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Gatsha Mazithulela Focus on Bulawayo
When the earliest people who settled in Rome built their houses on that city’s Seven Hills, their prime motivation was not to build an empire.
Rather it was basic common sense in consideration of defence of the city, sources of water, building materials and a trade route to other cities which had things that were not in Rome — and from this beginning, the Roman Empire was eventually built.
Such simplicity is the soul of strategy and these considerations are evident in all successful settlements. More sophisticated considerations are used nowadays and are the business of town planners and should be a central reference point for public officials and politicians alike in the development of programmes that promote economic growth, social development and environmental sustainability. Where these factors have not been considered, settlements have failed.
Historically, such settlements were all conquered or abandoned. In modern times such settlements have become inner city ghettos and slums. I am not exaggerating the very bleak point here that to avoid such a fate for Bulawayo, an integrated approach to strategic planning, necessarily involving all the considerations above and more is required.
In last week’s column, I revealed some surprising detail about a scramble for Bulawayo and I suggested that to understand part of the reasons for settler colonialism to take a global character in this city, it is necessary to explore the concept of geographic advantage with respect to Bulawayo.
When questions of industrial development or even redevelopment of industry, in this case, are considered, they will be based on a solid understanding of how competitive advantages can be built into industrial and economic policy.
As you can imagine, we could take several years talking about the various factors mentioned above so it is important to choose a few topical matters that concern our lives today. I will therefore treat the question of the geographical advantage of water occurrence and how it can contribute to solving some of Bulawayo’s industrialisation problems.
The first thing to understand clearly should be that the colonial design of the city did not envisage millions of Africans drinking water in Bulawayo. Our place was to be firmly in the “native reserves.” Therefore, we should look at Bulawayo and its water issues in the light of a racist design consequence rather than an omission in planning. That said, it is not an excuse to accept the now perennial water stresses as we should have changed the course of development of the city by now. We should have harnessed the ample water resources that occur underneath this city, its surroundings and of course from the Zambezi. The plans for the Zambezi pipeline are well known and I won’t enter that debate yet.
Water in Bulawayo? I hear thunderous disbelief already, but let me explain.
The Matsheumhlope Aquifer is a part of the solution for the water crisis and it is literally under our noses. It is a debate that I had hoped to lead within my office as councillor, prior to the bizarre lawsuit that is now so infamous.
Bulawayo sits on the Matsheumhlope Aquifer which has been characterised as having the geological features that collectively provide for deep weathering and an aquifer with fairly good water storage capacity. This area covers almost the whole City of Bulawayo from Four Winds to North End in the south-north direction and Tshabalala to Khumalo in the west-east direction. It is also fairly deep with a geological feature called the Bulawayan formation being about 40m deep in some places.
In 1992, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) of South Africa recommended that Bulawayo could safely abstract 3, 5x106m3 of water, which may have been insignificant but after a more detailed study in 2005 by the same expert organisation and the University of the Witwatersrand reported that Matsheumhlope could support a long term sustainable abstraction of 6, 1x106m3 of water or about 15 percent of the City of Bulawayo demand at that time. Furthermore, the Matsheumhlope Aquifer only requires 105,5mm of water per year for sustainable recharge and at the time of study, 61 percent of this recharge was already being provided by the city council’s own water mains and sewer leakages. I would not be surprised if the whole recharge requirement is now being fulfilled by leakages of water mains alone — fact that would make current abstraction of the aquifer almost a no brainer! It is a wonder why Bulawayo City Fathers have not considered utilising this source as they walk past the well right in front of the chambers at the City Hall. Perhaps they can explain. More puzzling is that there has been no diligent follow-up of any of these findings.
The Nyamandlovu Aquifer is of course viable for this use but being 60km away, pumping costs remain rather prohibitive as exemplified by the city’s electricity bill. Nyamandlovu is also a prime farming area which needs the water in order to provide the citizens of Bulawayo with food. With the upsurge of farming activities after the land reform programme, we must ask the question of how long the tension between supplying the farmers of Nyamandlovu with water for growing our food and the City of Bulawayo drinking from the same source, can be sustained. More importantly for me, the seepage of pesticides and fertilisers into the Nyamandlovu Aquifer as a result of intensive farming should be a significant public health concern.
The City of Bulawayo needs to at least provide data on occurrence of the chemicals and their secondary transformants in the water pumped from the Nyamandlovu Aquifer. The people have a right to understand any current or future risks or know of its absence.
The net result of policy incongruence between the Bulawayo City Council and Zinwa has exposed ratepayers to unreasonable costs of pumping water all the way from Nyamandlovu. Due to the pressure to increase pumping capacities from the Nyamandlovu Aquifer, the Bulawayo City Council may be putting at risk the strategic farming activities in Nyamandlovu and the long term health of the population of Bulawayo.
There has been no shortage of advice or technical information that should guide strategy for this city where water is concerned.
Other than the CSIR studies mentioned earlier, Noel Mnkandla, Van de Zaag and the City Council’s own Peter Sibanda used a multilinear regression model in 2005 and characterised yet another water source near Umguza. They studied the additional water supply sources that are currently being considered for Bulawayo (namely the Zambezi water pipeline; Gwayi-Shangani Dam; Mtshabezi Dam; Lower Tuli Dam; and Glass Block Dam) and then compared them with an alternative water source not yet contemplated, namely drawing groundwater from Umguza, part of the Nyamandlovu Aquifer. They then provided details of the Umguza alternative, which was designed at pre-feasibility level by Mnkandla in 2003.
They concluded that it would be the least-cost alternative for a period of six to 10 years, at which time Shangani Dam should be on line.
I wonder what value there is in educating our citizens to a level where they can plan and develop workable strategies if they are never even considered. I would quickly say perhaps the councillors couldn’t understand multilinear regression but Engineer Simela Dube does. However, for some tragic reason, his formidable skills are hardly used by the councillors who have preferred to cart water in bowsers instead!
The people of Bulawayo should demand to know how this long-forgotten geographic advantage will be used to relieve them of current water shortages, even partially. The people should be given an explanation of how the tension between the growth of farming water requirements in Nyamandlovu and their needs in the city is being monitored and managed.
The people should be told about the levels of specific agrochemicals in water from the farming areas. The people should be told how much money could have been saved in electricity by pumping from within the city. The people deserve these answers from the MDC-T dominated Bulawayo City Council because the 2005 study results should have been used by this council. Failure to ask these questions would be symptomatic of more disasters coming, as they say. How do we even talk about re-industrialisation if we can’t find water right under our feet? Industrialists just need to know when we will get our act together.
Strategies that have already been suggested by our own talented engineers but the geographic advantage in question has not been exploited so that it can deliver competitive advantages to industry in Bulawayo. Water problems have often been mentioned by industrialists who have closed down. Would those factories that closed because of unreliable water supplies have closed if Bulawayo City Council had led the exploitation of the Matsheumhlope Aquifer, right underneath the Bulawayo industrial sites? This water could have been used exclusively for industry since it seems there is no urgency to drink it.
This is not a series of academic articles so I will not give technical references except to those who request them on email.
Dr Gatsha Mazithulela is an acclaimed scientist. He writes in his own personal capacity. For feedback he can contacted on [email protected]
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