The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Senior Municipal Reporter
THE year 2020 has arguably been a trying year globally and definitely one that will go down in history as the most difficult one in recent years.
With the Covid-19 pandemic accounting for over 1,2 million deaths with over 48 million being affected globally, this is one year which has definitely brought about a shift in world history, with historians in coming generations likely to term it; the year of the coronavirus, in the same vein we refer the year 1918 as the year of the Spanish Flue.
However, for Bulawayo residents, to add on to the scare of Covid-19 the city has already been identified as a hotspot — residents also have the added burden of enduring the worst water crisis in recent years. The city went from an initial 96-hour water shedding regime, which was later increased to 120 hours and eventually 144 hours a week. In the past couple of months, the local authority has further tightened the schedule by saying residents get water as and when its available, developing what they term a daily provisional water supply restoration schedule.
For residents, searching for the precious liquid has become a norm, as they opt for either council bowsers, boreholes or the water kiosks that have been constructed by the local authority working with various funding partners.
The water situation has come with its unfortunate lows with the city recording a number of diarrhoea and typhoid cases, the worst being recorded in Luveve where there have been more than 2 000 diarrhoea cases, leading to the death of 13 people.
The water problem has affected the viability of industrial operations too with one of the largest and one of the few industries operating in the city — United Refineries Limited — announcing that they were scaling down operations due to the unavailability of water.
URL said water supplies at its factory in the last seven days have not improved forcing the firm to suspend operations.
Suffice to say URL is one of the few companies that have remained loyally headquartered in the city while most either shut down or relocated to the capital, Harare. Besides remaining operational in the past years, URL has maintained a capacity utilisation of above 80 percent.
Ironically the statement by URL came at a time when the local authority continually flighted advertisements claiming industries were exempted from any water shedding to allow productivity to continue. With this obvious perennial crisis, a lot of schools of thought have emerged from possible solutions to the actual solution both short and long term.
In his undergraduate degree thesis, titled Dry City: A history of water problems in Bulawayo, 1980-2014, Methembe Hadebe likens Bulawayo to be an ecologically cursed region with low rainfall of between 400 millimetres to 600 milimetres per annum.
“One can conclude that water paucity of Bulawayo since 1980 has been necessitated by the geographical location of the city, population density straining water supply, obsolete water supply infrastructure, the decommissioning of dams, financial constraint and lack of resources to explore underground reservoirs in the Nyamandlovu Aquifer and Epping Forest,” notes Hadebe in his study.
The year 2020 itself has seen the city decommissioning three of its six supply dams — Umzingwane, Upper Ncema and Lower Ncema, with council officials attributing the crisis to the drought being experienced in the region.
As a means of developing emergence solutions to alleviate the crisis, both Government and BCC have pooled resources to complete the Epping Forest borehole project which will see the city get an additional 10 megalitres (ML) per day to the depressed city’s water supplies.
The local authority has also been talking about the controversial rehabilitation of the heavily polluted Khami Dam water and also said they had discovered another aquifer near Matopo, with a feasibility study being undertaken.
However, as a planning authority a lot of questions can be asked to BCC officials, because for a number of years the city’s water problems have been said to be perennial yet there seems to be an attitude to work when the crisis arises.
Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BPRA) co-ordinator, Mr Emmanuel Ndlovu said while he acknowledged the water crisis and the drought bedevilling the region, Zimbabwe and Bulawayo’s water problems in particular were man-made.
He said the country had 10 747 dams and more per capita than any of its regional partners, while in the Matabeleland region there was still a notable shortage of dams this resulted in the perennial water shortages being experienced in areas such as Bulawayo.
“While council carries the immediate burden of blame due to it being the tier of public authority closer to and best accessible to the communities, the project is much bigger and more complex. Central Government has not done enough to address the water problems and creating more dams.
“The problem has been accelerated by lack of leadership and water blindness within the BCC. BCC must take responsibility for persistent technical faults and pipe bursts that have deprived residents of the precious liquid. BCC continues to supply contaminated water and can’t blame the Central Government for this. This is a result of poor leadership,” said Mr Ndlovu.
On the possible solutions to the crisis, Mr Ndlovu said there was a top-down syndrome within both Government and council such that residents were overlooked as stakeholders of the city, who could go a long way in helping identify lasting solutions.
“Three weeks back we visited Nyamandlovu Aquifer and from what we saw, Rochester and Epping Forest cannot be touted as the panacea to Bulawayo’s water woes. Speeding up the bulk pipeline from Mtshabezi to Ncema might ease the water crisis.
“There is a need for long term investment in water. The problem we have is worsened by a total dependence on personal or personalised and top-down solutions to societal problems. BCC is currently doing management by crisis and this will not work in the long run. A permanent solution is needed and if the current leaders can’t think of a solution then they must pack their bags and go,” said the BPRA co-ordinator.
National University of Science and Technology academic and water expert, Dr Lerato Nare said one of the major issues that had led to the water crisis in the city was the lack of investment in water resources. He noted that since independence only one dam had been constructed in the city — Mtshabezi — at a time when the city’s population continued to grow, thereby requiring more alternative water sources.
“It’s not only the dams but also BCC is still relying on Criterion Water treatment plant, a facility that was constructed way before independence, of which it does not need a technocrat to tell you that it is now obsolete and cannot service the entire Bulawayo population.
“What we need now is for more investment in water infrastructure of which for now I believe we can look at the Epping Forest project, rehabilitation of Khami Dam water and rain water harvesting. The local authority must also look at water conservation methods, knowing very well that this crisis is now perennial, hence they must always be ready,” said Dr Nare.
He further noted that the Gwayi-Shangani Dam was a long-term solution but required major investment while dismissing the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project as a pipe dream.
Dr Nare said the local authority must also adhere to the principles of integrated water resources management which among other things required them to be in constant communication with all relevant stakeholders as they work towards finding a lasting solution to the water crisis.
“I will give you an example of the rehabilitation of Khami Dam water; there is no honest discussion relating to that matter. If council is genuine, they could at lease avail information relating to the pollution levels of all their supply dams and further educate people on this Khami water because as a water expert I believe that honestly that is one of the major solutions to this crisis.
“To be honest if BCC followed the principles of integrated water resources management, the public will appreciate that with the advancement of technology all water is now recyclable. I am further prepared to put my head on the block that when you compare, the water from Khami Dam is way better than that at Lake Chivero in terms of pollution, but it is now for BCC technocrats to now tell us that,” said Dr Nare.
Therefore, as the city continues to ponder on the next step to take in solving this water crisis, there is a need for all stakeholders to realise that for society to function there is always need for water, as Anglo-American poet, Wystan Hugh Auden famously put it; “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.”
