There is no doubt the much-vaunted Kunzvi Dam, a government project, is the permanent solution to Harare’s water woes.
As Harare City faces a serious environmental and ecological crisis because of pollution from the raw sewer and industrial waste that is fed daily into Lake Chivero, the capital city’s main water source, I have sought to revisit this project and how the Zanu PF government has over the years played political games with people’s lives by stalling on this very important enterprise.
Since 1996, the Kunzvi Dam project has been a perennial promise on seven successive Zanu PF campaign manifestos but with nothing being implemented on the ground.
In 2022, the project was again on Zanu PF’s campaign manifesto for the seventh time. In that year, just 12 months before the 2023 election, Zanu PF promised that they would implement the project before the plebiscite was held last August.
Obviously, this was yet another blatant lie. In this column, on 14 October 2022, I warned Zimbabweans that it was a lie that Kunzvi Dam would be built before the 2023 elections.
In a piece titled Kunzvi Dam: A Perennial Zanu PF election campaign promise, I pledged that if, by some miracle, Zanu PF managed to meet its promised feat in the remaining months before the 2023 polls, I would change my name to Bukayo Saka or Gabriel Jesus.
Of course I have retained my birth name as Luke Tamborinyoka Gombera because this much-vaunted project towards every election remains still born to this day.
Of course, there will be fresh shrill noises towards the 2028 polls (or is it 2030?). But when they yet again come back to the voters with this perennial promise, we will all know it will be yet another mirage.
I hold no brief for Harare City Council, which by its own acts of omission and commission has failed to deliver prudent services to the city’s residents.
But Zanu PF and central government too must take their own fair share of the blame for the city’s woes, particularly in terms of provision of water to the city and its environs.
Towards the 2013 elections and as a campaign gimmick, Zanu PF, the biggest debtor to council, wrote off US$300million owed by residents and other debtors, including itself, to Harare City council.
Former Harare mayor Ben Manyenyeni last week told us the amount written off was equivalent to the city’s revenue for 30 months (or two and half years). Harare City council has not yet recovered from this cheap but expensive gimmick.
But that is a story for another day.
My story this week is about Zanu PF’s costly lying game over Kunzwi, which has now resulted in the ecological calamity unfolding at Lake Chivero today.
The Kunzvi Dam construction has remained a Zanu PF promise for the over a quarter of a century that it has remained on the Zanu PF election manifesto.
Indeed, the Kunzwi project has become a classic work of fiction, for it remains an ungrounded floating narrative, notwithstanding the many lofty pronouncements regarding implementation of the same.
And fiction is a beast that needs to be luke-d in the eye, especially if the fiction is a commodity sold out by a whole government to a hapless, innocent citizenry.
So this week, I will be Luke-ing the Kunzvi dam fiction right in the retina of its Eye.
Kunzvi Dam, deemed to be the permanent solution to the water challenges in Harare, is set to be built in my rural home district of Goromonzi. The dam site is 67 kilometres north-east of Harare at the confluence of Nyaguwe and Nora rivers.
The dam is expected to carry some 158, 4 million cubic metres of water and to produce some 250 000 cubic metres of water daily.
Kunzvi will provide water to Harare and its catchment areas, notably Chitungwiza, Juru growth point, Arcturus and Goromonzi.
There is a huge water challenge in Harare and for the record; it is not the duty of councils to build dams, even though Zanu PF has always blamed the Harare city council for the water shortages.
Yet only a dam of the magnitude of Kunzvi will deal with that challenge. And the Water Act is clear that government, through the Zimbabwe National Water Authority (ZINWA), bears that responsibility and has the requisite budgetary wherewithal to construct dams.
Council is akin to a hose-pipe that takes the water from the government’s main water reservoirs (dams) to the residents. If there is no water in the dam or if there are no dams in the first place, it means the hosepipe has nowhere to draw water from.
The laughable habit by government to blame the council for Harare’s water woes is akin to a dry dam blaming the hosepipe for not transferring any water. And yet the dry dam itself is supposed to be the source of the water.
Harare and its burgeoning population is mired in serious water challenges that have inadvertently resulted in the current ecological calamity around Lake Chivero that has claimed both flora and fauna.
As stated earlier, Harare recycles its waste back into its major supply dam, Lake Chivero, and uses more than nine chemicals to treat the water at huge cost to the ratepayers.
Because of the acute shortage of foreign currency in the country, it is the responsibility of the government through the Procurement Authority of Zimbabwe (PRAZ) to procure the water treatment chemicals.
Even where there are delays due to the forex shortages in availing the chemicals to treat the water, the Zanu PF regime has over the years continued to blame the Harare authorities for the acute water challenges in the capital city.
Indeed, the Kunzvi Dam construction project has dominated seven Zanu PF election campaign manifestos. In the 2000 parliamentary election campaign, the ruling party’s narrative was that plans to build the Kunzwi Dam were now “at an advanced stage.”
In the 2002 Presidential election campaign, they said the plans to build Kunzvi were now “at a very advanced stage.”
The crazy message mantra was to continue in the 2005 parliamentary election when they told us plans were “at an advanced stage”to build the Kunzvi Dam.
Ahead of the 2008 harmonised polls, they yet again promised to build the Kunzvi Dam.
It was the same crazy story in 2013 when, like a record stuck in a groove, Zanu PF promised to build the Kunzvi Dam.
Towards the 2018 election, they told us yet again that plans to build the Kunzvi Dam were now “at an advanced stage.”
In 2022, they actually told the nation that the project would be completed by the time the 2023 election would be held.
Because of my unstinting faith in Zanu P’s consistent lies, I publicly pledged to the nation that if that happened, then I would change my name to Bukayo Saka.
I hate to say I told you so. But I have since been vindicated. And certainly at the next election, the Kunzvi Dam (or is it dummy) will be sold to us yet again for the umpteenth time.
They certainly think we are all crazy, like them.
They forget that they have been saying the same thing to us for over a quarter of a century now.
Five days before the 2018 election, the government said it had finally secured the funding for the Kunzvi Dam project from the Chinese government.
Initially deemed to be complete by December 2024, the government in 2022 publicly said the dam would be completed well ahead of schedule in 2023 before the elections.
On my birthday on 8 September 2021, ZINWA chief executive Taurai Maurukira publicly restated that position when he said the project was well on course and would certainly be completed by 2023.
It all turned out to be a blatant lie.
And the cost of the project kept changing over the years, typical of most government projects.
One can surmise that this is because the looters, the elite in government and the tenderpreneurs who often hover around these huge projects, always inflate the costs to accommodate kickbacks.
At one point, we were told the Kunzvi Dam was a US$850 million dollar project, at another point it was a US$680 million project and at yet another point it became a US$109 million project.
As with all looters, the figure keeps shifting, like a mirage.
Conclusion
Since 1996, and for seven elections, the Kunzvi Dam project has been a permanent item on the Zanu PF election manifesto.
On the eve of the last election, they told us it would be complete by 2023.
Of course, I have managed to retain my name because of that blatant lie.
There is no doubt about the importance of the project to Zimbabweans in general and to the residents of Harare in particular, especially given the current ecological disaster at Lake Chivero.
The only challenge has been non-delivery on this very important national project that has been fraught with unmitigated lies.
Someone has even quipped that Zanu PF does not feel hastened to deliver on the project because it will mainly benefit the people of Harare, who have serially rejected them at the polls..
It has been 29 years of lying about this project and you will certainly hear the same shrill noise in 2028
As I said in 2022, tanzwa nekunzwa zveKunzvi. (We are tired of the Kunzvi lies).
Luke Tamborinyoka is a citizen from Domboshava. He is by profession a journalist and a political scientist. You can interact with him via his facebook page or via his X handle @luke_tambo.
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