10 Jun 2025 | Bulawayo 24News

Bulawayo city councillors have voiced serious concern over the stringent registration requirements imposed by the local authority on small business operators, warning that the rigid system is fuelling corruption and costing the city potential revenue.

Speaking during a recent full council meeting, Ward 9 councillor Donaldson Mabuto said the current business registration process was pushing small business owners to resort to paying bribes to avoid harassment by law enforcement officers.

Mabuto said his findings revealed that small shop owners and vendors were willing to pay for licences, but overly strict by-laws and inflexible procedures were creating barriers that encouraged underhand dealings. He claimed that some operators were forking out at least US$35 monthly or bi-monthly in bribes, depending on the frequency of police raids.

“The council should think outside the box. Vendors want to be licensed, but council’s inflexibility is a major obstacle. I have done research which revealed that vendors and other small shop operators are willing to pay council, but stringent bylaws hinder the progress,” Mabuto said.

His concerns were echoed by Ward 23 councillor Ntombizodwa Khumalo, who noted the efforts by the Bulawayo City Council (BCC) to bring order to vending activities in the city, but called on central government to step in and assist in addressing the problem of illegal vending.

Mayor David Coltart acknowledged the challenges and stressed the importance of developing attractive and accessible vending spaces that would encourage informal traders to operate within the legal framework.

He cited stalled projects like Egodini Mall and suggested the need for partnerships with investors to establish modern market spaces equipped with essential amenities such as roofing, solar power, clean water, toilets, and smooth flooring.

Coltart said council should identify and develop more designated vending bays and provide proper structures for traders to boost their confidence in the system. He added that increasing the number of vending bays could raise the number of licensed vendors from 12,000 to 15,000, enhancing council revenue collection.

“We must move from plans to action,” Coltart said, urging the town planning department to prioritise the creation of formal vending spaces, particularly in high-density suburbs like Makokoba and Nkulumane.

The mayor emphasised a phased, sector-focused development approach targeting retail, manufacturing, and vending to support the city’s informal economy while maintaining order and service delivery.

21 May 2025 Bulawayo24 News

The Bulawayo City Council (BCC) has intensified efforts to clamp down on illegal gold mining, sand poaching, and firewood theft-activities that are wreaking havoc on the environment and jeopardising the city’s already strained water supply.

Rampant illegal mining, particularly within and around critical catchment areas such as Umzingwane, has been identified as a major contributor to land degradation and siltation of supply dams including Ncema and Insiza. The city’s environmental watchdogs say these activities are accelerating silt build-up in reservoirs that provide water to Bulawayo’s nearly 700,000 residents.

“The situation is alarming,” said Bulawayo Mayor Councillor David Coltart. “These illegal activities are not only scarring the land but are actively sabotaging our water infrastructure. Blocked streams and deep gullies in our dam catchments are worsening an already dire water crisis.”

From January to March this year, BCC mounted 281 patrols targeting illegal operations within supply dam zones. In April alone, 83 patrols focused on the Umzingwane catchment resulted in the arrest of 12 illegal gold panners. The suspects were handed over to the Esigodini Magistrate’s Court, and 45 tools-including three metal detectors-were confiscated.

The Environmental Management Authority (EMA) has warned that the use of metal detectors by illegal panners is accelerating land degradation. Once gold is located, large swathes of land are dug up indiscriminately, leaving behind gaping pits and altered landscapes.

Joint patrols by city rangers and Esigodini police have netted a total of 16 gold panners since the start of the year, according to council minutes.

Illegal mining has also encroached into residential areas like Queenspark, Killarney, and Mqabuko Heights. In these suburbs, 51 patrols conducted in April led to a noticeable decline in panning activity, though the council cautioned that the situation remains volatile.

The city is also grappling with a surge in sand poaching, particularly in peri-urban zones such as St Peters. Council rangers recently impounded five trucks, two wheelbarrows, and over 100 tools used in sand extraction operations. Thirty-seven tickets were issued for environmental and municipal by-law violations, 28 of which were paid, raising US$2,175. The remaining nine tickets, valued at US$1,698, are still outstanding.

Meanwhile, firewood poaching has surged in areas like Emakhandeni, New Lobengula, and Luveve, where residents are resorting to cutting down trees for cooking fuel amid prolonged load shedding caused by damaged electricity infrastructure.

“Firewood demand has spiked due to power outages, and this has turned firewood poaching into a major environmental concern,” the council reported. In recent operations, five scotch carts and two wheelbarrows were impounded, and offenders were charged for breaching environmental by-laws.

Adding to the city’s woes, BCC is facing challenges in managing stray donkeys that have become a nuisance in suburbs bordering peri-urban areas. The city’s land inspectorate says it is unable to respond effectively due to logistical challenges, with a key utility vehicle still under repair.

“The lands inspectorate is highly incapacitated… a BCC ranger utility truck is still under repair,” reads a section of the minutes.

As Bulawayo battles on multiple environmental fronts, city officials are calling for greater collaboration with law enforcement, communities, and government agencies to address what they describe as a “creeping crisis” that threatens both urban sustainability and water security.

“We must treat this as an emergency,” said Mayor Coltart. “If we lose our catchments, we lose our future.”

May 19, 2025 : Street Child United

We’re thrilled to share some truly game-changing news: the next Street Child Cricket World Cup (SCCWC) is heading to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe in 2027!

With the full support of Mayor David Coltart and the incredible leadership team at the City of Bulawayo, we’ll be bringing our global movement for street-connected young people to Southern Africa for ten unforgettable days of cricket, creativity and advocacy.

This will be the third edition of the SCCWC—and our biggest yet! Twenty mixed-gender teams made up of street-connected young people from around the world will come together not just to play cricket, but to tell the world: #IamSomebody.

More than just cricket…

Cricket is at the heart of what we do, but SCCWC is about so much more. It’s about visibility. It’s about empowerment. It’s about change. Alongside the action-packed Street20 tournament (a fast, inclusive version of the game), teams will take part in an arts festival and a youth-led Congress focused on identity, education, protection, and gender equality. The event will finish with a powerful General Assembly, where young people will present their ideas and demands for change directly to decision-makers.

As a lead-in event to the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup – jointly hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia 0 SCCWC 2027 will shine an even brighter spotlight on the rights of street-connected children and the incredible potential they have when given the chance.

Mayor Coltart, who has long championed education and human rights in Zimbabwe, had this to say:

“For too long, Zimbabwe’s youth, especially those on the margins, have been overlooked in conversations that shape their future. The Street Child Cricket World Cup is an opportunity to change that. Bulawayo is proud to host an event that not only showcases sport’s unifying power but also amplifies the voices of children who have been denied the chance to be heard.”

We couldn’t agree more.

We’ve seen how powerful this tournament can be. In 2019, we brought SCCWC to Cambridge and London, where the finals were played at the iconic Lord’s Cricket Ground. In 2023, we lit up Chennai, India, where Team Zimbabwe came heartbreakingly close to winning it all, just edged out by Team Uganda in a nail-biting final.

Now we return to Zimbabwe with even bigger dreams.

As our CEO and co-founder, John Wroe, put it:

“We are honoured to partner with the City of Bulawayo and Mayor Coltart in hosting SCCWC 2027 in Zimbabwe. Through sport, creativity, and youth-led advocacy, we will send a powerful global message: every child deserves to be respected, protected, and given the opportunity to thrive.”

Bulawayo has the spirit, culture and heart to host something truly special and we can’t wait to share this journey with you.

Monday, 19 May 2025

By Andy Bull: The Guardian

Twenty-two years is a long time, even in a sport that measures its games in days and its history in centuries. The last time England played a Test match against Zimbabwe, in 2003, Rob Key was in the middle order instead of the managing director’s job, Jimmy Anderson was a 20-year-old tearaway playing in his very first series, and the England and Wales Cricket Board was just about to launch the world’s very first professional Twenty20 tournament. Zimbabwean cricket has changed, too. Back then the team was in the earliest stages of a transformation that was meant to turn cricket from a minority game, played by the small white population, into a sport that better represented the whole country.

They have been hard years, driven by player strikes, political interference, maladministration and a miserable drop-off in results. The team temporarily withdrew from Test cricket, suspended their domestic competition and were repeatedly censured by the International Cricket Council. They lost so many players through emigration to England, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand, that even now you could build a hell of a good Zimbabwean squad out of people who are making a living overseas. And yet, at the end of it all, the process was, by one important measure, a success. The squad that came on tour in 2003 was majority white, the team that has come this year is majority black.

“Despite all the politics, despite all the chaos that we’ve been through, cricket is now a national game,” says David Coltart, “supported by an overwhelming majority of Zimbabweans, black and white and other races.” Coltart is the elected mayor of Bulawayo, a white man elected in a mostly black city. He has spent his life navigating the bitter, heated, complicated politics of his country. He has been fighting for the Zimbabwe he believes in ever since the 1990s, first as a founding member of the Movement for Democratic Change and a key figure in the opposition to Robert Mugabe, then as minister for education and sport in Morgan Tsvangirai’s coalition government.

More than five million people have emigrated from the country in that time. Coltart is one of the ones who stayed. “I believe in Zimbabwe with a passion,” he says, “I believe in its people and its future, and I believe it is a country worth fighting for.”

When Andy Flower and Henry Olonga made their public protest against “the death of democracy” in their country in 2003, it was Coltart they asked to help draft their statement. “My sadness is that Henry and Andy didn’t stay in the country,” he says, “because they remain hugely influential figures. It’s not a criticism. I understand why they felt compelled to leave. But we need figures like them.” He mourns Heath Streak, who did stay, but who died in 2023. “Heath provided inspiration to people on both sides of the argument. He was a white man who was fluent in Ndebele, and who attracted a lot of sympathy and affection from a lot of black people, and yet he remained an inspirational for white farmers who’d been dispossessed of their land.”

For Coltart, the Zimbabwean team is emblematic of the society it represents. “We punch above our weight.” Which is why he believes transformation had to happen.

“It was very necessary,” Coltart says. “Cricket in Zimbabwe 30 years ago was a minority sport. If you just looked at the crowds they were, relatively speaking, very few black people in them. Even aside from the principle of the matter, that situation was completely unsustainable.” He just wishes it had been done differently. He makes a comparison with the redistribution of land, and the violent farm takeovers which were the cause of so much pain, grief and injustice in the 2000s. “The land holdings were unjust,” he says, “But we could have done it without violence. Now, there wasn’t violence in cricket, but I think that when you look at the dreadful collapse of cricket in 2004, that could have been avoided.”

When Zimbabwe stopped playing Test cricket, Coltart helped lead the campaign to restore it. In government he spent a lot of time lobbying the English to start playing fixtures against his country again. The ECB turned its back on the country, even after the end of the Mugabe regime. It was only when Richard Gould took over as the chief executive of the ECB that things finally changed. “They disregarded us and while I understand the reasons, I’ve never felt that England should not be playing Zimbabwe,” Coltart says. “Although I’m a strident critic of the Zimbabwean regime, I’ve always believed in the power of sport to bridge divides.”

Even now, he would be against a boycott of Afghan cricket on similar grounds. “Because if the players and the board members themselves are trying to do the right thing but are being constrained by the government, then you’ve got to support them and encourage them, not boycott them. Use the game, the opportunities it provides, to build relations, and to hold them to higher standards.”

He is still trying to do that in his own country now, as mayor. Bulawayo has just won the right to host the Street Child Cricket World Cup. But Coltart is deeply concerned about the way the sport is being run. “There’s still far too much politics involved in Zimbabwe Cricket, in the running of the organisation, and even in the selection policies. I still fear that we’re not spending the money that we get as best we should. I’m a politician, but I don’t think politicians should be anywhere near cricket administration. I would rather see people whose primary attribute is a great passion for cricket being involved in the running of the sport. I’d like to see our best players from the past dominating the selection panel, black and white.”

Still, he beams when he thinks that Zimbabwe are going to play a Test at Trent Bridge this week. “Despite the politics, despite the abuse of the rule of law and corruption in the country, all the concerns that I have regarding the government, the vast majority of Zimbabweans are united. It’s a wonderful country and you will see that in our cricket, we are a passionately multiracial team, and that’s a wonderful projection of our country.”