Drought and Man Made Water Crisis in Zimbabwe

Once considered the bread basket of Southern Africa, Zimbabwe is facing a hunger crisis with half of the population, 7.7 million people, food insecure, the World Food Programme (WFP) said in early December. The days of the large plantations is long gone, and the increasingly unreliable rainy season a result of climate change and shifting weather patterns affects subsistence farmers in particular. Maize is a very water-intensive crop and a staple of their diet.

On top of food insecurity and growing malnutrition, in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, has a water crisis. Over 2 million people there are suffering from acute water shortage at home after the main water treatment plant, the Morton Jaffray waterworks, was shut down on Sept 24, 2019. The plant was reopened briefly and shut down again. Currently Morton Jaffray waterworks uses nine chemicals to treat water which is heavily polluted with domestic and industrial effluent at a cost of US$3 million/month.

City authorities say the drinking water crisis is caused by a lack of foreign currency to pay for the water purification chemicals necessary to purify drinking water that is supplied by dam reservoirs. The hyper inflation (490%) that Zimbabwe has experienced has resulted in the need to pay for imported goods like the water treatment chemicals with foreign currency. Zimbabwe has little to export to get foreign currency. A drought is drying up nearby reservoirs, making the situation worse.

Morton Jaffray was constructed in the 1950’s to serve a then population of 300,000 people, now Harare has over 4 Million people. In addition, deferred maintenance has resulted in the deterioration of the water services infrastructure, which in turn has impacted on service delivery. Currently, the Harare city Government is attempting to purchase better water treatment technology solutions for the city. But this is Zimbabwe and the contract process has been fraught with corruption. Two Government ministers have been implicated in a massive scandal after they allegedly directed the local authority to award a multi-million dollar water treatment contract to two separate unqualified companies without following official bid procedures.

  

In addition, “the crisis is being exacerbated by a dire shortage of currency, runaway inflation, mounting unemployment, lack of fuel,prolonged power outages and large-scale livestock losses." Zimbabwe is not alone. The entire region is experiencing its second extreme drought in the past three years. Economies in the region are suffering and 45 million people are  facing water and food crises, according to the United Nations.