…As water crisis deepens
Martha Mamombe
Samson Kasom of Hatcliffe has a daily routine: waking up at 4am every day to fetch water from a community borehole.
Residents of this high density suburb have not had water for a long time “In our home, my wife and I use 40 litres of water a day.
My wife and I bath together to save water, we use 10 litres.
The rest of the water we use to cook, do dishes, drink and flush the toilet.
When it’s laundry day we take the wheelbarrow to get an additional 20 litres,” Kasom told Business Times.
“It’s difficult because we have not had running water in Hatcliffe for some time.
No one knows why.
So, we collect water from the community borehole at 4am every day before there’s a long queue, it’s a 15-minute walk from where we live and we get ready for work after.”
It is not only in Hatcliffe where residents are grappling with this crisis.
In Harare’s suburbs, the story is the same as in Chitungwiza as local authorities fail to provide clean and potable water to residents.
A United Nations report recognised that water was critical and it was a human right for everyone to access it.
It said the water costs should not exceed 3% of household income and the water source has to be within 1,000 metres of the home and collection time should not exceed 30 minutes.
“Water is at the core of sustainable development and is critical for socio-economic development, energy and food production, healthy ecosystems and for human survival itself.
Water is also a rights issue. As the global population grows, there is an increasing need to balance all of the competing commercial demands on water resources so that communities have enough for their needs,” the UN said.
Despite the severity of the problems, it seems the crisis has been normalised.
Water entrepreneurs have sprouted up selling the liquid for household and commercial purposes.
Business Times can report that buying 5000 litres of water costs an average US$40 in Zimbabwe.
But, the US$40 is beyond the reach of many Zimbabweans.
The average Zimbabwean cannot afford $US$40 to access portable water. Under Statutory Instrument 81 of 2020 the national minimum wage is ZWL$2,549.74 (about US$32 using the auction rate).
Although the Zimbabwean dollar is the official legal tender, the greenback is widely used and preferred for its store of value and stability.
In high density suburbs of Harare, those fortunate enough to have wells or boreholes in their backyards don’t donate water to neighbours and the community; it’s an income generating business as they sell water to desperate residents.
Harare Residents Trust director Precious Shumba said: “We have been told by residents that a 20 litre bucket of water is selling at ZWL$20.
“Some people have found a way to get excess water from community boreholes. They collect water for personal use and the rest they sell later to desperate people when the borehole is closed for the day.
The situation is prevalent in densely populated areas of Glen View, Budiriro and Kuwadzana.”
In urban and rural settings, women and men walk long distances with heavy containers carefully placed on their heads or in a wheelbarrow as they take water home from wells and boreholes.
The danger is when safe water can no longer be supplied by responsible authorities, people resort to unsafe water sources often contaminated, resulting in water-borne diseases, often sending the already strained health sector into panic mode.
Urban households store water in bathtubs, buckets, dishes, bins, jars and any other container found in the home.
When local councils fail to deliver the commodity, long queues can be found at public boreholes (many of them courtesy of donors) or water bowser collection points.
The young and old take turns to collect and store as much as possible.
Zimbabwe has struggled to allocate more resources to the water, sanitation and health (WASH).
A UNICEF report showed that WASH sector allocations “fall far below government commitments to the WASH sector and 2018’s budget allocation was only about 0.43% of the total national budget and 0.13% of GDP”.
Water is being recycled in households: the same water used to wash dishes can be used for laundry before it is eventually flushed down the toilet. In some areas, residents have gone for years without water supply as a result of broken pipes that were never repaired.
Desperate times call for desperate measures and boreholes and wells are a means to a desperate end.
“As Harare Residents Trust we are concerned.
This is a real crisis.
Drilling more boreholes across suburbs is not the solution; it will result in the water table being compromised and boreholes running dry.
The city council needs to increase pumping capacity to reach every community and every household,” Shumba said.
The bucket-life has become a way of life.
Harare, the “Sunshine City” as it is affectionately known, supplies water less than 3 times a week to almost every part of the city.
In some areas the plight can be felt for weeks sometimes months when faults are not attended to.
When the precious liquid flows through taps every conceivable container is filled with just about enough supply until the next scheduled supply.
Harare Mayor Jacob Mafume told Business Times the city does not have enough water bodies to give water to all the residents.
“We need to build dams and reservoirs.
The combined cost would not be more than US$250m.
The next step would be building water treatment plants. In addition, we need to refurbish and extend distribution pipes.
The cost of chemicals is high.
Currently we spend ZWL$3m on water chemicals to treat and purify the water,” Mafume said.
The Morton Jaffray Water Treatment Plant, the capital’s main treatment site, has been operating in its current form with no major infrastructural refurbishment since before independence in 1980.
The plant was built over 60 years ago, making it one of the antiquated treatment plants in Zimbabwe. It was built to service a population of about 400,000 and the number has ballooned to three million in Harare, Mafume said.
“The Chinese did some refurbishment of the plant and that has increased capacity to around 640 megalitres per day but the city requires over 1,200 mega litres to provide water everywhere every day,” the mayor said.
The water shortages have seen the resurgence in infectious diseases such as typhoid and cholera break out in some high-density suburbs.
The framework for the development of infrastructure is there, but it is evident that lack of funding, the absence of public-private partnerships and a reactive approach have rendered interim measures to solve the country’s water crisis useless.
Zimbabwe National Water Authority Corporate Communications Officer, Marjorie Munyonga said the water authority was hamstrung to provide water to towns and growth points.
“We can’t really say we are giving 100% supply to the 500 small towns and growth points across the country we are responsible for because of many challenges.
Our infrastructure is obsolete and old and can no longer satisfy demand. We also have electricity challenges, load shedding and electrical faults.
Some of our clients take so long to pay rates. We are currently owed in excess of $US$1.2bn,” Munyonga said.
In the face of a global pandemic such as the Covid-19, questions will be raised over how resilience building mechanisms need to include provision of water as a source of life and basic human need and right. While it may not be known how and when Zimbabwe’s water crisis will be resolved, experts say a multi-stakeholder approach is required to find lasting solutions to avert any health hazard that can arise from lack of consistent water supply.
Analysts said it was long overdue for Zimbabwe to be afforded the right to consistent tap water supply.
For Kasom, the recycling of water will be with him for a long time.
