adminSamuel Takawira Features Correspondent
On a bitterly cold winter morning, Martha Dumba (34) sits impatiently on her 20-litre container as she queues for water. After an interval of five minutes, she peeps into the well. She has been here since 4am.
The long winding queue is moving at a snail’s pace but eventually she lands her turn to fill up the container. The 20-litre container will ferry just a drop of the water that her family requires on a daily basis. Before she attends to her daily chores, she has to make another trip to the well. Her day starts this way everyday for the past 15 years.
In the queue, behind her, many other women wait impatiently for their turn. They need to beat time so that they get back home before their children go to school.
The proceedings at the well replicate the situation in many rural parts of Zimbabwe. It depicts how rural women have been turned into water scavengers.
For women in the Moffat resettlement area, Chirumanzu-Zibagwe district, which is about 86 kilometres from Gweru – Zimbabwe’s third largest city – the water plight seems to have no end in sight.
Narrating her ordeal, Dumba revealed that women in her district have to endure much to secure water for daily use.
“I have to wake up around 4am so that I find my way to the well before it runs dry. Failure to do so means I will have to endure the 10-kilometre journey to the main borehole. As a woman you have to neglect some of the daily chores so as to forage for water. Sometimes I leave my containers in the queue and collect them later,” she said.
It is clear that if you do not have a scotchcart in the area, you are literally reduced to a water scavenger who has to run around from one source to the other in search of water. In such scenarios where women queue up to fetch water, quarrelling, even about petty issues, becomes the order of the day.
“To avoid such conflict I opt to collect water at night sometimes,” said Dumba
The bulk of water sourcing in rural areas is done by women who have to spend at least six hours every day on this cumbersome task.
There is only one borehole in the area which serves close to 400 families. The borehole was drilled by a missionary church.
Due to financial constraints, Government is not able to drill boreholes and is therefore looking to the public-private partnership (PPP) model to radically improve infrastructure networks and enhance service delivery.
Another woman who spoke to this reporter said for 15 years, she has had to use a cart to fetch water from the only borehole in her area.
“We always have to use a cart to fetch water from the borehole. You can’t walk to the borehole while carrying a container on your head, it’s just impossible. Luckily we have a cart, it’s a nightmare for those who do not have,” said Netsai Rimwe.
She, like many other women in the area, also has to wake up in the early hours of the morning so that she gets to the borehole before the queue gets long.
With around 70 percent of Zimbabwe’s population residing in rural areas, improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene is vital.
Inadequate availability of clean and safe water is said to be the main cause of diarrhoeal diseases that afflict mostly children in rural communities.
Some of the women in the area reported that they have to bath once in three days as they take turns with the rest of the family.
The water challenges also extend to livestock, which, in the dry season, has to skip a day without drinking water largely due to the distant watering holes.
In her presentation during the SADC Water Weeks Zimbabwe training course for journalists held in Harare recently, Kudzai Makombe, the regional manager of Inter Press Service Africa, said effective water governance could help address the gender disparities deepened by water woes.
“Effective water governance can increase the personal security of women by ensuring they don’t have to travel long distances, making them vulnerable to attacks,” said Makombe.
A Chirumhanzu Rural District Council official, who requested anonymity, told this reporter that the district was in dire shortage of water sources.
“Water woes in our district remain a problem especially in the resettlement side of the district where water sources remain scarce.
“There is need to ensure that boreholes are sunk,” he said.
He would not divulge more information but he said council would look at the water issue and propose effective solutions. Women in the Moffat resettlement now pin hopes on their new Member of Parliament, Auxillia Mnagangwa, who during her campaigns, indicated that she was concerned with issues that affect the people.
During the campaigns prior to the March 27 by-elections, Cde Mnagagwa said if elected, she would work diligently and put her husband, Vice President Emmerson Mngwagwa, to task so that they implement new projects.
Timothy Tigere, a representative at the District Development Fund, said: “The uneven distribution of water resources, the result of erratic rainfall and varying climate, are said to be the causes of water shortages in the district.”
Engineer Wensley Muchineri of Upper Manyame Sub-Catchment Council, said: “The current rainfall patterns characterised by long dry spells are envisaged to impact in low recharge to the ground water systems, drying of groundwater and increase water demand while shrinking water supplies.”
In some parts of the country, including areas such as Masvingo and Insiza, cases of perpetual shortages of water underscore the gravity and widespread nature of the water crisis in rural Zimbabwe.
As water woes in rural areas escalate, women in Chivi have resorted to desperate measures fetching drinking water from the rivers where they tunnel unsafe wells in the dry river beds to slake their thirst.
A United Nations Millennium Development Goals Report (2012) revealed that globally women spend a combined 40 billion hours a year collecting water, adversely affecting their efforts to engage in other productive activities.
The World Bank also noted that climate change had exacerbated water challenges in Zimbabwe and other developing countries.
The 2015 United Nations Climate Conference to be hosted in France later this year is expected to provide solutions to this.
The 2014 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey key finding report alluded to the fact that 34 percent of Zimbabwe’s population still use unimproved drinking water.
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