Tons of trash kill Sunshine City (21-12-06)

m 0pt”>HARARE – Once lauded as the “Sunshine City,” Harare is now the subject of satire, derided by observers as a “dead city” because of its reeking mounds of garbage, persistent water shortages, electricity blackouts and sanitation problems.

The commission running the city, which is made up of handpicked cronies of President Robert Mugabe’s governing Zanu (PF) party, is struggling to provide the most basic of services.

And it is not just the capital that is suffering. Uncollected refuse, for example, has become one of the biggest environmental problems afflicting all of Zimbabwe’s urban centres.

Occasionally, the magnitude of the problem even usurps politics, Zimbabweans’ favourite topic, as the talk of town.

Harare’s main streets are strewn with litter, its business and residential areas full of huge heaps of garbage. It has all accumulated over the past three years when an elected opposition Mayor was kicked out of office and replaced with an inept commission of handpicked Zanu (PF) supporters run by extravagance-loving Mayoress Sekesai Makwavarara.

Environment and Tourism Minister Francis Nhema last week led a delegation of the commissioners to one of the city’s commonplace dumpsites near Magaba Flats – a densely populated slum.

The minister took one look at the massive eye-sore, turned his nose away from the steamy stench, and immediately ordered the commissioners to relocate the garbage dump to somewhere on the outskirts of town.

The Magaba Flats dump was actually condemned by the Environment Ministry two years ago. It now holds over 1,3 million cubic metres of garbage, which is spilling over a large part of the nearby Magaba slum.

Refuse from the lower side of the site flows into Mukuvisi River, creating yet another environmental disaster. Elsewhere the story is all too similar.

In Chitungwiza, a satellite town of the capital, Harare, children play in streets dotted with uncollected garbage. They ignore the stench of overflowing sewerage and race little home-made boats in contaminated water.
“The problems in Chitungwiza are beyond the council’s control,” said former Mayor Misheck Shoko, who has also been forced out of office because of alleged inefficiency. “While I was at the helm of Chitungwiza, we could not source donor funding on our own to upgrade the sewerage and water systems, which are old and dilapidated, as the (central) government dictated that such funding should be channelled through its coffers.
“Right now I am told the garbage collection vehicles are immobile due to fuel shortages, but (central) government regulations stipulate that urban councils can’t procure fuel from abroad on their own,” Shoko complained.
The Combined Harare Residents Association (CHRA), which has been lobbying for a rates boycott until local governance and service delivery improve, says the responsibility for the current crisis should be laid squarely on the shoulders of local government.

“We cannot pay rates when there is no water, refuse is not being collected and street lights are not being repaired,” said CHRA information officer Precious Shumba.
In Harare uncollected rubbish continues to pile up in the central business district. Environmentalists and health experts have warned that the city may be sitting on a disease time bomb, as raw sewerage continues to spill into Lake Chivero, the capital’s main source of water.

Shumba said if the commission, and indeed Local Government minister Ignatius Chombo, continue to fail their citizens they might find themselves in the dock. Shumba said they can be taken to court and forced to perform their duties.

“Infact, the commission running the city is illegal and this is why as CHRA we are demanding that fresh elections be held immediately to deal with this problem,” Shumba said.

Three years ago, the central government appointed a commission to run Harare, after Chombo dismissed its elected opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) mayor, Engineer Elias Mudzuri, for alleged inefficiency.
Shumba said local government officials should be arrested and taken to court for failing to collect garbage and for failing to ensure cleanliness.

To counter the growing environmental threat posed by the city’s spreading rubbish, Harare residents have devised their own means of tackling the problem by organising occasional strikes where they dump raw sewerage and garbage at Town House.

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, although relatively clean, is grappling with an acute water crisis due to successive droughts, but Mayor Japhet Ndabeni-Ncube’s council does not have the authority to borrow funds, making it difficult to maintain minimal services.
Francis Dhlakama, the mayor of Chegutu, 140 km southwest of Harare, said his town was “as good as dead”.

“While we need 30,000 megalitres of water a day, we are able to purify only 12,000 megalitres a day … (and) some of it is lost through leakages,” he explained.
In smaller urban centres like Bindura and Shamva, north of Harare, ongoing fuel shortages have forced councils to collect refuse using ox-drawn carts hired from nearby farmers.
”We are trying to ration fuel so that we can attend to cases that require immediate attention, like in the health sector. The (ox-drawn cart garbage collection) programme will continue until the fuel situation in the country improves,” said the Shamva council chair, Sydney Chiwara.
In Marondera, southeast of the capital, schools closed early due to water and electricity supply problems.
The CHRA blames government interference for the crisis that is gripping most urban centres and claims that politics have taken precedence over good governance and service delivery issues in many local authorities.
Morris Sakabuya, the Deputy Minister of Local Government, Public Works and Urban Development, acknowledged that there were problems affecting service delivery in urban centres, but blamed councils for operating without set targets.
”The government cannot sit (idly by) while services go down, we (have to) react to situations on the ground,” Sakabuya commented. “If things go wrong, people always ask: ‘Where was the government?’ If we intervene, they start calling it interference.”

A commissioner who spoke to The Zimbabwean on condition of anonymity defended Harare’s authorities, pointing out that Local Governments across the country, especially Harare, were broke and that their tax revenue could not pay for adequate services. He also stressed that local authorities had additional problems to deal with, like ruined roads and unsafe drinking water.

But Shumba insisted that the Harare council was badly managed and riddled with corruption, citing Makwavarara’s housing, DSTV and curtains scandals.

And until something is done to improve local government, there is little chance of any progress on the streets.

In the meantime, Harare will be swamped by more rubbish, and the image of a “Sunshine City” will become an ever more distant memory.