Back to Index

Water Problems haunt Mabvuku - Life under threat
Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA)
Extracted from The Resident Issue 35
June 07, 2004

The toilets reek human filth. Hoards of flies roam round the homestead, settling on the food, on the children's lips, and hovering just above the parents' heads. They have grown tired of chasing them away. Some of the children play dejectedly in the dusty tracks, their feet covered in dirt. The mother on normal occasions would have screamed at them for doing this. Today they are in a pensive mood, dribbling in their mind the prospects of sacrificing a quarter of their grocery money to purchase a 4 gallons of water at a nearby borehole.

This is not an excerpt from Alan Quatrain's African Adventure Series, nor is it a prelude to Dambudzo Marechera's House of Hunger, it is the harsh reality of what has become everyday life in Mabvuku. Residents in the area have been without water for the past weeks now. Council has offered piecemeal solutions to the problem in the form of water bowsers and promises of improved water supply. The Resident Minister for Harare Metropolitan, Dr. Witness Mangwende has been quoted by ZBC TV as saying that government has plans to build a lot of dams in Harare, a promise sounding shallow given that the Kunzvi Water project has been on the cards for half a decade now, and needs the same time to be completed.

State media reports that residents in the Eastern part of the city cannot bear to wait any longer. "Our children can no longer go to school because there is no water." said a woman who appeared on ZBC's NewsHour on the 09th of May 2004. "The toilets are a mess and the boreholes do not provide safe water. We are being charged to draw water from protected boreholes. "The City council taps are dry... we do not know what to do" Newsnet filmed a man taking a sip from an open water source in Mabvuku, this amid reports that in some areas the water sources were filled with used condoms and were not guarded from people who could abuse them in the night.

The Resident is appalled at the situation in Mabuku. Both government and council must come up with an urgent solution to the problem or risk having a humanitarian disaster at their hands. ZINWA, the water authority must awaken from its slumber and provide timeous interventions not only to Harare but to all local authorities with support from Central Government.

Water is a right, it is life and has to be readily available for all citizens at affordable prices and must be safe. Is Harare Water crisis not a National Crisis? What a health hazard we are nurturing by not providing clean water to residents! Were are the rights of children to education being exercised when schools close for a week or so because there is no water?

What about the right to life when men, women, boys and girls and made to drink highly contaminated water from unprotected wells and rivers? Please offer your practical suggestions especially in light of June the 5th, World Environment Day.

Visit the CHRA fact sheet

Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.

TOP