environment:By KENNEDY NYAVAYA
As soon as she finishes pumping water into a 20-litre bucket and two five-litre containers, Kudzai Paraziwa (34) is relieved and can now think of other things because this day’s rigorous struggles have come to an end.
Placing the bigger vessel on her head while her seven-year-old daughter clutches onto the smaller ones on either side, the mother of two swiftly paces into the thick night forcing her last born into a slight jog.
This has become a typical daily exercise for most women and girls in Glen Norah A’s Chitubu area in Harare.
“We secure spots in the queue at around 3pm and now [10pm] is the time we get to fetch the water,” Paraziwa told Standard Style.
“My child is supposed to go to school tomorrow so her time for sleep is significantly reduced.”
Taps in this part of Harare’s vastly populated suburb have not produced a drop of the life-sustaining liquid in over a month, a precarious situation making the single bush pump at this shopping centre a sacred fountain around the clock.
Due to the city’s inconsistent water supply, hundreds of thousands of residents in the capital are forced to depend on similar water facilities, including unprotected wells, every day making them a melting pot of conflict, abuse and pain particularly for women.
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“We are being bullied at the boreholes by physically stronger men and as you can see I am of slim-built so it is very hard to outmuscle them,” said Paraziwa, who has had to plead to get a chance at the pump after close to seven hours.
She is forced to leave a neighbour’s daughter, Melissa Muranda (17), behind as the “benevolence” is only extended to her alone.
“We as young girls also face bullying and we do not get a chance until all the elderly and those strong enough to beat us are done,” said an uncertain Muranda, who attests to sometimes staying up to midnight and still going back empty-handed.
This is eating into the Form 5 student’s study time as she has to wake up at 4am to prepare for school every weekday.
With the crisis deepening in Harare as a result of successive droughts, destruction of wetlands and poor maintenance of reticulation amenities, findings by Standard Style prove that most women and girls spend inordinately long time in search of the liquid.
In most cases, they are getting less than enough to none unless they either employ violent tactics or pay in cash or kind.
Washing a few nappies for two-year-old Engrade, at midmorning in Epworth’s Komboni Yatsva settlement, Siphakamile Magona (26) is careful to use a quarter of the bucketfuls for the task to save and ensure the three buckets the family of three has for the day last.
“We are no longer afraid she could get a disease, we used to when the water problems started, but now she is used to it because she no longer gets sick from it,” says Magona, pointing at her little girl playing in the sand.
The problems on these outskirts of the city, although not identical, are similar and the buck always ostensibly stops with the women.
“We get water from a nearby well where we pay a mandatory US$2 per month and we do not earn that much and for us to go to the much distant bush pumps they tell us that they belong to members of certain political parties,” explained Magona as her husband, who has been sleeping, joins the conversation.
“They also get water from a close-by wetland, but it does not produce much and the water will be very dirty, but we have no choice.”
According to Oxfam in Zimbabwe social norms adviser Regis Mtutu, there is significant need for families to reduce the impact of the crisis on women and redistribute this unpaid care work beyond gender.
“Traditionally, the gendered division of labour says this is women’s work [so] you find that women are actually the ones who are responsible for accessing water,” he said.
“It really makes life very tough for women who are given the responsibility to access, fetch and use the water.”
True to his sentiments, a 2017 report by the United Nations on Gender and Water in Africa pointed out that women and girls were responsible for water collection in eight out of 10 households with water off premises.
The UN, which marks World Water Day today every year, through Sustainable Development Goal 6 established in 2015, advocates for the availability of clean water and sanitation.
However, back home, not much effort has been put of late to ensure access to this fundamental right, despite the government’s mandate to ensure all citizens’ right to water under Section 77 of the constitution.
“Every person has the right to safe, clean and potable water…and the state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within the limits of the resources available to it, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right,” it reads.
If the current situation is left to prevail, women would be largely exposed to physical, emotional and psychological among other dangers, says Mtutu.
“It is not unusual for a woman to spend three to five hours in a water queue so the impact is that it is really disturbing the usual lifestyle of women, it is causing a lot of work in terms of the burden of care they have to use a lot of strength on a daily basis,” he said.
As a result of this intensive unpaid care work, women across the country and continent often end up with chronic ailments including backaches, swollen legs and hypertension.
If policymakers in government and local councils, seemingly turning a blind eye to the crisis, could assess the water problems and provide solutions like solarised water boreholes as Oxfam has done in Budiriro and Hatcliffe, the situation would be better.
“If we could get policymakers to see the impact that it has on women, then they buy the idea, we can have more of these boreholes to cut on the time and reducing the burden,” said Mtutu, adding that lessening the burden in this regard could nudge men to also participate more in care work.
But, there appears to be no silver bullet or light at the end of the tunnel for the city’s women who have been reduced to unpaid and unappreciated labourers.
In fact, there is a joke doing rounds in the ghetto that witches and wizards no longer find women in bed when they partake in their night shenanigans.
For Paraziwa, the continuing crisis means more late nights out where she has to scurry away not only to get home quickly, but also shield her daughter from getting used to seeing the mounting numbers of perverted drunkards and sex workers prowling surrounding clubs at Chitubu.
“They [children] have to be protected from seeing such things,” she said.
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