Zimbabwe's descent into misery

The nation's economic meltdown seems to have broken the spirit of its people, write Xan Rice and Jan Raath
05 Dec 05
IN CHITUNGWIZA, a dormitory town that is home to more than a million black Zimbabweans, a breeze is a curse. It shifts the rotting rubbish in front of the tiny houses. And it laces the air with the stench of human waste, which drifts in thin dark rivers in the streets.

"We are sitting on a time bomb," said the Mayor of Chitungwiza, Misheck Shoko, as he gestured towards a concrete pipe spewing thick brown effluent into a stream outside the town's main sewage treatment plant. The stream feeds the Manyame Dam, which supplies the capital, Harare, with its water.

"It's a miracle there have not been more outbreaks of disease," he said.

Across Zimbabwe, the scene is the same: townships that were once claimed as models for Africa have become stinking health hazards. The big cities are not much better. Some parts of Bulawayo have not had water for seven weeks. Refuse collection in Harare is sporadic. Power failures are routine.

In small towns such as Bindura and Shamva to the north, rubbish is collected by ox wagon. Zimbabwe is fast sinking into the past.

The meltdown of one of the continent's best infrastructures has been years in the making, the result of underinvestment and mismanagement. But the speed of the decline over the past few months has been astonishing. Zimbabweans long accustomed to hardship cannot remember a worse time.