Unplanned urbanisation cause for diseases outbreak

The disease has claimed the lives of a quite large number of people, and it is feared that it can spread to the country’s other densely populated centres, especially towns.
The typhoid outbreak comes a couple of years after cholera played havoc with the lives of hundreds of people also in Harare in particular and in one or two other urban centres.
The main cause of these repeated disease outbreaks is the unplanned, rapid urbanisation occurring in Zimbabwe since the country became independent in 1980.
Zimbabwe is a part of the Southern African Region (SAR) about 75 percent of whose population is rural. Every time there is a drought in Zimbabwe, a large number of peasants head for the towns nearest to their rural areas and settle there as best as circumstances permit.
The same migratory movement occurs also whenever there are political disturbances caused by factors such as disputed election results or intermittent civil wars as is the case in the DRC.
Natural disasters are also responsible for a great deal of migration from rural to urban areas.
Another major cause of this trend is a social one, education in its two stages, first its acquisition and second when those who have received it want to apply or use it practically. The acquisition of education is relatively easier in urban centres than in the rural areas because of the abundance of its dispensers and centres in the former (urban locals.)
After acquiring whatever education, people prefer remaining in the urban centres.
The same can be said about the multi-racial composition of the Harare-Chitungwiza complex.
That apart, to cope with this fast urbanisation development local and national settlement planners have to look into the future from the usual three perspectives; short term, medium term and long term.
The most important needs of every new urban community are clean water, accommodation, roads and facilities for the efficient disposal of people’s waste and refuse.
Coming hard on the heels of these are social and health service facilities such as schools, clinics and safe and adequate means of public transport.
The government, both national and local has the traditional responsibility to provide land for these sprouting communities especially for social amenities such as sports and parks.
The above scenario is based on the sound assumption that it is impossible to stem the exodus from the rural areas to urban centres.
One of the causes of that social phenomenon is lack of economic development in the countryside. This can be alleviated by the creation of a revolving rural economic development fund from which rural-based industrial undertakers can borrow at a nominal interest.
Rural industries that can be developed by such a fund can include timber logging, fisheries, food collection, packaging and processing and a host of agricultural activities, seek employment and utilise their newly acquired skills. These are joined by the usual job-seekers from the rural areas.
That trend is a major characteristic of urbanisation in the Southern African Region (SAR) with Zambia featuring prominently in the list of countries where people drift to urban centres where they live in mushrooming slums some of which have romantic names such as Paradise, Chibolya and Kanyama.
In South Africa, the number of people living in similar slums or shanties around Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Durban, Bloemfontein, Port Elizabeth, Pietersburg (Polokwane) is larger than the combined population of Swaziland, Lesotho and Botswana.
It is important to note here that more than 50 percent of those slum-dwellers are foreigners; Zimbabweans, Somalis, Congolese, Mozambicans, Nigerians, Zambians and Angolans.
Incidentally, the Johannesburg-Pretoria complex has the highest number of people of different races, that is to say it is the most cosmopolitan area south of the Equator.
Processing of hides, skins and pelts should be a rural-based industry in as much as sources of these raw products are in the rural areas.
Accommodation in the countryside also forces many people to move away from there to towns. A government scheme encouraging and assisting rural people to invest in houses in the rural areas can reduce that trend.
People must be taught that rural life is, to all intents and purposes, healthier, happier and more secure than urban existence provided water, energy, food and social amenities are both available and accessible.
That is true particularly for pensioners who cannot afford municipal charges such as rates and are more often than not consequently ‘spat out’ by the urban environment, so to speak.
The emphasis ought to be on making life easily livable in the rural areas by providing necessities the most basic of which are accommodation and employment.
If we fail to do that, let us try (and succeed) to plan well ahead for a safe process of urbanisation that will cater for the social and economic needs of the increasing number of new urban residents most of whom live literally from hand to mouth.