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Zimbabwe: Byo a Victim of Dangerous Political Games - Tsvangirai
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Financial Gazette (Harare)
OPINION
13 December 2007
Posted to the web 13 December 2007
Morgan Tsvangirai
OPPOSITION leader Morgan Tsvangirai, after a tour of Bulawayo, said the city that was once the bastion of Zimbabwe's industry is in decay. Here, he writes for The Financial Gazette on the crisis, and how he thinks the decline in local government can be reversed.
WHILE it is generally acknowledged that dictators are known for their willful callousness and amazing exploits to waste away their kith and kin, there comes a time when a people are forced to unite against abuse and resist.
A major human catastrophe has been allowed to fester in Bulawayo, with a water shortage that is slowly, but surely, grating itself towards a messy spectacle.
Like the early days of Gukurahundi, information was deliberately denied to the entire nation with regards to the extent of state brutality on ordinary citizens. Today, Zimbabweans are totally unaware of the seriousness of the water shortage in Bulawayo and its impact on life in that beleaguered city.
(President) Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF think they can punish a whole community with impunity, for its supposed political sins either historical or contemporary. But the people have set their countdown timers and have the solution to the deepening level of neglect they see and experience every day.
In its prime, Bulawayo was the place to be: an industrial hub strategically located to service southern Africa with a bustling manufacturing, textile, agriculture (beef, milk, hides and skins), leather, cultural and tourism industry.
The question uppermost in people's minds is: what happened to Bulawayo? Why has ZANU PF and (President) Mugabe placed the city in a low-intensity genocidal phase, especially after independence? Many immediately think of the politics of exclusion and retribution, with some justification.
Zimbabweans see Bulawayo as the centre of excellence, a meeting point for diversity and tolerance and an historical school for trade union and political activism. Most nationalistic politicians today came through Bulawayo.
Today Bulawayo, affectionately known as the City of Kings, is a shell of its former self -- without water, without electricity, a fast receding industrial base with no jobs, no food and no opportunity.
What ZANU PF and (President) Mugabe have failed to destroy is hope. The people of Bulawayo have a vision. The people of Bulawayo can see a New Zimbabwe. They are determined to shape the future.
Bulawayo requires 160 000 cubic metres of raw water a day to meet all essential needs and to regain its lost glitter. The city has the capacity to supply 180 000 cubic metres a day from five supply dams -- all constructed by the city itself over a 60-year period.
These five supply dams all deliver water by gravity feed to the municipal pump station at Lower Ncema dam from where the raw water is delivered to the water purification plant at Criterion in Bulawayo.
Ten years ago the government built a new dam at Mtshabezi in the Matopo Hills but failed to complete the project by installing a pump station and the necessary pipeline to feed water to the Ncema pump station. During a previous crisis, the government established a network of 77 large wells at an aquifer in Nyamandlovu.
The capacity of these new facilities at the time of design was 20 000 cubic metres a day from Mtshabezi and 35 000 cubic metres day from the aquifer.
In the last two years, low run-off (2005/6) and low rainfall (2006/7) resulted in the gradual shut down of the supply dams with four now decommissioned -- the last (Inyankuni) just two weeks ago. This leaves one dam to supply the city -- Insiza and this is now 37 percent full.
While this was happening vandalism and theft of equipment and pipelines have rendered the majority of the wells on the aquifer unusable. Only a few wells are running and the system is delivering a mere 2 000 cubic metres a day.
The total water supply to the city has declined to such low levels, which are grossly insufficient to meet even the most basic of needs. I saw the dams at the weekend; they have been reduced to little puddles.
I was with the people at water collection points. Widows and mothers told me harrowing tales of blocked sewer systems, of diarhorrea outbreaks, of struggling maternity hospitals, boarding schools and hotels and of desperate factories. I shall be in Bulawayo again to mobilise people against this continuing nonsense. We have to stop the social and human hemorrhage.
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I met the Bulawayo executive mayor Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube, who firmly believes the city is a victim of dangerous political games -- all designed to punish and control the people.
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