In 1970, the owner of Subdivision 65 of Farm 1751, Buckley Estate, Lusaka, bought a property that lay outside the boundary of Greater Lusaka. He paid no municipal rates because, at the time, he was not a city ratepayer. Then the city expanded.
The owner objected for a reason that remains immediately recognisable. The Council supplied him with no water. He had his own borehole. The plaintiff accepted that his property had value and was not exempted. Once Buckley Estate fell within the city boundary, the statutory architecture therefore applied to Subdivision 65.
The judgment’s understanding of rates rests upon an idea of the city as a collective institution. A resident may never use a public cemetery, borrow a book from a municipal library or wait at a particular bus stand, yet the existence of those facilities forms part of the infrastructure of urban life.
What makes this case worth remembering is the principle behind the story:
- The action was dismissed, although Sakala J made no order as to costs because of the public importance of the issue.
The plaintiff lost his declaration but left behind a question that every growing city must continue to answer politically even after the law is clear:
- If citizens must contribute to the city as a whole, how well must the city serve them in return?
For lawyers, the value of the case is not only the rule it states, but the way the facts make the rule memorable.
For everyone else, it is another reminder that Zambia’s legal history is also Zambia’s social history.
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