Zimbabweans adapt to water insecurity

The World Economic Forum notes that water scarcity is a key priority on the sustainability agenda. Water availability is not only needed to meet people’s day-to-day needs but contributes significantly towards a country’s overall health, economic growth and development.

- Sikhululekile Mashingaidze

Local governments, which are positioned closest to the residents, play a critical role in the realisation of the UN’s sustainable development goal six that seeks to ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.

Section 77 of the Zimbabwean Constitution highlights every citizen’s right to food and water, and particularly to “safe, clean and potable water”.

The direct effect that the provision of safe, clean and potable water has on the right to sufficient food and healthcare, among others, makes it imperative for the state, through its local government arm, to “take reasonable legislative and other measures, within the limits of the resources available to it, to achieve the progressive realisation of this right”.

But, for a majority of residents in parts of Chitungwiza, Epworth and New Dzivarasekwa, it is not the local government but residents themselves who have adapted to ensure access to safe drinking water and other household uses.

Good Governance Africa (GGA) researcher Helen Grange, focusing on South Africa, observes this adaptation resulting from “the breach left by failing local government services, [in which] citizens have been making alternative plans for years ... digging boreholes to tap underground water and purchasing water tanks to help them get through water outages and throttling”.

The issue of insecure access to water is not unique to South Africa and Zimbabwe. It is a global problem as reflected in the United Nations 2023 Sustainable Development Goals Report on Water, Sanitation, Hygiene, Waste and Electricity Services in Healthcare Facilities: Progress on the Fundamentals.