitted, or poorly managed without sufficient examination of the structural conditions under which they are operating. This can generate a punitive accountability culture in which local authorities are blamed for outcomes that are partly produced by systemic neglect, constrained mandates, or weak fiscal design. In such a setting, performance management loses its developmental function and becomes an instrument of judgement rather than institutional improvement.

Third, the framework may unintentionally incentivise administrative compliance rather than real transformation. When institutions are assessed against targets that are disconnected from their enabling conditions, they often adapt by learning how to report performance rather than how to generate it. The result is a shift toward template completion, indicator management, and formal compliance rituals. What gets strengthened is the reporting function, not necessarily the developmental function. In this sense, an under-enabled performance regime can create the appearance of accountability while leaving the deeper determinants of performance untouched.

The issue is not that performance measurement is unnecessary. On the contrary, measurement is essential. Without standards, indicators, and oversight, public institutions can drift into complacency, opacity, and non-performance. But measurement alone is never enough. Performance is not produced by targets; it is produced by the interaction between targets and capability. It depends on whether institutions have the fiscal means, administrative systems, human resources, autonomy, and economic base required to translate mandates into outcomes. Where those conditions are absent, measurement may describe failure, but it cannot explain it adequately, still less correct it.

A more credible performance system would therefore move beyond narrow output assessment and incorporate enabling variables into the logic of evaluation itself. It would recognise that local government performance is shaped not only by what councils do, but also by what councils are able to do under prevailing structural conditions. Such a system would distinguish between performance failure arising from weak effort or poor management, and failure arising from low fiscal capacity, territorial disadvantage, or inadequate institutional support. That distinction is essential if performance management is to be fair, analytically sound, and reform-oriented.

At its core, therefore, the problem is not simply one of measurement design, but of state logic. The framework reflects a technocratic impulse to measure outcomes without equal attention to the political economy of delivery. It assumes that all councils can be rendered legible through common indicators, even though they are embedded in radically different economic and territorial realities. Yet performance cannot be abstracted from context. It is always produced within an enabling or disabling environment. Where the state measures without enabling, it risks mistaking institutional distress for institutional failure.

The central message of this paper, therefore, is that any serious performance regime must begin not only with the question, What are local authorities achieving? but also with the prior question, What conditions have been created to make achievement possible? Until that question is taken seriously, performance management will remain only partially credible. It will measure outcomes, but it will not fully understand them. And where causes are poorly understood, reform efforts will remain misdirected. It will be unfair for the central government to credibly demand performance from sub-national structures it has not sufficiently enabled to perform.

Rewiring the Logic: From Budgeting Silos to Territorial Delivery

This is where the conversation must connect to a broader reform agenda—one that has already been articulated in calls to rewire Zimbabwe’s budgeting framework. The central argument is simple but transformative. National development must be conceptualised sectorally. Institutional responsibility must be clearly allocated and implementation must be grounded territorially. The required resources must follow functional responsibility and spatial need. At present, Zimbabwe’s system does the opposite. Resources are allocated in centralised, sectoral silos, while implementation responsibility is pushed to local authorities without corresponding fiscal support.

The result? Local authorities become implementation agents without the financial means to implement. If local government performance is to improve meaningfully, there must be a serious reconsideration of intergovernmental fiscal relations. This includes strengthening revenue-sharing mechanisms beyond the at least 5% provision in the Constitution, ensuring predictable and formula-based transfers and aligning transfers with local authorities fiscal capacity, availability of development resources, historical exclusion, territorial size and infrastructure deficits. The logic is straightforward: Citizens experience government primarily through local authorities, not central ministries. If service delivery is local, then funding must also be localised.

Differentiation: Moving Beyond a One-Size-Fits-All System

Another critical reform lies in recognising that Zimbabwe’s local authorities are not homogeneous entities operating under comparable conditions. The current system, however, tends to impose broadly uniform expectations on institutions with vastly different economic bases, settlement patterns, territorial sizes, service delivery burdens, and revenue capacities. This is a serious weakness. A credible performance system cannot treat all local authorities as if they begin from the same starting point, face the same constraints, or possess the same opportunities for growth and service delivery.

Local authorities should therefore be categorised and supported according to their distinct structural, economic, and territorial realities. Metropolitan authorities such as Harare and Bulawayo face challenges of scale, infrastructure congestion, informality, ageing service networks, high population pressure, and complex urban governance demands. Former industrial towns such as Kadoma, Kwekwe, Redcliff, and Chegutu confront a different problem: the erosion or collapse of the economic bases that once sustained their revenue systems, employment structures, and urban relevance. Their performance cannot be understood apart from industrial decline, company closures, infrastructure deterioration, and shrinking local economies.

There is also another category of smaller urban centres and district towns such as Mvurwi, Gokwe, and Lupane, many of which still function more as administrative centres or growth points than as fully developed municipalities with diversified and resilient revenue bases. Their institutional form may resemble that of urban councils, but their economic foundations remain shallow. Applying the same performance assumptions used for larger and more economically active towns risks overstating their delivery capacity and underestimating the developmental investments still required to transform them into viable urban centres.

Similarly, peri-urban and high-potential rural district councils such as Zvimba, Mazowe, Manyame, Goromonzi, Umguza, Umzingwane, Makoni, Makonde, and Vungu occupy a distinct position within the local government landscape. Their proximity to major urban markets, transport corridors, agricultural zones, mining activities, and land development pressures gives them stronger growth potential and, in some cases, a more promising fiscal base. These councils often sit at the frontier of spatial transition, where rural governance structures increasingly confront urbanisation, land value changes, investment demand, and service expansion pressures. Their performance potential is therefore different from that of deeply remote rural councils and should be measured accordingly.

By contrast, predominantly rural district councils such as Chivi, Zaka, Rushinga, UMP, Chirumanzu, Buhera, Mberengwa, and Gokwe North and South often operate under much narrower and weaker resource bases. They serve dispersed populations across large territories, with low economic density, limited commercial activity, weak ratepayer bases, and high service delivery costs. In such contexts, the challenge is not simply one of management efficiency, but of structural viability. Revenue mobilisation is harder, infrastructure provision is more expensive, and economies of scale are more difficult to achieve. To assess such councils using the same assumptions applied to metropolitan or peri-urban authorities is neither fair nor analytically sound.

These differences are not incidental. They shape the very conditions under which performance is produced. Economic base determines revenue potential. Territorial scale affects service delivery costs. Settlement patterns influence infrastructure efficiency. Proximity to growth corridors shapes investment prospects. Historical trajectories of industrialisation, decline, or marginalisation continue to structure present institutional possibilities. If these dynamics are ignored, performance measurement becomes abstract and misleading. It risks rewarding councils for inherited advantage and penalising others for structural disadvantage.

A differentiated system does not mean lowering standards or excusing failure. It means making performance expectations more realistic, context-sensitive, and developmentally meaningful. It means comparing like with like, setting targets that reflect actual institutional conditions, and designing support mechanisms that respond to different types of local authority realities. Some councils need urban infrastructure renewal. Some need local economic regeneration. Some need support to manage peri-urban transition. Others need foundational investment in basic capacity, revenue systems, and service access. A uniform performance regime cannot adequately respond to such diversity.

Only when these differences are taken seriously can performance expectations become fair, credible, and useful. Differentiation is therefore not a technical adjustment at the margins; it is central to building a performance system that measures reality rather than ignoring it. What is required is not equal measurement across unequal realities, but intelligent measurement that reflects the diversity of local government conditions in Zimbabwe.

Rethinking the Narrative

Painfully, for Zimbabwe local government practitioners and its faithful, local authorities have been routinely described as the weakest link in public sector performance. It's not essentially a criticism of the view and the measurement that produced it; it’s a contention that the diagnosis may be shallow. The deeper reality is that they are among the most resilient but structurally constrained institutions in the governance system, expected to deliver without the adequate fiscal capacity, institutional autonomy, or enabling environment required to perform. As long as this reality is ignored, the cycle will continue: targets will be set without resources, performance will be demanded without capacity, and outcomes will be measured without reforming the system that produces them. The result is predictable. Local authorities will continue to be labelled as underperforming. While expedient in some forms and contexts, it is a development inconvenience that should not be permitted to persist.

What we are calling “underperformance” is, in many cases, the logical outcome of a system that demands more than it enables. We are not merely witnessing failure at the local level. We are reproducing it through the very architecture of governance, finance, and accountability we have chosen to maintain.

Local government is not merely failing within the system; it is failing because of the system.