The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday News Reporter
MS Santa Mabuya (56) does not believe that the rains will come soon enough to save the people of Sitezi Village, in Gwanda, Matabeleland South.
It is an ordinary afternoon in the village located in Nkangala under Chief Mathema and Ms Mabuya is out with two of her neighbours on Mntuli River. The dry, sandy banks of the river have become a second home to the three women and many from around the village.
Like spider webs, white lines emerge from the above soles of Ms Mabuya’s feet, rising all the way up shins. Her lips are chapped and their thirst seems only matched by the soil of the Mntuli River. For a long time the river has been a trusted ally that the community always turns to when others run dry. However, this is not the case this year. Energy sapping heat pounds the bare river and as has often been the case in the last few years, the Mntuli River seems as thirsty as the women who, year after year, turn to it for salvation. The heavens have become stingy, only letting loose sporadic showers throughout the year. This is not enough to quench Mntuli River’s thirst.
As another wet season beckons, instead of gathering clouds pregnant with rain, Ms Mabuya sees death looming on the horizon.
“If God locks the heavens until December, then you’ll need to bring tractors to get dead bodies out of here. People are going to die,” Ms Mabuya told Sunday News when it visited the drought stricken village.
The drought is taking a toll on the women. They wake up in the middle of the night, before the earliest cock has crowed, and forage for water. The places from which they can draw water decrease by the month. Each year the water sources dwindle. Ms Betty Mlilo (52) believes that the watering hole from which the women draw water on Mntuli River is where the community is making its last stand. There is simply no water body that they can draw water from after this one is depleted.
“We wake up every day at 2.30am and come to draw water here. We light our fires and start singing songs. We only bring a few buckets because the whole community uses these holes for water. The water surfaces in small drops so we have to make sure that we all have just enough to cook. We also get a little for the animals as well. The animals don’t drink much because we make sure that they just wet their throats only. We can’t afford to give them more than that,” Ms Mlilo said.
Most of the women have to walk long distances for the small volumes of water that they get. According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (Desa) in rural sub-Saharan Africa, 37 percent of the population is 30 minutes or more away from a safe drinking water source. As the women of Sitezi can attest, this worsens in times of drought. Once upon-a-time water related problems were not so severe. Ms Mabuya still remembers with fondness the abundant boreholes in Kezi, where she grew up and lived before she got married. She also remembers the beauty of bountiful Mntuli in the earlier days of her marriage, when the water used to gush downstream uninhibited.
Over the last few years however, she says that the river got “torn”.
“So even if it rains the water never flows on the surface but instead it flows beneath the soil and we have to dig to get to it,” she said.
Due to the unwritten rules of tradition, the task of finding water falls on the women. “There are no men here,” Ms Mabuya said when Sunday News inquired why only women made the nightly pilgrimage to this community’s sole remaining watering hole.
Matabeleland South has a high rate of immigration, with most men in the province moving to mainly South Africa in search of better job prospects. When Sunday News visited Sitezi, the whole village seemed to be stuck in a time loop. The few men that have remained in the village were happy to waste away the hours of the day at a local bar. They drank traditional brew while under the shade of the white walls of the bar, with fading signs advertising 90s style Protector Plus condoms and Norolon tablets over them.
Also in the atmosphere, unseen but ever-present, were old gender stereotypes and rules that made sure that the women spent half their night and most of their day on the Mntuli River while the men watched life pass them by in a stupor.
As climate change hits home, and villages in the drought prone regions wilt under the heat, women bear the full brunt of environmental changes. According to the United Nations Development Programme, “There is a direct relationship between gender equality, women’s empowerment and climate change. On the one hand, women are disproportionately vulnerable to the effects of climate change, which could, in turn, exacerbate existing gender disparities”.
In Sitezi, this gender disparity does not only apply to the older women but to those even younger. At nearby Sitezi Primary School, where some girls have just reached puberty, this has presented a new set of challenges.
“The children carry water by bottles to school but that isn’t enough,” said Ms Sipho Mpofu (47). Ms Mpofu is the acting village head, standing in for her husband who is also not resident in the village. She does not disclose where he is presently.
“Can you imagine this is the same water that they use to drink and also the water that they use to clean toilets while they’re at school? As for girls the situation is worse because if we can’t get water to bath their basic hygiene needs are neglected.
“Right now we just want water to cook. We don’t bath anymore. We aren’t concerned by that. The most important thing for us now is to get water for cooking because without that we would simply starve,” Ms Mpofu said.
The struggle faced by the women of Sitezi is similar to the trails of women in Zimbabwe’s neighbouring countries as the whole southern African region struggles with drought. According to experts at the Global Change Institute (GCI) at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, temperatures in Southern Africa have risen on average by twice as much as global temperatures.
South African weekly publication the Sunday Times last week reported that women in Qwaqwa in the eastern Free State have to make a two-hour round in Maluti-a-Phofung municipality. Locals in that area have said that they have been struggling for water for the past 15 years and the municipality has since declared the area a disaster zone.
While the struggle for the emancipation of women continues, the changes are not trickling down to women in the lower rungs of society as fast as authorities would wish. Article 12 of the Sadc Protocol on Gender and Development (2008) requires that “States Parties shall endeavour that, by 2015, at least fifty percent of decision-making positions in the public and private sectors are held by women including the use of affirmative action measures as provided for in Article 5.”
Legislation and gender sensitivity activism has meant that this is now closer to reality than ever. A number of countries, including Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa and Tanzania, have on average more than 30 percent women’s representation in the upper and lower houses of parliament. In Lesotho, 58 percent of local government positions are filled by women. A number of countries have legislated minimum quotas for women’s representation in parliaments.
However, for women in the lower rungs of the social, economic and political ladder, old perceptions and stereotypes are still prevalent and when adverse climatic conditions like droughts hit, they are reminded of their place in the pecking order. The impact of the drought on livestock has been equally devastating. The Department of Veterinary Services revealed to Sunday News last week that 5 000 cattle have so far been wiped out in Matabeleland South, with Gwanda losing 600. The figures, Matabeleland South provincial livestock specialist Mr Hatitye Muchemwa said, could be worse as those given only represented reported cases.
In Sitezi, the death of livestock has given rise to rural myths.
