Water becomes critical issue in Zimbabwe poll

A Zimbabwean rates amnesty of $600-million (R8.1-billion) in 2013 still haunts the functioning of cities and towns.

The pardon was ordered in the run-up to the 2013 election by President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF.

Cities and major towns remain hamstrung by scant revenue inflows and decaying infrastructure. This has resulted in water shortages and a health crisis and has hobbled industry in ramping up production.

With no money to upgrade and extend urgently required infrastructure, major urban centres are buckling under the weight of either water-borne diseases or a struggle to supply running water. Harare has an outbreak of typhoid and in Bulawayo the city's water infrastructure has been unable to cope with the population growth.

Bulawayo, once considered the country's industrial hub,implemented a 72-hour water cut late last year in an attempt to manage its limited supplies. The water cut was suspended in the new year following good rains.

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These infrastructure problems are curtailing efforts by industry to revive operations, attract foreign investment and get the wheels of the economy turning again.

Industries are operating at about 47% capacity, according to the Confederation of Zimbabwe Industries, which cites water and power cuts as threats to operations.

Eddie Cross, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change's spokesman on local government, blames the Mugabe government for the empty coffers of the town and city councils. The MDC controls 16 urban and three rural centres in Zimbabwe.

"The decision, for purely short-term political reasons, to cancel at the stroke of a pen over $600-million in outstanding rates and taxes in 2013 by the then minister Ignatius Chombo has crippled the urban councils financially," Cross said this week.

"With total revenues from all sources for all urban councils now running at about $600-million a year - half of which is in Harare - and urban council populations now exceeding eight million people, this gives the councils an annual spend of just $75 per capita per annum. This is a totally inadequate sum to deal with their many urgent priorities."

Nearly 97% of Zimbabwe's monthly revenue gathered by the Treasury from taxes pays the salaries of public servants. The remaining 3% is all that is left over for capital projects - hardly enough to make a dent in the vast infrastructure projects which Zimbabwe urgently needs.

Cross said that with no new investments in water infrastructure, the strain was unbearable for the country's ever-growing cities, which had the same water-supply infrastructure that they inherited at independence in 1980.

"Bulk storage of water in all urban areas is down to 18 months or less, rather than the three years previously stipulated," said Cross.

"Plans for new bulk-water sources such as the Gwayi-Shangani and Harare North water supplies have not made any progress despite years of planning and promises," he said.

With the onset of each rainy season, heavy downpours have not only exposed the extent of decay in infrastructure in the urban centres, but also laid bare the vulnerability of the health sector, which has not been spared the effects of the economic collapse.

The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights said this week that burst pipes, unsafe water and poor sanitation in Harare violated residents' right to a healthy environment. More than 130 cases of typhoid have been recorded in the capital, two of them resulting in death.

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Recent statistics provided by the Ministry of Health and child care also paint a gloomy picture of a country in which a range of water-borne diseases led to the deaths of 529 people last year.

A breakdown of statistics from the Health Ministry shows that diarrhoea claimed 435 lives, dysentery 84, typhoid nine and cholera one.

Harare was hard hit by a cholera outbreak in 2008. It took several months to contain because of the parlous state in which the economic collapse has left the health system.

In total during the 2008 cholera epidemic, 98,596 cases of cholera were recorded and 4,369 people died, which made it the largest outbreak of cholera recorded in Zimbabwe.

Bernard Manyenyeni, the Harare mayor, said this week that responses to the typhoid outbreak in the capital had "been belated and slow at both council and national levels".

The response in part is explained by the use of the outbreak by Zanu-PF as an opportunity to score political points against the MDC-run urban centres.

Already the ruling party has claimed that the urban councils, which are run by the MDC, were responsible for the 529 deaths linked to water-borne diseases last year because of poor service delivery.

With elections set for next year, the ruling party is now focusing on the failures of the MDC-run city councils in an effort to curry favour with urban voters.

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Traditionally, Zanu-PF has enjoyed support from the rural centres, but it has increasingly been envious of the opposition's control of the urban centres since the 2013 elections.

It has since then resorted to overtures that include populist policies, such as the $600-million rates amnesty, threats and even the use of the law to try to wrest the urban centres from the grip of the MDC.

Saviour Kasukuwere, the local government minister who doubles as the Zanu-PF national commissar - a task which includes mobilising the party's grassroots supporters - blamed what he called the inefficiency of the MDC-run local authorities.

"They [MDC councillors] have been allocating themselves stands, getting the best pieces of land at the expense of service delivery," he said.

Obert Gutu, the MDC national spokesman, said Kasukuwere's allegations that MDC councillors had been lining their pockets at the expense of service delivery were untrue.

"Against intolerable and oppressive interference from Kasukuwere, the MDC councillors have actually done extremely well to discharge their duties efficiently and effectively in the various councils," he said.

The politicisation of the typhoid crisis, Manyenyeni said, was a tragedy.

"The water and sanitation situation is a matter of long-term deficit in infrastructure planning. We are dealing with a problem which is over 25 years old," said Manyenyeni.

But with Zimbabwe's main political parties getting into election mode, any leverage they can gain over each other is likely to take priority - regardless of the cost to human life.