Of all the not-easy-to-comprehend things that are allowed to happen in Mbare suburb, the proliferation of the huge amounts of litter there has to be the scariest thing.
Report by Chipo Masara
I have never in my life seen as much litter as I saw when I went around the area with a friend last Sunday.
It’s like everywhere you look; you are greeted by filth.
From the mounds of litter that characterise virtually the entire area, you can tell that the habit of dumping garbage just anywhere, mostly by the roadside, has become a deeply entrenched culture in Mbare.
But judging by the attitude exhibited by the generality of people in the high-density area, living with the dirt and the stench that it produces has become part of life.
On the part of Mbare that is along Simon Mazorodze Road, you could see a number of people working through enormous dirt, struggling to push the litter to the edges, in a desperate attempt to prepare the land for another planting season.
What I found most worrying was how, in clearing the land, people did not wear gloves or any protective clothing. They were using bare hands to work through the mounds and mounds of garbage.
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Although it was being done like it was the most natural thing to do, it looked to me like the kind of thing that could seriously jeopardise anyone’s health.
Vending, unhygienic conditions could trigger cholera, typhoid outbreaks Moving around in Mbare, you could see people selling foodstuffs including drinks, buns, polony and boiled eggs — mostly near piles of garbage infested with huge flies (green bombers).
Most surprisingly, a fairly large number of people would actually come over to purchase the goods, and some even saw it appropriate to eat right there. Judging from what I saw, it certainly looked like another major cholera or typhoid outbreak in the making.
Someone might be forgiven to argue that Zimbabwe, and especially its capital city, is generally dirty nowadays. Sadly, it is a claim I would have to agree with completely.
The city centre and most suburbs (especially high-density suburbs) in Harare are infested with filth.
The Harare City Council (HCC) has since admitted that waste management has become, to the institution, an overwhelming task.
Waste management however, is evidently not a challenge for just HCC as almost all of the country’s councils are struggling in that department.
Even Kwekwe, which used to be one of the cleanest cities in the country, is not as clean anymore. Chitungwiza is another very filthy place and the constantly bursting sewer pipes only add in making the area’s environment even more unpleasant.
After my visit to Mbare however, I was left convinced that the area had to be one of the filthiest of all filthy places in the country. In fact, if a first-time visitor to Harare was to choose Mbare for their first drop-off point, he/she would be forgiven for thinking Harare was one of the filthiest cities in the whole world — which would be unfair on all the clean and well-kept suburbs Harare has.
But just why is Mbare so dirty anyway?
“I don’t think Mbare is one of the council’s priorities inasfar as providing service is concerned. If they do not collect the litter, what are we supposed to do?” queried one visibly irate Mbare resident, who requested anonymity.
The majority of the residents I managed to talk to bemoaned the lack of a reliable refuse collection service. They expressed anger at HCC as they insisted they were each month paying a refuse collection fee but were not getting value for their hard-earned money.
Mbare, like many other suburbs in Harare and the rest of the country, evidently has very few bins, which, coupled with non-collection of refuse, has been pointed as one of the reasons they littered.
Corrective measures should be a matter of priority for both HCC and the residents of the area. If clean up measures are not put in place soon, bigger problems surely loom.
Serious recycling companies in Zimbabwe would do good to recognise the big business opportunities in Mbare.
