WATCH: Lake Mutirikwi: Where tourism meets power generation and agriculture

Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter

WHILE the whole of Zimbabwe was in a celebratory mood when Tugwi-Mukosi Dam was opened in 2016, Tendai Maulana and other residents who were working near Lake Mutirikwi were apprehensive at this new development.
Lake Mutirikwi reigned as the country’s largest inland dam since the 1960s.

Now, 56 years later, that reign was over and Maulana and others thought the water body’s crowning glory would take away interest in Lake Mutirikwi.

Zimbabweans, they thought, were now likely to turn their attention to the new kid on the block, ignoring the water jewel that Masvingo has been exploiting agriculturally and in the tourism sector.

Life for Lake Mutirikwi was already tough enough as it was, given that it is located in the shadow of the Great Zimbabwe monuments. A second counter attraction would be fatal, they thought.

However, eight years later, interest in Lake Mutirikwi is at its peak and that is partly due to the US$14.5 million mini-hydro-power plant being developed by Great Zimbabwe Hydro-Power Company.

The five-megawatt (5MW) power station, which is expected to enhance the energy supply in Masvingo Province and feed into the national grid is expected to be commissioned in the next six weeks.

While the commissioning of the power station is a welcome development for the country’s strained electricity generation capacity, the construction efforts have left an impression on those who live near the dam, giving what was already a picturesque place an added dimension.

As more people flock to see the new Lake Mutirikwi, Maulana, who works for the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) is chuffed at the increased traffic of visitors they have been seeing.

“We are grateful for the power generation project because it has taken Lake Mutirikwi back on the map,” he said in an interview last week.

“We had fears that because of Tugwi-Mukosi, which is larger, Lake Mutirikwi would cease being the attraction that it used to be in the past.

“However, this project has meant that we still capture the imagination of Zimbabweans and we are grateful for that.

There is curiosity among people who thought Lake Mutirikwi no longer had anything to offer. They can see it is now very vibrant again. As residents here, we are also interested in seeing the power generation project taking shape because, for a lot of us, it is the first time seeing something of this nature being built.”

With Kyle Recreational Park near the lake offering activities including skiing, fishing, boating, yachting and game viewing by boat, it is no wonder why Lake Mutirikwi has become a hit with tourists from home and abroad.

A dam that was initially built to provide water to the farming estates in the Lowveld to the southwest around the town of Triangle has managed to reinvent itself many times over and it is now a hub for tourism, power generation and agriculture. It is an evolution that the likes of Maulana have watched unfold with keen interest.

“When it is full, it carries a capacity of 1 400 cubic metres of water and that means it can churn out five megawatts of electricity. It was important for the water in the dam to be converted to that purpose because there was a realisation that when it was not used, it would just end up flooding agricultural land. Of course, this is meant to be water for agricultural purposes but there was a need to use it for other purposes.

“This dam was initially meant for farming but in the modern era, tourism has also become one of its main offerings. It is now an old structure with a long history stretching back to the colonial era and that has made it attractive. In addition to that, while we might not have any major companies operating here, we have fishing co-operatives that are reaping the benefits from Lake Mutirikwi,” he said.

While domestic tourism was thriving at Lake Mutirikwi, Maulana said more still needed to be done to entice international visitors, as most only wanted to see the Great Zimbabwe when in Masvingo.

“We do get many visitors from countries like South Africa and Zambia but I think our greatest challenge is positioning it on the tourism map. We are still not as prominent as Great Zimbabwe. We would like to see more people from those countries come in greater numbers. I think we need to strike up more partnerships with Great Zimbabwe because the dam is part and parcel of it. Some of the Great Zimbabwe’s ruins are buried here,” he said.

Tumburai Tumburai, a loss control officer at Zinwa, said they were getting a lot of visitors, who included church groups. While others sought a view of a beautiful African sunset, others only sought to be closer to their maker at Lake Mutirikwi’s waters.

“We have a lot of school children coming here for trips and they have a lot of curiosity about the place. They want to know what rivers feed Lake Mutirikwi and other such information. Then we also have a lot of people that come here for a nice time, to have a braai while looking at the spectacular view.

“People spend the whole day here, experiencing nature because what they see here is not there in Harare and other places in the urban parts of Zimbabwe.

“Schools have always been a major clientele for us but recently, churches have also joined in. A lot of them come here for prayer sessions. We also have the local people from Masvingo and Zimbabwe at large who now have a renewed interest and are trickling in to see Lake Mutirikwi in larger numbers.

“Most of our clientele visit us on weekends and public holidays. A lot of people want to spend their special days here and watch the sunset,” he said.