Bulawayo: a dying city

Bulawayo: a dying city

• Harare needs billions to restore water supplies

• Raw sewage contaminates Harare water

• Schools shut as Bulawayo runs dry

By Bekithemba Mhlanga

SOME fourteen years ago, as a budding reporter with the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, I produced a 30-minute programme highlighting the water crisis facing Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest City at that time.

The City of Kings was said to be staring death at that time and the furore raised by the issue reverberated throughout the corridors of power endlessly for many months. So pronounced was the issue that Evans Ndebele, the entrepreneur behind Zimbabwe Express Airlines, named one of his planes after the crisis – simply called Water for Bulawayo.

That was not all. Arnold Payne, an enduring thorn on the side of government, the local authority and all those that he viewed as being blind to the problem, pushed a wheel burrow all the way from Victoria Falls to Bulawayo to highlight the problem.

It was a symbolic gesture to raise the urgency of the crisis to the authorities to speed up the implementation of the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project which seeks to draw water from the mighty Zambezi to Bulawayo.

The forked-tongue minister responsible for water security at that time, the late Herbert Ushewokunze, dismissed the issue with contempt in a slanging match with Eric Bloch at a Zimbabwe National Chamber of Commerce dinner at the Bulawayo Holiday Inn.

A few days later, the Bulawayo City Council began laying the pipeline to draw water from the Nyamandlovu Aquifer and when I broke that story, the then Town Clerk of Bulawayo Mike Ndubiwa chastised me for placing in danger the whole project.

How I was doing this remained a mystery. Only a few weeks later, the late Vice President Muzenda commissioned the Nyamandlovu Aquifer amid pomp and praise to those gathered on the day. In an interview with Muzenda on the day, I asked him point blank what the government's long term plan was in dealing with the water situation in Bulawayo specifically and Matabeleland in general.

To quote from my notes on the day he said: “We want to take the water from Bulawayo to Nyamandlovu, then to the Gwayi–Shangani Dam and finally to the Zambezi River.”

ZBC ran the tap just like that. Whether he got his bearings wrong or he was being his usual funny self or worse still was relaying the flippancy with which the government was treating the issue is up for debate.

My gut instinct is that the latter was probably the correct point. Bulawayo was then to be dotted with boreholes in no time with residents queuing up to collect water on a daily basis thereafter – and the villagisation of the City had begun in earnest.

An accountant with one of the big four accounting firms in the City said to me that the government would never allow the second largest City to die due to the revenue that it generated for the state coffers. If he were to visit Bulawayo again today, he would discover how naive he was in his analysis.

Hundreds if not thousands of people today are faced with the real threat of diseases brought about by the severe water shortages the City is facing. Some suburbs are going for days without water. Drinking water has become a luxury, bathing water and for the toilets has become yesterday's dream.

Men, women and children have been reduced to water beggars. Yet up to this day, the government has remained silent on a threat posed by this lack of water. The excuse that the region is suffering because of its location will not hold water any more. Excuse the pun.

At the heart of this problem lies the government of Zimbabwe's inability to think strategically about Matabeleland’s infrastructural requirements that have been common knowledge to this government and that of Ian Smith before it.

Residents of Bulawayo will be excused for thinking that there is something in the DNA of this government that makes it think it’s right and proper that Bulawayo and Matabeleland deserve this kind of treatment.

The idea that the government has fears about what a green belt in Matabeleland brought about by the pipeline will mean for economic, social and political independence of the area cannot be dismissed as a far fetched concept.

Prior to the meddling in the running of the affairs of the city by the government, Bulawayo's plans and provision of services such as water was second to none. Indeed if this had continued, the city would have been in a position to have made adequate plans to deal with a crisis that is now unfolding in front of everyone's eyes with little or no action towards dealing with this problem.

Fair enough, the problem cannot be blamed only on the Zanu PF government, but also on the shoulders of its newest recruits since the Unity Accord. While the expectation was that the Dumiso Dabengwas, the John Nkomos and the Cain Mathemas of this world would be shouting from rooftops – the deafening silence and inaction on their part has been alarming. One is reminded of a Zipra combatant who said “with this lot leading the war effort – no wonder it took so long”.

There is still an opportunity to redeem the situation for the future. The Matabeleland water crisis must be wrested from the clutches of Zanu PF, its new recruits, and Gideon Gono who have tried to make it a personal agenda to be stroked, cuddled and caressed for political gains when necessary. The people of Bulawayo must reclaim it once more as once did Arnold Payne, Evans Ndebele, Joshua Malinga and the late Sidney Malunga.

That must be followed by a strong public awareness campaign both at home and internationally to highlight the crisis that is slowly unfolding. This will have to be followed up by a concerted resource mobilisation from individuals, international bodies, trusts and foundations across the length and breadth of this world.

Most of the technical work, the business cases and the financing requirements for the project have been done before. All that is needed would be to bring them up to date and actioned by women and men who have the interests of Matabeleland at heart.

Bulawayo must not die, but it will die if the status quo is allowed to prevail.

Bekithemba Mhlanga is a Zimbabwean journalist and writes from West Sussex, England
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