Energy crisis sees Harare residents cooking over open fires

Using water-soaked wood and bundles of old newspapers, Sophie Hama struggles to light up a fire in the drizzling rain.

After a while stuffing more paper in the wood, Hama and her daughters – who have been helping her build the fire – for a moment appear to forget themselves, erupting in joy and applause welcoming the small flame that slowly flickers from the firewood.

“It’s as if we do not have an electric stove,” Hama told ZimOnline, as she carefully balanced a black pot over the fire in the open ground just outside her home in Harare’s working class suburb of Warren Park D.

A week after South Africa’s Eskom power utility cut off electricity supplies to Zimbabwe, residents in Harare and other cities find themselves back in the Stone Age, forced to cook meals over open fires because of frequent and unregulated by powers cuts as the local Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) rations the little available power.

Zimbabwe imports more than a third of its power requirements most of it coming from Eskom. A shortage of coal at ZESA’s largest thermal power station at Hwange plus frequent breakdowns of ageing electricity generation equipment at other stations across the country has only helped worsen the energy crisis.

Power cuts can last for several hours as happened in the third most populous city of Chitungwiza and in the Harare suburbs of Budiriro, Southerton, Mufakose, Marimba, Tafara, Mabvuku that went without electricity for about four hours on Tuesday and on Wednesday this week.

In the worst cases, whole suburbs can be switched off for a whole day or even more, forcing residents to throw away food from fridges because it would have gone bad.

But Hama said the most trying time for her is when she has to build a fire in the rain. Zimbabwe is in the middle of its rain season and heavy rains have continued to pound the country for the past four weeks.

“It is worse than torture when you have to build a fire in the rain,” Hama said, her eyes reddish and teary from the smoke from her fire that keeps coming up and dying down again when the drizzle intensifies.

The rain is however not the only problem for Hama and other residents in Zimbabwean cities and towns. Residents have to grapple with a shortage of firewood as well as rising prices of the commodity as suppliers take advantage of increasing demand.

Ranga Zoro, who stays in Southerton, said his family has resorted to simply waiting for the power to be restored before cooking any meals because they cannot afford the cost of firewood.

He said: “We are barely managing to pay for the electricity and the food in the first place, so we cannot waste the little dollars that we have to buy fire wood. We wait until the power comes, that’s when we cook. If it does not come, we say tough luck and go to bed hungry.”

The paraffin stove that Zoro had always kept for times like these has been rendered useless because paraffin, just like every other petroleum product is in critical short supply in Zimbabwe as the country grapples its worst economic crisis since independence from Britain 26 years ago.

At least for Zoro he has studied well the power cuts timetable and says in his neighborhood electricity goes out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday between 8 in the morning and midday and then in the evening between 6 pm and 10 pm.

“So we time our cooking based on these times. When we hear the commuter trains arriving with workers in the evening, we know it is about 6pm, time for load shedding,” added Zoro.

However Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA), spokesperson Precious Shumba says residents should not be left to guess when power might be next cut.

“They (ZESA) are taking residents for granted. Electricity just goes out at anytime of the day,” said Shumba. “It makes it difficult for people to plan their daily schedules,” he added.

ZESA, which insists the power cuts by Eskom are not because it has failed to pay the South African firm, says it has done its best to keep residents informed, adding that whatever troubles consumers are facing at the moment, power supplies will be back to normal “soon”.

“We are very confident from ESKOM’s communication that the situation will normalise in the near future,” ZESA spokesman James Maridadi said in a statement earlier this week.

The assurance by the power firm has however done little to calm industrialists who fear the prolonged electricity cuts could bring a number of the country’s tottering firms to their knees, a majority of which are already operating far below their capacity. – ZimOnline