2021: A mixed bag for Masvingo

George Maponga Masvingo Bureau

The year 2021 will go down as one of the most hectic in the history of Masvingo.

The past 12 months were largely a mixed bag for people in the province.

Smarting from a bumper harvest in the 2020/21 main agricultural season Masvingo, unlike previous years had no qualms about food shortages with the province punching above its weight in both cereals and traditional grains production.

The bumper harvest meant authorities for the first time in years suspended the winter maize project in Chiredzi which had become an annual phenomenon in the Lowveld agricultural calendar as the Second Republic pulled all the stops to engender food security and stem food imports.

Despite delays in harvesting late planted winter maize at Hippo Valley and Triangle in the first quarter of this year, Masvingo Development Trust and Tongaat eventually managed to harvest all the maize before it could be damaged by rains thanks to the Government’s timely intervention which made sure there were additional combine harvesters and dryers.

After harvesting all the winter maize focus turned to wheat with maize being shelved as the country had recorded a bumper harvest making imports irrelevant.

Still in the agricultural sphere, Masvingo also went a step closer toward full exploitation of Tugwi-Mukosi Dam with the water body’s development master plan ending the year while waiting to be okayed by Cabinet after the country’s eminent universities were roped in to speed up work on it.

The long awaited master plan entails the spatial plan that will designate the land use pattern in the dam’s immediate vicinity like pinpointing exact areas where hotels and lodges will be built and also the irrigation development master plan.

The irrigation master plan will designate how and where irrigation will take place with an estimated 40 000 hectares set to be watered by the reservoir propelling Masvingo to the zenith of agricultural productivity in Zimbabwe.

According to Masvingo Provincial Affairs and Devolution minister Ezra Chadzamira hopes are high the province will start accruing irrigation benefits from Tugwi-Mukosi beginning year.

Minister Chadzamira believes the gargantuan irrigation project is the province’s best foot forward in terms of quickly realising Vision 2030 goals.

The dam will also sustain a 15 megawatt hydro power plant enough to light up the whole of Masvingo raising hopes for people in the province of attaining energy self- sufficiency.

Tugwi-Mukosi also falls within the anticipated Lowveld Integrated Irrigation Development Master Plan, which was approved by Government and envisions creation of an irrigation greenbelt straddling over 200 000ha acres southern Masvingo from Rutenga to the west up to Chiredzi in the east.

The anticipated greenbelt will become the arrowhead of the nation’s food security drive while also posing as a local shield for Masvingo to tackle hunger and stimulating socio-economic growth in line with Vision 2030 as it entails full exploitation of all the main river systems in the province that largely converge in the Lowveld.

Besides maize and wheat, citrus plantations are also planned under this initiative that also revolves around building the new Runde-Tende Dam at the confluence of Runde and Tende Rivers in southernmost Chivi.

This dam will eclipse Tugwi-Mukosi as Zimbabwe’s largest inland water body while also creating scope for Zimbabwe to export raw water to deficient and arid northern parts of South Africa.

The Integrated Irrigation Master Plan also hints at creation of small green belts around hitherto underutilized dams like Muzhwi, Mutirikwi, Siya, Bangala, Manjirenji and Manyuchi, positioning Masvingo to become the fulcrum of Zimbabwe’s agricultural revolution as the nation angles for Vision 2030 targets.

In the sphere of infrastructural development, Masvingo made a lot of inroads with new schools, clinics and bridges being built thanks to Government’s devolution war chest.

At least two new clinics were built in all the province’s seven administrative districts with most of them almost complete and ready for opening.

A number of schools were also built across Masvingo under devolution with the state of the art Chirichoga Primary that was commissioned by Minister Chadzamira in the first half of 2021 being the flagship.

In Masvingo City, the provincial capital, Chitima Fresh Produce Market was refurbished and is now equipped with modern amenities to promote high levels of hygiene especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the sphere of roads, projects such as the Masvingo-Zimuto road, Sango-Rutenga-Zvishavane, Gutu-Buhera were allocated funding allowing considerable progress though additional money is required to cover more ground and expedite work.

Musavezi Bridge in Gutu that was swept away by floods was also repaired and is now trafficable coming in handy for the farming community in Bhasera and surrounding areas.

In Masvingo City, most roads are being resurfaced in both the CBD and suburban areas a move that has earned both council and the Government plaudits from residents.

Roger Howman Vocational Training Centre in Masvingo city also got substantial funding to increase hostel space and up enrollment while Buffalo Range International Airport is undergoing refurbishment with the airport’s runaway also being expanded to accommodate bigger aircraft in anticipation of increased tourism traffic as the Covid-19 pandemic wanes.

The Government under President Mnangagwa continued to roll out empowerment projects in partnership with the private sector with the US$40 million Kilimanjaro sugar cane project being developed by Tongaat Huletts Zimbabwe seeing the first batch of beneficiaries coming on stream.

The project is being bankrolled by local financial institutions and Tongaat and at full completion will see nearly 4000ha of virgin land being turned into cane fields for allocation to indigenous Zimbabweans as part of the Government’s empowerment drive.

The year 2021 will loom large in the memory of Chivi villagers in the province who were involved in a turf war with Murowa Diamond Company, which was exploring for gems in their area.

At the tip of the parties’ tiff was reluctance by Murowa to decamp from Danhamombe High School in Sese, a move which villagers said was an affront to the rights of their children learning at the high school and the adjacent St Simon Zhara Primary School.

Murowa had been exploring for diamonds in Sese since 2018 on its nearly 200 claims in the area.

The claims are said to be diamondiferous but Sese villagers charged that the company was not engaging them for a harmonious relationship while also fuming that the diamond miner was destroying local roads with its huge equipment such as tippers,front end loaders and rigs.

Villagers even upped the ante and staged a series of demonstrations after Murowa dug in and refused to decamp from Danhamombe High precincts claiming to have permission from the school administration.

Boisterous villagers dug pits to stop Murowa from moving its rigs across Sese as it emerged that the firm’s drilling activities were responsible for destroying the foundation at Chamakanda Dip Tank that was built by locals with assistance from local prominent businessman Mr Alex Mashamhanda.

Chamakanda Dam was also damaged by the drilling prompting villagers to scale up the fight until Murowa quit the area in a huff and took back all their equipment to their base in neighbouring Zvishavane district.

Villagers in Sese now want Murowa to pay compensation for damages caused at the dam and dip tank.

The two facilities are vital cogs in the lives of the Sese community that is predominated by peasant farmers who rely on their livestock for draught power and small holder irrigation gardens to generate income for survival.

The raging dispute between the villagers and Murowa is now before the Supreme Court. While villagers have already started civil works on hostels projects to upgrade Danhamombe High into a boarding and save the rural girl child from walking long distances to school, their battle with Murowa has received tacit support from President Mnangagwa.

The President is on record recently saying mining companies should not forcibly remove locals from their ancestral land to pave way for mining activities. This seems to have emboldened Sese villagers who have since vowed to continue fighting the mining behemoth saying they would rather put up with irrigation projects using the nearby Tugwi-Mukosi Dam water than accepting a mining venture focusing on a finite resource whose presence in their ancestral land remains a subject of conjecture.

The Sese community seems to have engaged a higher gear in the quest to engender socioeconomic development in their area where under the leadership of Mr Mashamhanda they have embarked on the electrification of schools like Chikore Primary guided by the “Nyika inovakwa nevene vayo” rallying call by President Mnangagwa.

The year wound up on a positive note for the people of Masvingo in general and Mwenezi in particular with President Mnangagwa commissioning Zimbabwe’s first Marula/Mapfura processing and value addition plant at Rutenga.

This plant with potential to process 100 000 litres of marula juice earning $400 million per year was built using local expertise via harnessing local resources.

This dovetails with the country 5.0 education system now being pursued in local institutions of higher learning that have become engines of Zimbabwe’s industrialization drive.

Scores of people have already been directly employed at the plant which answers to the Second Republic’s rural industrialization strategy in line with Vision 2030.

Moreover, the Marula/Mapfura plant at Rutenga is already being touted as a game changer for Mwenezi district because an estimated over 30 000 households will accrue income from supplying the mapfura/marula fruit during its peak harvesting season from January to April.

Before the advent of the plant the fruit used to be food for animals with the majority going to waste.

Now that is changing and Rutenga is already bracing for town status with an influx of investment in the urban settlement that has also been designated as a dry port and got its first processing industry in October thanks to the Second Republic which conceived the Marula/Mapfura value addition plant.

Looking into the future Masvingo remains firmly on the cusp of massive economic transformation undergirded by large-scale irrigation development revolving around the giant Tugwi-Mukosi Dam.

The drought-stricken province has arguably the highest dam density in Zimbabwe making it a key hinge of the nation’s accelerated irrigation development program in the face of increased food insecurity caused by climate change.

Boosting a huge mineral resource base, Masvingo has potential to become a mining hub and there are promising signs on the ground that value addition of minerals can take place in the province as evidenced by the ongoing construction of a chrome processing plant by a Chinese firm near Mhandamabwe.

Masvingo City’s only heavy industry SIMBI, which is an acronym for Sponge Iron Mining and Beneficiation Industries, has also embarked on US$150 million expansion project that will see the sponge iron producer churning out steel products.

This will be a boon for the Masvingo economy as it means more jobs and locally available steel products to power the city’s ongoing growth and expansion targets.

Currently SIMBI ships its sponge to Kwekwe for further processing into steel at its parent company Steelmakers plant.

Masvingo City is also in the mix with the local authority expected to finally ink the seemingly elusive financing deal of its phase 2 water augmentation project that requires US$72 million to undertake.

Town Clerk Engineer Edward Mukaratirwa is optimistic funding will soon come on stream with hopes for a breakthrough expected at the ongoing belated Dubai Expo.

The project will obliterate water problems by duplicating the existing water pumping, purification, conveyancing and storage infrastructure to take daily output to around 60 megalitres.