Sikhumbuzo Moyo, smoyo@chronicle.co.zw
THE City of Bulawayo yesterday unveiled a gleaming fleet of road machinery, a tangible promise against the rutted memories of seasons past. The commission marks a fresh push to bolster road maintenance in a network that now demands at least US$15 million annually for effective upkeep — a figure likely to swell where weary surfaces no longer ask for patches but for rebirth through full reconstruction.
City Mayor, Councillor David Coltart, said during the commissioning of road maintenance equipment procured using 2025 fund disbursements from the Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) that delivering a good road network requires more resources.
The event, modest in length but weighty in symbolism, made clear that tarmac and time wait for no one, and that ambition must be matched with equipment worthy of the task.
The brief ceremony was held at the Large City Hall parking area, where the mayor revealed that council had passed a resolution to utilise part of its 2025 allocation of approximately ZiG33 million to purchase critical plant and equipment to strengthen the city’s road rehabilitation capacity.
In a city that moves to the rhythm of commuters, traders and school runs, the announcement read like a quiet vow to keep life flowing smoothly from dawn’s first kombi to the last returning bus at dusk.
“This is part of a deliberate and collective effort between Zinara and the Bulawayo City Council to empower our Works Department so that we no longer have to rely excessively on third parties, but can increasingly execute roadworks ourselves,” he said.
It was a pledge of self-reliance, a statement that the hands fixing the roads would, more often, be the city’s own.
While US$15 million is the estimated annual requirement for maintenance, Coltart said the calculation assumes roads are already in a maintainable state.
“The reality we face is far more serious. Many roads across our city can no longer simply be maintained; they require full reconstruction. That is why even the US$15 million figure is, in truth, very conservative,” he said.
In those lines lay an unvarnished truth: some arteries of the city need more than a bandage — they need surgery.
The commissioned equipment included two backhoe loaders, a soil compactor, a grader and a pneumatic roller — primarily designed for full-scale road reconstruction rather than routine pothole patching.
Each machine felt like a promise made steel, purpose-built for the heavy lifting of restoration rather than the fleeting relief of quick fixes.
The whole set of equipment cost slightly over US$1 million.
On Wednesday, Zinara chief executive officer, Nkosinathi Ncube, told the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Infrastructural Development that Zinara recorded a significant increase in revenue collections for 2025, raising ZiG12,5 billion (US$469,3 million), up from ZiG6,4 billion (US$366,95 million) collected in 2024. The surge in collections suggested a broader national push to fund the roads that knit towns, trade and communities together.
Ncube said from the collected figure, Zinara disbursed a total of ZIG9,1 billion (US$341,8 million), representing 73 percent of revenue and 12 percent above the target of ZIG8,3 billion (US$305 million), to all road authorities and high-impact projects. In that release of funds lay the pulse of fresh projects, each disbursement a nudge towards smoother, safer journeys across the country.
This includes allocations for maintenance of the Mutare-Plumtree Road financed through the Development Bank of Southern Africa (DBSA). The country’s great east-west spine, once weary, continues to draw breath from this support, keeping commerce moving and horizons connected.
Ncube said of the total disbursements of ZiG1,173 billion went directly to road authorities, while ZiG68,95 million (equivalent to two million litres) was allocated in fuel to capacitate local authorities to carry out in-house road works. Local authorities had drawn more than 1,76 million litres of fuel as of December 31 last year.
“This was meant to capacitate road authorities to undertake expedient in-house road works and avert challenges associated with procuring fuel in ZiG,” Ncube said.
In a landscape where logistics can stall progress, that fuel allocation read like momentum in liquid form.
He said disbursements towards high-impact projects managed through Treasury and the Department of Roads amounted to ZiG5,6 billion (US$208,8 million) — 23 percent above target. A further ZiG85,02 million was released for emergency road works and was fully utilised. Zinara is mandated to collect and disburse road user fees to various road authorities for maintenance, rehabilitation and construction projects across the country. With four road authorities — the Department of Roads, Rural Infrastructural Development Agency (Rida), and Urban and Rural District Councils — the web of responsibility is wide, but so too is the ambition to keep wheels turning and livelihoods connected.
Coltart appealed to residents to join council in maintaining roads, particularly in areas where they can assist with pothole repairs under the supervision of the Works Department.
“We will only restore our road network to an acceptable standard if this becomes a collective enterprise — council, national institutions and residents working together,” he said.
The call was plain-spoken: the streets belong to everyone, and their healing will be a shared craft.
The mayor called for proper maintenance and provision of spare parts for the new equipment, saying it will be critical to ensuring that machinery serves the city for the foreseeable future.
“The true measure of success will not be today’s ceremony, but seeing this equipment deployed consistently across our suburbs — five or six days a week — reconstructing and restoring our roads for the benefit of every resident,” said Coltart.
The sentiment was less speech than standard — reliability, constancy, and the steady hum of machines at work.
He commended the Transport and Infrastructural Development Minister Felix Mhona for ongoing works on key arterial roads in the city and also applauded Government on the decision to procure asphalt production plants, noting the recently commissioned Skyline and that Bulawayo is expected to be the next beneficiary — a development he said would complement the newly acquired equipment by ensuring more affordable asphalt supplies. In that alignment of plant and purpose, Bulawayo’s roads seemed poised not just for repair, but for renewal — a city setting its course on firmer ground.
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