A Photo Essay by Cont Mhlanga

On the first picture the queue is already long at this water hole in one of Bulawayo’s western townships Magwegwe West at 6:45am. On the second picture taken the same day 9:30pm in the same water hole, the queue is still growing. There are now hundreds of such water holes in Bulawayo which are now the main source of water for the residents. Some of these are dug wells while others are burst pipes.

Tap water now comes once a week or at times every other week. They are not enough boreholes for every one. The situation as you can see from the pictures is bad and desperate for citizens. It is however mostly children that get the rough end of irresponsible governance and the disaster of Zimbabwe’s cheque book politics by our own black elite. The girl in the picture has to fetch water at this water hole all morning before she goes to school in the afternoon while the kids in the second picture went to school first in the morning and in the afternoon come to this queue at the water hole.

However if they were living in a normal country that is not a failed state like Zimbabwe, at this hour they are supposed to be home studying as examinations are around the corner, but not so. There is no electricity at this hour in this township. It has been gone since 2:30pm. There are no candles at the shops. No paraffin at the gas stations. So how can they read in the dark? The only things one can do around the fire is cook or tell and listen to stories and not read books.

Unfortunately for young ones, there is no year end examination on story telling around the fire, so they are better off at the water hole fetching water. At least they will be able to flash the toilets. This is what is happening to residents, the difficult conditions they have to endue while the Cabinet through their company called ZINWA is busy plotting to take away the City of Bulawayo from the citizens while the leaders of the city are busy plotting to defend the city. Our understanding of the mandate of ZINWA is to bring bulk treated water to the city and then charge the council. Yet what we see on the ground is the opposite.

They want to own the city first and charge the residents before they deliver adequate bulk treated water to them. The battle for the city of Bulawayo rages on. This reminds me of Cecil John Rhodes’s African adventures where his company destroyed a people’s kingdom, ended up owning the country that he gave his name while the masses toiled and lived under deplorable conditions. The picture speaks volumes of how people are living under difficult conditions while Government and its company ZINWA drill boreholes for themselves, drive big cars to offices to go and plot how to take over a city.

One would wish that they should be going to the private sector board rooms to plot with the business sector how they can partner each other to bring adequate treated water to people. But not for these liberation war heroes. They are obsessed with some funny style of comrade commerce where they take for free and give away for free and hope to run a prosperous economy and country. However the result is what you see in the pictures. City residents that drink from boreholes and unsafe water holes.

But what is wrong with us Zimbabweans when we are so educated and can work in any part of the world? In 1991 I once asked this question to my great-great grand mother Thwakuzo who was then 114 years old. She replied: ‘The problem with you our black boys is that when we give you the best of western education and then you get into political parties, you get silly. You think that you and your political parties are more important than the people and the country. Our generation put people and nation first.’

I did not understand what she meant then. I don’t think I understand what she meant now. Do you understand what she was trying to communicate?

Cont Mhlanga

Bulawayo

Thursday, October 11, 2007