Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
IT is impossible to miss the house George Zulu has called home for the past two decades.
When one gets to Pelandaba West and drives a short distance south past the shopping centre called Emakharathini, Zulu’s home, which is located downhill, comes into view.
Standing alone and surrounded by what from a distance just looks like an untamed bush, the house stands out like a sore thumb, looking old and tired in comparison to the rest of the suburb.
When city fathers initially conceived the idea of the suburb, purchasing Hyde Park Estate in 1947 as part of the city’s strategy of creating a land bank for future urban development, they would have hoped that the houses that would be built on that suburb would be modern and eye-catching.
In 2002, motivated by the desire to ease the city’s swelling housing backlog, council broke ground on the suburb which is sandwiched by Pelandaba and the expansive Pumula South.
Back then, it was envisioned that the suburb, initially estimated to be built at a cost of $100m, would hold 1 600 low-cost houses.
Today, Pelandaba West looks anything but low-cost. Looking at the housing units that have been built there, one could be forgiven for thinking that some of the city’s so-called “leafy suburbs” had been lifted from the eastern half of Bulawayo and transplanted with surgical precision into the middle of Bulawayo’s western suburbs.
Paved driveways, French doors, and Venetian blinds are all hallmarks of houses in a suburb that seems to perfectly encapsulate the property developments that are taking place in Bulawayo.
However, amid all this modern splendour, Zulu’s home sticks out like a sore finger.
The walls of his home, which is built in the style of a farmhouse, have been patched more than once, giving it several shades like a torn garment that has had to be sewn back together several times.
A rusty metal roof is also similarly worn out, with several holes covered up by plastic and other materials. When Sunday Life visited him at his modest abode, Zulu told the news crew that he felt as if he was living in a different time period from his neighbours. Several of these housing units, the few remnants of the old Hyde Park, still stand in Pelandaba West and partly Pumula South, with most of them lacking basic services like sewer and water reticulation.
Zulu revealed that he had raised an entire generation of children in darkness in the six-roomed house, as he had never had a supply of electricity.
“There’s water at this particular house but we haven’t had electricity since we moved in here in 2000. So for over 20 years we have been living in the dark. We have raised our children in the dark and they don’t know how it feels to have electricity in their home for most of the day. Sometimes we don’t miss it anymore because this is how we are used to living. “We are grateful to at least have water and for cooking, we mostly use firewood we buy from poachers that pass through here on a regular basis. Gas is also an option but it is a bit more expensive so we rarely use it,” he said.
Jabulani Hadebe, who shares the house with Zulu, said while the rest of the country looked forward to the rainy season, cloudy skies only brought worry to them, as their leaky roofs left them at the mercy of inclement weather.
“Of course, we would like to see the house renovated. Look, at that? We are patching up the roof with plastic so that it can hold up. This place becomes hell in certain weather conditions. I’m sure a lot of people are looking forward to the rains because they believe that it will lead to a good harvest but for us, it is the opposite because when it rains, that’s when you worry about the kind of place you might be sleeping in,” he said.
Some of the old houses visited play host to a number of families who, despite the lack of running water, ablution facilities and other amenities, seemingly live in harmony despite the ever-present threat of diseases.
In one such household, Sunday Life was introduced to a man known as Mastanda (landlord), who revealed that they had not had running water for the past of two years. Bottles of illicit whisky (njengu) littered the yard of the dilapidated empire that Mastanda, real name Vincent Mpofu, resides.
A choir of flies buzzed over the makeshift Blair toilet that he and his “tenants” constructed, as he revealed that they had learnt to live without water.
“One of the problems that we face here is that we don’t have both water and electricity. That makes life very hard for us because while these things are in short supply in Bulawayo, it is a permanent situation for us. You live without even the hope that electricity will come back later at night or water will start flowing some days later. What is life without hope? From our resources, we build our own makeshift Blair toilet and a nearby borehole where we get our water for cooking and other things. It is a difficult life but we make do,” he said.
Mpofu revealed that they faced accusations of theft and other criminal acts from their neighbours who lived in more fashionable houses.
“The last time we had water was in 2022 and that was the time there was a dispute between the people that were living here at the time. From that time onwards, the water was cut and it has never been reconnected. We would like to get the services other people get of course because you can look around and see how beautiful houses around here are. Due to the dilapidated nature of our home, we stand out and sometimes people will accuse us of things we aren’t aware of. Some might think we harbour thieves or things like that but we are just ordinary people,” he said.
While others might be crying foul at the state of their old houses, Senzeni Nkomo, said she could not imagine herself living in any other place. As ramshackle as her old house might appear, she said it was at least a place that she could confidently call home.
“We have adjusted to life without electricity. It is not something that bothers us as much anymore. We have water so that has made our condition very tolerable. We are not complaining. Life is good and cannot think of any other place I could call home,” she said.
