Tendai Ruben Mbofana
The sights and sounds of celebration in Budiriro North today were a tragic indictment of a nation that has lost its way and forgotten the standard of living it once commanded.
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There is something deeply unsettling about watching a community break out in dance and song over the drilling of a communal borehole in a 21st century urban setting.
This is not progress and it is certainly not a milestone worth the pomp and fanfare displayed by officials.
Instead, it is a glaring monument to institutional failure and a regressive slide into a past that our parents fought so hard to leave behind.
We are witnessing the normalization of mediocrity where basic rights are rebranded as presidential gifts and where the survival of the urban dweller is now tied to a bucket and a queue.
When our parents migrated from the rural hinterlands to cities like Salisbury, Bulawayo, and Queque in the 1960s, they were driven by a fierce ambition for a better life.
They did not move to the city to fetch water from a hole in the ground or to walk over sewage-soaked streets.
They moved because the city promised a standard of dignity that included consistent running tap water, reliable electricity, and navigable tarred roads.
In those decades, urban life meant a house with plumbing that worked and a wage that allowed for a decent existence.
To suggest that we should now celebrate communal boreholes as inclusive development is to spit on the aspirations of that generation.
We have been taken nearly a century back to the dark days of river water and primitive extraction, yet the architects of this decay expect us to be grateful.
The psychology of our gratitude is perhaps the most heartbreaking aspect of the Zimbabwean story today.
In my hometown of Redcliff, we have endured half a decade without consistent tap water.
When the local authority finally manages to provide a few sporadic hours of supply, the response from residents is often one of profound thanks and relief.
It is a terrifying phenomenon to see people falling over each other to praise officials for a service that is unpredictable, unreliable, and likely to disappear for another month.
How did we reach a point where we are no longer enraged by such horrendous service delivery?
How did we become so battered by crisis that we thank the very people whose incompetence and misappropriation of resources created the drought in the first place?
This manufactured gratitude is a powerful tool for those in power.
By keeping the population in a state of perpetual thirst and desperation, the restoration of a basic right for sixty minutes becomes a political masterstroke.
We see this in the way the Presidential Borehole Drilling Scheme is framed as a statement of intent toward Vision 2030.
There is no dignity in a borehole for an urban population that had tap water forty years ago.
There is no equality in a system where the poor queue for hours at a pump while the elite enjoy manicured lawns and filled swimming pools behind high walls.
To call this service delivery is a perversion of the English language.
It is actually the management of a controlled collapse.
The contrast between the governed and the governors has never been more obscene.
While the majority of Zimbabweans eke out a living through vending and navigate potholed streets that have virtually disappeared, those in authority live lifestyles of staggering opulence.
They drive massive SUVs with price tags that could refurbish entire water treatment plants.
These vehicles are not merely a preference; they are a necessity for the elite because they cannot drive luxury low-chassis cars on the ruined roads they have failed to maintain.
They navigate the craters of our streets in armored comfort, seemingly immune to the shame of their surroundings.
Most of this wealth is acquired through the blatant looting of resources that were meant to provide the very water and infrastructure that is now absent.
It is particularly galling to see these officials presiding over the opening of boreholes with smiles and speeches about unity.
There is a deep-seated lack of shame in a leadership that views a borehole in a suburb as a achievement rather than a confession of failure.
If the national vision truly aimed at uplifting every Zimbabwean, the focus would be on the construction of more dams and water works or the upgrading of the archaic piping systems in our towns.
Instead, we are given a primitive solution to a modern problem and told it is inclusive development.
This is not a step forward; it is a frantic attempt to paper over the cracks of a crumbling state.
The alignment between political factions around these borehole schemes is equally concerning.
When political engagement results in the celebration of substandard living conditions, it signals that the entire political class has lowered its expectations of what a Zimbabwean deserves.
We are being conditioned to accept the bare minimum.
We are being told that as long as there is a pump nearby, we should be satisfied.
But where is our pride as a people?
What happened to the fire that once burned in our bellies when we demanded nothing but the best?
We have become a nation of survivors rather than a nation of citizens.
Survivors are grateful for any scrap thrown their way, while citizens demand accountability and the fulfillment of the social contract.
The decline of our urban areas is a physical manifestation of the rot at the core of our governance.
A city without water is not a city; it is a crowded village.
When we see people supporting the extension of terms for the very individuals who have presided over this decay, we must ask ourselves what has gone wrong with our collective consciousness.
Are we so broken that we see the drilling of a hole as a reason to grant more time to those who destroyed the taps?
The reality is that these boreholes are a symbol of a nation in reverse.
We are regressing into a state of existence that our parents sought to transcend.
We must stop the fanfare.
We must stop the dancing at borehole sites.
We must stop the letters of gratitude for an hour of water every few weeks.
There is nothing to celebrate when a country that was once the breadbasket and the industrial hub of the region cannot provide its people with the most basic necessity of life.
Clean, potable tap water is not a privilege to be handed out by a benefactor; it is a right that we pay for through our taxes and our labor.
The moment we start celebrating the crumbs is the moment we tell the authorities that they no longer need to provide the loaf.
Our parents’ generation would be devastated to see the state of Redcliff and Harare today.
They would be appalled to see their children and grandchildren celebrating a return to the water bucket.
We owe it to their memory and to the future of our children to reclaim our outrage.
We must demand a return to the standards of excellence that once defined us.
We must look at the massive SUVs and the opulent mansions of the elite and ask why that wealth is not reflected in our public infrastructure.
Until we stop thanking the arsonist for a glass of water to put out the fire he started, we will remain trapped in this cycle of celebrated poverty.
Zimbabwe deserves better than a communal pump.
It deserves a leadership with the integrity to fix the taps and the shame to apologize for ever letting them run dry.
- Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08