Zimbabwe: Councils Must Enforce Building Standards

Commissioning 220 flats and houses for the Zimbabwe Defence Forces this week, President Mnangagwa called for a determined effort to provide decent housing for all Zimbabweans and made it clear that proper services had to be in place before construction.

The Government, and the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, through its relatively new construction regiment, knew exactly what had to be in place at the new Defence Forces housing site before the first foundation trench was dug.

The trunk sewers, trunk water supply and the road network were laid out and built.

Provision would have been made for another primary school or to expand a school nearby, to make sure the more than 400 children likely to be on the new estate had somewhere to go.

There was discussion during the commissioning ceremony about innovative technologies that were employed in part of the construction, but these would have met the building by-laws and been cleared for use. Almost certainly, the Government insistence that regardless of materials, the finished buildings should have low maintenance requirements would have been followed.

This is simply how development is supposed to take place, as the President was insisting, without exception and without any attempt to circumvent the rules.

The planning rules are very firm and should never be varied. And this instance by the Government in action is what has been missing in newer housing areas of Harare this century and the council acquiesced in the rampage by land barons cheating at every turn.

There has to be a proper local plan, approved through the local authority processes, with adequate land set for schools, health centres, social services and recreation.

As you move into suburban style planning, then the local authorities will want to have land set aside for commercial purposes, which being more valuable will help offset costs of services for residential stands and usually provide the profit margin for a private developer.

The Environmental Management Authority has these days a firm input, insisting on the impact statements and making sure wetlands and other environmentally fragile areas are protected.

Often, in practical development, some of the public open spaces and recreational land can be assigned to these environmentally protected areas, freeing up more of the good building land for intense development.

Modern planning for cities and towns also frowns upon detached housing on large plots, which can cause extreme urban sprawl, and there is planning pressure for denser housing which includes blocks of flats, terraced housing and the cluster housing that in its luxury form is making such an impact on what were once exclusive low-density suburbs.

The planning basics are laid down fairly rigidly, but planners and the planning authorities who approve lay-out and development plans, are not wedded to the past. Innovation and imagination are desirable in this regard, so long as there is no attempt to skip services and provide a sub-standard development.

Much of Zimbabwean planning law relies on professionals working with those who have to live with the developments, hence the acceptance of change and innovation. But, as the President made clear, this does not affect the essentials, that essential services must be in place and that adequate land has to be set aside for schools, health and recreation.

But there are also the building codes, personified in the Model Building By-Laws that all councils have adopted, where there is flexibility.

These building codes are not exhaustive or set in stone for all time. They lay down the default standards, those that will be accepted automatically, but also allow a lot of innovation and change, although these start off being accepted after checking of calculations and research by which usually end up as an automatically accepted option as they become proven.

There are laid down procedures when an architect or building contractor wants to introduce innovative materials or construction technology, and these are readily approved once it can be shown that they will work.

This is allowing money to go further in development, as we have seen at the Defence Forces development site.

There are conservatives who want to limit building materials to those known in the past, yet even in the 134 years since the establishment of Harare, there have been dramatic changes in technology, starting with machine made bricks.

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This was followed by the substitution of cement for lime in mortar, and then the cement tiles instead of corrugated iron and now the steel roofs, in what could be thought of as a return to an older technology but is in fact a major jump forward.

At the same time, standards were laid down for reinforced concrete structures and for buildings of mixed materials.

So there is no such thing as a “traditional” technology, just a growing number of options for property owners, architects and builders. What is common to all of these options is the fact that they meet laid down safety and other standards, and it is those standards, rather than the actual materials and designs, that have to be enforced.

We are moving fast towards what could well be a major revision of the Model Building By-Laws, following so much technology advances in recent decades, so the manual will become thicker as new methods are added.

The interesting point about these by-laws is that they are rarely amended by deletion of any section and generally they just grow, so you can find an 1890s technology next door to last week’s latest advance.

They fit together and they work, so are all needed.

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