It has been many years now that consensus was achieved over the benefits that would accrue to both Government and the citizens if power was given to Local Government structures.
Many years ago Government appointed a Presidential Commission chaired by Pelonomi Venson.
The Commission among other things recommended that local government should be given more power.
Almost 20 years later we still have a central Government that has retained excessive powers to itself, overly centralized and inaccessible to the people it pretends to serve.
Once again we need to bring back the debate on decentralisation and devolution of powers.
Candidate areas for such devolution and decentralization include by-law enforcement, tax, health, education etc.
There are those who are even calling for executive mayors with powers to have budgets reminiscent to what situation obtains in Federal States.
But maybe we are not there yet. But the point has been made.
We need to give more powers to people holding such offices. They are the closest to the people vis-à-vis Central Government.
As it is they are somehow junior to a Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Local Government, which really is insulting.
Another issue that has to be looked at is the possible increase in the number of district councils.
Current district councils do not serve the people optimally.
They are too far removed because headquarters is often too far away from a majority of people in the district.
If you take the Central District Council for example, it is too large to be efficiently run by a Council Secretary who sits in Serowe from where he shouts down instructions to sub-districts before any decision can be taken.
The decision to maintain the Central District in the size it is a result of headless nationalism by the principal tribe in Serowe that effectively boils down to tribalism rather than anything else.
The district is large population-wise, unmanageable because of its sheer size scale and administratively clumsy.
Nobody wants to talk about breaking down the Central District into say four independent districts because that is viewed somehow as a taboo. To its adherents, the history of the district elicits a kind of nationalism that is only comparable to the latter-day Zulu tribal and ethnic supremacists.
To such headless nationalists (the correct word is tribalists) the mere mention of the district’s name conjures all sorts of vague prestige.
To the people who relate to such archaic and divisive way of thinking, finding better ways to get services to the people means nothing compared to keeping intact a relic of history that has as its primary element the subordination of other peoples by others.
This is a sensitive issue ÔÇô apparently to some people. But we are living in a modern age where if we are not careful, we will break apart exactly that which we seek to preserve.
Devolution and decentralisation are the way to go.
