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IT is very clear that Mvuma-Manhize is about to become the core of a major industrial and urban area, with that development swamping existing services and potentially creating a major industrial slum and dump.
So the movement of the town planning authorities to make sure that the urban development is done properly is necessary and welcome, with land set aside for future industrial sites, waste management and all the rest.
At present there is the small old town of Mvuma, an old mine centre as well as one of those many similar towns that fulfil the functions of a district centre, with a hospital and a high school, and the home of small businesses that supply the surrounding farming communities.
Right next door is the Dinson Iron and Steel Company, a subsidiary of the giant Tsingshan Holdings, the world’s largest stainless steel producer, which is developing a US$1,5 billion investment in mining and an integrated steel works.
Dinson has been very careful to follow the environmental law in its development and has been equally careful in making sure that those farmers who need to move to make way for the steel works are properly compensated and have their new homes built.
Dinson actually owns the land it uses itself, but expects that a lot of other industry is likely to open in the area so is keen on seeing the proper planning both for its land and for the surrounding land owned by the Chirumhanzu Rural District Council.
It also needs to fit in with the older and smaller town of Mvuma.
The Ministry of Local Government and Public Works has generated the proper town plans, working out where services need to go. This will allow the new town to be developed in stages without the sort of mess we have seen created by land barons in other areas.
Steps have already been taken to ensure there is a proper water supply and power supply, and presumably the future sewer network and sewage and waste treatment has now been planned so that when the population reaches the required level this can be plugged in.
High-end town planning is going to be needed because Mvuma-Manhize will be an industrial centre, and not just industry, but heavy industry. Dinson expects some of its downstream customers will be moving in, and some of these are likely to be foundries and other heavy industry.
This is one reason to have the Environmental Management Agency involved at an early stage in the planning and implementation of plans.
It is usually easy and cheap to minimise pollution and ensure that waste never gets out of hand before the pollution starts, regardless of whether it is air or water pollution or just dust settling onto gardens and playing fields.
There are many industrial towns and cities around the world where everyone wished good planners had been brought in at the beginning when it was easy, and importantly cheap, to build things right rather than have to first live with undesired pollution and poor development and then spend a lot of money fixing it up later.
There are also, on the other side of the equation, plenty of places where the planners were in on the ground level and managed to get things fixed from the start, so that the towns could grow, the residents could prosper, and everyone was living in a healthy and pleasant environment without being bankrupted by rates set at levels to fix a mess, because there was no mess to fix.
Some issues might seem small. Mvuma used to be a dangerous town, on a main T-junction on the national highway system as the “wide-tar” upgrades moved steadily onwards. Crossing the road in the town meant taking your life in your hands.
Fortunately some fairly smart planners managed to swing the national highways round the town, as the upgrades were designed, which irritated some small businesses that relied on passing traffic, but which made the place a lot more pleasant and safer to live in.
The new Manhize development is also on the west side of the national north-south highway, so the local authority, backed by the Ministry, is going to have to be quite determined to ensure that there is no urban development on both sides of the road, and that we have a few kilometres of highway with ultra-slow speed limits and even then a few people will die each year as they try and cross the road.
This just requires enforcing the town planning, and not relaxing, allowing some private development that should never take place in some areas to take place, and then trying to regularise this later.
On a smaller scale, we see a surprising amount of this slackness and future regularisation in many parts of Harare, where properly planned shopping malls and other development attract unplanned additions in the wrong place and so create dangers.
In some respects, Mvuma-Manhize will be similar to some major new urban centres near giant mines, but with the addition that besides the giant core development, in this case an integrated steel mill, there will be a lot of other industries and businesses moving in, rather than just retail and service industry for the new townspeople.
In addition, the new town will be a special landmark for Zimbabwe, the ground zero of where our new heavy industry will develop from.
We have lost a lot of primary industry over the last few decades, and while the light industrial sectors have grown and flourished, they still need to be anchored on heavy primary industry if they are to become totally embedded in the country and the region.
So special care is needed for this new industrial town, probably a new industrial city in a decade or two, so that we get it right from the start and are building somewhere where anyone will want to live and work.
Online Reporter