Online Reporter
Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
WHEN Mr Dingani Ndlovu, the village head in Bidi Village, Matobo District in Matabeleland South Province, saw the weather forecasts before the start of the rainy season, he thought that salvation had finally arrived after a drought-stricken year.
The year 2024 had been a tough one. Miske Dam, the one source of reliable water serving Ward 7, 8 and 9 in the district had completely dried up. The El Niño-induced drought wrought untold havoc with cattle their traditional source and form of wealth having succumbed to the drought in large numbers.
As the year advanced to an end, the forecasts were encouraging and villagers’ hope was rekindled. Rain was on the way, meteorologists promised and by the start of the festive season, the heavens indeed began to open up.
What followed was a deluge of biblical proportions that brought down parts of Miske Dam and left some villagers wondering if the drought had been kinder. The dam’s spillway was constructed by the local community with the help of the Caritas Zimbabwe Archdioceses of Bulawayo.
“During the dry months, the dam had completely dried out,” Mr Ndlovu told Sunday News in an interview.
“It had been reduced to zero and fish, both the tilapia and the barbel had died. This meant we had lost a key source of nutrition for the community and during this crisis our animals had no source of water to drink so we would move around the boreholes trying to keep them alive. So when the rains came, we were expecting salvation but the dam broke and it was a disaster.”
The destruction of the Miske Dam’s spillway is an example of the damage brought on by the recent downpours, which had resulted in 60 reported deaths and a cumulative total of more than US$14 million worth of infrastructure destroyed in seven provinces by the start of March.
Matabeleland South Province has borne the brunt of the devastation with infrastructure worth more than US$13 million destroyed.
In Bidi Village, the rains have destroyed homes, buildings and toilets in several schools including Mqabuko High School and St Anna Primary School.
However, it is the destruction of the spillway that has left the villagers in bewilderment.
“The community has been surviving on this dam for many years. It is the source of livelihood for everybody around.
Our livestock survive on it and we also use it for irrigation and construction. It has been sustaining our lives for a long time, and you have to remember that there were no boreholes here before. Due to the immense amount of rain that was witnessed in the area, the spillway just broke. The broken part is between 25 and 30 metres,” said Mr Ndlovu.
While it is a key source of livelihood in Bidi Village, Miske Dam also has a sentimental value for the people in the village. The dam was built from the efforts of Father Tharsisius Miske, the then parish priest at St Joseph Mission in 1952.
So passionate was Fr Miske about bringing water to the notoriously arid area that he fell into a well and died while inspecting its construction in 1958.
His death not only showed his passion for the community but the scarcity of water in the area and the almost desperate search for it.
The current parish priest at St Joseph’s, Father Innocent Makawule Ndlovu said while they had prayed for rain at the height of the dry season, they now hoped that some of the destruction it had brought could be reversed.
“We prayed for rain and God heard our prayers. Unfortunately, we also witnessed some toilets giving in around the area including Blair toilets in most of our schools. In terms of the environment itself, we lost some big trees that have a lot of significance to people in the area. They have stood undisturbed for a long time but they failed the test when exposed to this year’s rains and are now down.
“Some homes were also destroyed in the process while for the first time in our history, we saw water passing over the Semokwe Bridge, which is over 20 metres high.
“We now hope that by the time we receive more rains, we would have at least repaired the damaged spillway,” he said.
Fr Ndlovu, an agro-ecologist and teacher by profession said the environment had also taken a battering from the recent heavy rains.
“Due to the increase in population and climate change, the catchment area has no grass cover. During the rainy season, a lot of silt flows into the dam, which fills up easily after heavy rains, but that is not a true reflection of its capacity. So that is why the community requested the Catholic Church to help extend the spillway so it can contain more water because the depth of the dam has been overtaken by silt,” he said.
With the spillway now damaged, Fr Ndlovu said things were looking dire for the community.
“As a community, we are currently in lamentation because we are asking ourselves what we are going to do. We need urgent intervention so that when we receive the last rains, we may retain some of the water that could help sustain us for the coming months.
A lot of water has been lost and coupled with the fact that the dam has a lot of silt, this means that by the end of the season, the dam might dry up again and our animals would have no water to drink,” Fr Ndlovu said.
The damage to the spillway also threatens a mushrooming township in the area, which had seen locals begin to build picturesque houses that rival others around the province.
“It is important to note that there’s a growing growth point in St Joseph’s and while the houses that are coming up might be beautiful, all those people are relying on the dam for their water.
“Zinwa is not yet pumping water and it means if this dam doesn’t have water, the whole community will be in tears.
“That is why I say we need urgent intervention and support to patch up the dam,” he said.
Ms Soneni Dube, a villager whose homestead had been destroyed by the recent rains, said the trail of destruction left by the recent rains in the area was bringing about superstition theories where a number of them have been wondering if they were being punished for a crime they did not know of.
“It has not been easy. We have never seen rains like that in our lives before. Now, we hear that there might be a cyclone on the way. We wanted the rain but now most of us have had enough of it. Some of us lost a lot in the last few months and we don’t want to relive that again,” she said.
