Dry Taps In Harare Stop Government Business As Cholera Beckons

Residents line up at one of the boreholes dug by aid agencies in the suburbs of Harare. The water shortage has now reached critical levels, with practically the whole city having dried up, except in the city centre, where the Supreme Court had to close down last week for lack of water. It has now been restored, but residents, fleeing overwhelmed boreholes, are resorting to the most basic and unsafe well and stream water for their needs. Put this situation together with the rains that have now started in earnest, then you have a recipe for cholera, with a struggling health sector standing trembling nearby.

Harare, Zimbabwe, 17 November 2009

The water shortage in Harare has reached alarming proportions now, with most of the city's suburbs having last seen water a week and a half ago.

Only last week, the Supreme Court in Harare closed down because there was no water in the city centre section where it sits.

This s coming as rains have also started in earnest in the capital, as shown in the picture accompanying the story below this one, showing lawyers protesting in Harare under the cover umbrellas.

Sewage, of course, continues to flow in the streets of the townships of Harare. UNICEF and other aid agencies have tried to help by digging boreholes in the suburbs but these are now groaning under the weight of demand, leading citizens to go and fetch running water in streams and to dig their own wells in sewage littered open spaces nearby.

Harare city itself is a maze of trenches and unearthed rusty pipes resting on mounds and dirt. They are causing havoc with traffic. Kenneth Kaunda Avenue, for instance has been rendered a one-lane street for quite a stretch.

This ineptitude must apparently not be mentioned because Morgan Tsvangirai is now Prime Minister, according to MDC-T apologists.

That MDC-T supporters are now the most ardent defenders of Robert Mugabe policies and decay is of no significance to them. "Things are improving..." they moan. Tell that to the people who spend all day at a borehole.

Tell that to the children who will soon be falling like flies as cholera comes back.

Hospitals full of drugs? Dream on, all patients need to pay a little something, say US$5, for the medication. 70% of the population do not have that much spare, not even for their own health.

Things are improving?

MDC-T is sounding more and more like ZANU PF with each passing day. Which is not entirely unexpected , considering that they are implementing ZANU PF policies like true cadres, with the same enthusiasm for mediocrity that now suffuses Mugabe party.

The myth of the economic recovery of Zimbabwe is the biggest fraud perpetrated by the Mugabe/Tsvangirai coalition on the world. It is swallowed hook, line and sinker by those who find it to painful to think for themselves. And duly parroted.

But the people are not fooled. Evidence of that abounds, the starkest of which are the riots that rocked Mbare last Monday.