I had last been at the Beitbridge-Harare highway some five or so years ago and had not realised the level of deterioration when I used the road again on January 6 2018.
By Gloria Ndoro-Mkombachoto
The only good thing on that journey was the absence of too many police roadblocks. Be that as it may, it was a complete nightmare experienced in broad daylight. Do not get me started on the service levels and organisation, or lack of it, of the border post on both the Zimbabwe and South African sides. To say it was torturous, would be to be polite and diplomatic.
After being delayed there for almost eight hours, I now have new-found respect for long distance kombi/bus and haulage truck drivers and the cross-border traders from Zimbabwe and the rest of the Sadc region. Their willingness to lose life and limb for their livelihoods is commendable.
What I have observed, oftentimes, is that when decision-makers of public institutions are not the end users of a primary service whose rehabilitation needs their prioritisation, personal interest stands in the way of responsible leadership. This is the reason why many decisions are left unexecuted or bad and expensive choices (impacting ordinary folk like you and me) are made in many of our public institutions in Zimbabwe.
Because of its geographical positioning, Zimbabwe is the aorta from which the Sadc’s road transport network, its arterioles, link Southern Africa with the rest of Africa. Yet Zimbabwe stands to lose billions of dollars as Sadc states are building a highway to by-pass Zimbabwe. The Kazungula bridge project spearheaded by Botswana and Zambia and funded by the Japan International Co-operation Agency and Africa Development Bank, is expected to be completed in 2019.
In a road infrastructure assessment conducted by Sadc in 2001, it was reported that 30% of Zimbabwe’s road network was in a dreadful, desperate and dangerous state. The Beitbridge-Harare-Chirundu road was singled out for urgent attention because of its strategic importance in the regional road network. Almost 20 years later, Zimbabwe is still shuffling paper chit-chatting about it.
That is why it is my submission that if anything is going to be done and done fast, the presidency must without delay assume responsibility of this project. As a country keen on “growing our own timber”, one of the primary conditions would be to select competent Zimbabwean contractors to do the upgrade. An ideal requirement for these contractors would be to ensure that Zimbabweans living along this Beitbridge-Harare-Chirundu route benefit from training and job creation by participating in the reconstruction of this road. South Africa does this in all their road maintenance projects and it is not impossible for Zimbabwe to adopt the same approach.
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As the Beitbridge/Messina border post remains chaotic, the yet-to-be-dualised Beitbridge-Harare road, one of southern Africa’s busiest highway, is now a serious death trap. South Africa remains Zimbabwe’s largest trading partner and with the rail network in shambles, the transport of goods into and out of Zimbabwe is done using this gateway. The Beitbridge-Harare-Chirundu is the artery of Sadc trade used to service northern Mozambique, Zambia and Malawi and beyond.
There has been almost as many horrific accidents as papers written on the dualisation of the Beitbridge-Harare road. Three years ago on January 6 2015, then Transport and Infrastructural Development minister Obert Mpofu advised that the dualisation of the $1,3 billion, 900 kilometre Beitbridge-Harare-Chirundu road would commence before the end of the first quarter of that year. On May 18 2017, former president Robert Mugabe officially launched the $984m of the Beitbridge-Harare road, which was to be done in three years by an Austrian company, Geiger International under a build-operate-transfer facility. Eight months after the launch, there is no activity on the road whatsoever. In September 2017, The Sunday Mail reported that “the minister of Transport and Infrastructural Development Joram Gumbo had advised that engineers were working on the road plans” following mounting concerns that the deal between the government and Geiger had collapsed.
As far back as 2002, Zimhighways, a consortium of local Zimbabwe contractors won the tender for the dualisation of the highway, but the project was stillborn and later government cancelled the tender. Up until 2014, there was litigation by Zimhighways regarding this matter. Last Sunday, this paper reported that the Beitbridge-Harare dualisation was at risk of being cancelled “amid indications that there are new senior government officials that are pushing for the collapse of the deal to pave way for their own preferred companies.”
Meanwhile, as the travelling public awaits the promised dualisation, the shoulders of the road are now virtually non-existent, making way for dangerous sharp edges that are deadly to motorists, haulage trucks and buses. Over the last 10 years, as the road has further deteriorated, the volume of haulage trucks has increased, further worsening the state of the road. Buses have also increased and considering the fact that they move with additional loads on top almost the size of the trailers they are pulling, perched on top of the trailers, it is not surprising that head-on collisions and side swipes have also increased.
So, after many years of collecting tolls from the travelling public, perhaps the bosses at the Ministry of Transport and Infrastructure Development and Zimbabwe National Road Administration (Zinara) ought to relinquish their responsibilities around this issue to the presidency in order for there to be action. They must do this preferably after tabling plausible explanations to Zimbabweans as to why the dualisation of the Beitbridge-Harare-Chirundu gateway is 19 years overdue. Collection of toll fees was introduced by Zinara on Zimbabwe’s major highways in August 2009. After disaggregating the Beitbridge-Harare-Chirundu road toll fees from the national collections, what has happened to the tolls collected for this gateway over the years? Besides the tolls received, there are many funders out there willing to underwrite the rehabilitation of this highway.
Gloria Ndoro-Mkombachoto is an entrepreneur and a regional enterprise development consultant. Her experience spans a period of over 25 years. She can be contacted at [email protected]
