Zimbabwe on the brink

The country of Zimbabwe, in Southern Africa, is in the grip of a prolonged crisis that seems to have fallen off the international community's radar.

With an economy in tailspin, recurrent drought, ill-conceived public policies and the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the Zimbabwean people have seen their life expectancy plummet from 62 in the 1980s to just above 33 in 2004. There are over one million orphans in the country today.

One of the effects of the crisis has been a significant decline in access to basic essential services including the supply of safe water. In the south of the country, an estimated 2.5 million people suffer from daily water shortages. Climate has played a part. Since 2006, the region of Matabeleland has had below normal rainfall and the rain that has come has been erratic. Some areas of the province are experiencing a full-scale water crisis.

In the city of Bulawayo (population over 1 million), water rationing has become the norm. By September of this year, the city was only able to supply half of the daily requirement.

Oxfam Canada helps with water supply

Oxfam Canada has a long history of working with women and men in southern Zimbabwe on programs as diverse as HIV/AIDS prevention and education, emergency school feeding, the provision of seeds and tools and water source rehabilitation.

Since July 2007, we've been working with our partners to directly address the water crisis both in Bulawayo and in the surrounding areas. In the rural districts of Gwanda, Matobo and Insiza (areas where no other agencies were responding to the crisis) Oxfam is rehabilitating 46 broken borehole hand-pumps and reactivating 15 Water Management Committees. As a result, 12,000 people will have access to safe water and will have the means to maintain and perform basic repairs on the pumps in their villages.

As in other emergencies, women have been hit hardest. In Zimbabwe, women are responsible for collecting water. During water shortages, they walk for hours to find a functioning borehole, wait to fill their containers and then carry 2—25 litre containers back to their villages. Sometimes they walk up to 5-6 kilometres. Intervention that improves availability of safe water directly affects women's lives.

Daina Shereni is the Chair of the Water Management Committee in the village of Matshologwane in the district of Insiza. Her village has 300 people and 100 cattle. The village used to have two functioning boreholes. Both are now broken. When I visited recently, Oxfam was determining if they could be repaired. One pump had been taken apart and an inventory of needed parts had been made. The parts were being purchased.

In another village, women had been walking five kilometres to a neighbouring community and five more back again to bring water every day. On laundry days they had to make the trip more than once.

One of the women owned a wheelbarrow and the women took turns using it to transport their water containers. The wheelbarrow made it easier but the terrain is hilly and the roads were very bad. When I was there, the temperature was 30 degrees Celsius and there were no trees in sight for shade.

Once the pump in their village was repaired, life changed significantly. A fence was put up to protect the pump and the water supply from damage and potential pollution from cattle.

The women repeatedly told me how their lives had improved. The boreholes are now within 500 meters of their homes which saves time and energy so that they can take care of their homes, children and relatives with HIV/AIDS. Now that there is water, in some villages they were able to restart community gardens and grow vegetables that are critically important for health.

Making sure that women are members of the Water Management Committees means that they now have influence and control over water which is their responsibility. In some villages, they've started small community funds to collect money so that they can buy parts for the pump when it breaks down again.