The Sunday Mail
Harmony Agere —
The acrid stench wafting through the busy streets does not deter scores of people from going about their daily business.
A jolting cacophony of car horns, vehicle engines and jostling touts adds to the picture of people too busy to care about something as trivial as how the air smells when the more important business of survival has to be contended with.
A band of vegetable stalls splits the tattered tarmac and a stream of greenish raw sewage colours the roadside.
It has just drizzled and the vegetables, having been arranged on a thin rag, are splattered with black earth tainted with all sorts of filth from spit to human waste.
A toddler crawls from the road side, reaches for a plum and, to the horror of onlooking The Sunday Mail Extra team, sinks his tiny teeth into the dirty fruit.
“How many times must I tell you not to eat my stuff, do you want to put me out of business?” the mother shouts in Shona, rebuking the boy who responds with a fine tantrum.
She seems more concerned with loss of business than hygiene considerations for her little one. Just outside the farmers’ market, which has been closed for renovations, commotion is the name of the game.
With nowhere to sell their products, farmers have occupied an open area near a dumping site to conduct their business.
Heads of cabbages offloaded on bare ground are hardly recognisable as they marinate in a mixture of rain, black dust and all manner of filth.
The buyers are unfazed.
“The cabbages are very cheap, for a dollar I get five heads,” says a middle-aged man known as Mabhau who cooks and sell sadza in the market. “The dirt is absolutely no issue. When I get to the shop I will simply rinse them and all the dirt will be gone.”
The cabbages will be served to at least 30 of Mabhau’s customers.
Nonetheless, the renovations in the farmers’ markets is a welcome development. The Harare City Council is laying concrete slabs, putting in new pallets and clearing all the waste while installing bins.
Before, merchandise would be marketed on the bare ground while rotting vegetables and fruits were dumped near the produce still on sale.
“It’s been a while since we have seen a front-end loader and tippers collecting rubbish from the market,” says a hawker who identifies himself as Mupostori.
“We do not know if they are doing this as a reaction to typhoid but we must applaud it. Look there (pointing), the garbage has been cleared and they have emptied the bins. They should do it more often because the vendors are paying rates.”
Mupostori is fascinated by the renovations. As he speaks the rains start falling once again.
Instead of seeking shelter in the sheds, Mupostori and fellow traders dance and sing in the downpour, celebrating the already visible changes to the farmers’ market.
Of grave concern is the shortage of toilets. The only facility in the market charges a dollar per session, an amount people say is too high.
Says farmer Yamuro Gumbonzvanda: “Just imagine that you have come all the way from Wedza and never got an opportunity to relive yourself and you get here to be told to pay a dollar. So what will happen next is that people will help themselves in the secluded places of the market. For us women, we may have no option but to pay the dollar but men will certainly help themselves by the walls.”
Another toilet run by the council charges just USc10, but it is usually blocked or closed.
Mbare’s sanitation and hygiene hell is not confined to the market place.
The situation in the apartment blocks of Matererini, Matapi, Magaba and Shawasha is ghastly. Most of the flats are without running water and people on the upper floors lug buckets and other containers to their dwellings daily.
The shared washrooms are almost always blocked or flooded with raw sewer, which sometimes flows down from the upper floors. Communal cooking areas sit next to said washrooms. Some of the boreholes are either obsolete or have been condemned.
About 60 000 people, instead of 5 000, are said to live in the hostels. Typhoid has already claimed two lives in the suburb while more than a dozen other cases have been reported.
Established in 1907, Mbare is the oldest of Harare’s high-density suburbs and has degenerated into a slum of sorts. Experts believe the suburb could soon tip over the edge and into the abyss.
Harare Mayor councilor Bernard Manyenyeni admits urgent attention is needed.
“I have had meetings with councillors from that area and we agreed that in the allocation of our resources, the rehabilitation of toilets and the installation of window panes among other urgent sundries shall be given priority,” he says. “Discussions are also underway to see how we can increase the current budget allocation towards these causes.”
Cllr Manyenyeni says long-term measures to re-develop the suburb are in place but are being constrained by lack of funding.
Zimbabwe Institute of Regional and Urban Planners president Percy Toriro contends that complete reconstruction of Mbare is the only sound solution.
“Mbare requires a holistic and comprehensive redevelopment and upgrading programme. This will entail demolishing existing flats which were largely developed for migrant labour as hostels for bachelors.
“With the new inclusive urbanisation policy, such structures have no space due to their archaic design. Where the buildings are still structurally sound, there is need for retrofitting by adding facilities such as individual ablutions and kitchens.
“The solution must also involves de-congesting the hostels meaning there should be a parallel program to relocate some of the residents.”
City Council spokesperson Mr Michael Chideme says there are no plans to demolish the hostels.
“The plans that are there are about new apartments or refurbishing of the existing units to make them family units. In instances we use the word demolish, we make reference to the construction of a new unit . . . Once decamping has taken place an assessment is done to see whether the whole unit should be brought down or refurbished. In the event it is brought down a new unit would be constructed on the same foundation. The process is actually aimed at effecting urban renewal in Mbare and to make the units more habitable and family friendly.”
Mr Chideme speaks of the council’s garbage clearance programme for Mbare.
“The long-lasting solution is the biogas digester in the suburb that we expect to be operational in the second quarter of this year,” he reveals.
“The digesters will absorb the bulk of the garbage in Mbare. The community will be able to sell its garbage for the generation of electricity.”
