Government’s decision to roll out provincial hotlines for reporting potholes has been framed as a practical, citizen-centred intervention. Roads are deteriorating. 

Motorists encounter damage first. A direct reporting channel, the argument goes, should enable quicker responses and shared responsibility.

On the surface, the logic is sound. But public policy is rarely only about what it does. It is also about what it assumes — and what it quietly shifts.

Hotlines do not fix roads. They reorganise how failure is identified, prioritised and explained.

From Maintenance to Reporting

Traditionally, road infrastructure is governed through inspection cycles, engineering assessments and scheduled maintenance.

Damage is anticipated.

Budgets are planned.

Deterioration is treated as a predictable outcome of time, weather and use.

Hotlines invert this logic. Instead of roads being repaired because they are due for maintenance, they are repaired because someone has reported a defect. The system moves from being maintenance-led to complaint-led.

This shift matters. It subtly changes the definition of the problem. The central issue is no longer the condition of the road network itself, but the flow of information about its condition.

What is reported exists. What is not reported risks becoming administratively invisible.

In practice, this means infrastructure management begins to respond to alerts rather than forecasts, messages rather than measurements.

The Uneven Voice Problem

The hotline model rests on a key assumption: that citizens are equally able — and equally likely — to report hazards.

They are not.

Urban motorists with smartphones, mobile data and confidence engaging official systems will report potholes. Busy highways and politically visible routes will generate repeated alerts. Roads near economic centres will attract attention.

Rural roads — often in worse condition — are less likely to be documented, less likely to trend, and less likely to be prioritised. Not because they matter less, but because the people who use them have less digital access, less time, and less expectation of response.

This does not reflect engineering need. It reflects reporting density. Infrastructure allocation begins to follow voice, not wear.

Information Without Capacity

Hotlines also generate a second, quieter problem: volume. Reporting systems only function when matched by response capacity. More messages do not create more tar, graders, fuel or engineers.

If reporting outpaces repair, the system risks becoming a catalogue of unresolved complaints rather than a tool for improvement.

Acknowledging a problem without resolving it is not neutral. Over time, it corrodes trust.

A pothole that is ignored is frustrating. A pothole that is reported, acknowledged and left unfixed sends a clearer message: the system is listening, but not acting.

This is how participation mechanisms, when poorly resourced, turn into symbols of institutional weakness rather than responsiveness.

Accountability or Deflection?

There is also a subtle governance shift embedded in the policy. Once hotlines exist, explanations for poor road conditions can quietly move from maintenance failure to reporting gaps.

Responsibility does not disappear — it is redistributed.

The key question becomes: Was it reported?

Not: Why was it not maintained?

This reframing is politically convenient. It introduces citizen participation while diluting institutional culpability. Failure becomes procedural rather than structural. It is a familiar pattern in public administration: crowdsourcing the detection of breakdowns instead of investing in systems that prevent them.

Where Hotlines Do Make Sense

None of this suggests reporting channels are inherently flawed.

They are useful for:

Sudden wash-aways after heavy rains

Collapsed bridges

New hazards caused by storms or accidents

In these cases, citizen alerts complement — rather than replace — planned maintenance. But this only works if hotlines sit on top of a functioning maintenance regime, not in place of one.

That requires:

Clear public timelines for repairs

Transparent criteria for prioritisation

Feedback loops showing what action was taken

Independent inspection programmes that do not rely on complaints

Without these, hotlines risk becoming symbolic fixes for material problems.

The Larger Question

The real issue is not whether citizens should report potholes. They already do — informally, loudly and often angrily.

The issue is how government conceptualises infrastructure failure. Potholes are not anomalies. In a context of heavy rains, increasing traffic volumes and constrained budgets, they are predictable outcomes. Treating them as surprises to be flagged misunderstands the nature of the system.

Hotlines assume irregularity. Roads operate on inevitability.

Good infrastructure policy plans for the latter and uses reporting tools sparingly, as supplements, not substitutes.

Simbarashe Namusi is a peace, leadership and governance scholar as well as a media expert, writing in his personal capacity.