Jill Roberts represented Kubatana at the recent SHARE Beirut event.

SHARE Beirut is a weekend-long public, free and non-commercial hybrid event blending an Internet culture and technology related daytime conference with dynamic cutting-edge music festival by night. It will bring together hundreds of passionate people, forward-thinkers, cultural creatives, activists and artists from Lebanon as all around the world for talks and parties in 72 hours of powerful gathering to share ideas, knowledge and creativity.

Services which citizens of a nation are supposed to get from local authorities as a basic right have become a privilege.

In almost every town in Zimbabwe citizens are bemoaning poor service delivery – from dry taps to dark nights caused by load shedding. Mounting complaints fall on deaf ears. Recently it was reported that City of Harare’s wage bill has doubled leaving little revenue going to service delivery.

For decades now the Zambezi water project (now Zambezi water pipe dream), which is supposed to help solve Bulawayo’s water woes, has not produced positive results even when the Movement for Democratic Change took over the Ministry of Water. Residents of Bulawayo recently had to resort to the so-called “Big Flush” and Councilor Thaba Moyo was quoted saying, “The big flush is meant to take care of areas that would have been placed under water rationing. Residents will be asked to systematically flush all their toilets so that sufficient water will be deposited in the system in order to get rid of the material that would have dried up and blocked the system.” I just can’t imagine residents trying to beat evening traffic to reach home so that they can comply with the 7:30 pm Big Flush directive.

Service delivery problems are even affecting smaller towns like Gweru and Masvingo.

Try to imagine a growing town like Chitungwiza with no independent water supply of its own having to rely on City of Harare for supply of this precious basic right which sometimes gets disconnected for non-payment.

Soon it will be raining and heaps of gravel will be dumped along the roads to patch up pothole riddled partly tarred roads. This exercise of patching tarred roads with gravel has not done any good to the roads as the potholes have increase to ditches making the roads impassable during rainy season.

And, instead of just starting with putting the pre-paid meters in households somebody didn’t do his/her job right at Zimbabwe’s power distribution company ZESA by wasting money ordering millions of bulbs to save electricity which residents only receive less than twelve hours a day.

In the words of the Kubatana community:

The Fix It sticker that I have is too small to stick where there is water running just opposite the Southerton police station. There is now an artificial river yet there are people without water. My heart bleeds. – Kubatana subscriber

I am writing to you because I don’t know where else to write. Please is there anyone out there who can remind ZESA that when people pay bills in full they deserve electricity. Its so disturbing that the power cuts in ZIMRE are almost unbearable. We pay more than 100usd dollars but nearly every day we have no power. Would it be better for not sending bills if they cannot supply any electricity.
- Kubatana subscriber

As residents of Hatcliffe we’ve had it to the bream. The City of Harare has completely failed us as they have failed to deal with the shortage of water for over a decade now. The situation has worsened as most wells and boreholes have dried up in the past 2 months resulting in people having to rely on contaminated water for house hold purposes. If possible we would like to hear what the mayor thinks about this and how he wants us to react.
- Kubatana subscriber

The whole of Harare is a death Trap. We are all too meek and mild to do anything about it. One day we must all stand up and fight and get ALL this Government out. – Kubatana subscriber

Source: Visualise us

Community Radio Harare recently published this:

As water shortages continue to worsen in many Harare suburbs, some mandimbandimbas have taken charge of local boreholes demanding that each resident must pay $1 to access the borehole water.

Several residents who spoke to Talking Harare confirmed that the mandimbandimbas were terrorizing them and taking advantage of the water crisis by demanding money. ‘Yes it is true that the mandimbandimbas are asking us to pay $1 per resident for us to access UNICEF boreholes that are the only source of water in Highfield. For example, at Highfield Satellite Clinic this situation has been going on for over a week now and these people seem to be untouchable once again as nothing is being done to stop them,’ said Mrs Faith Madondo of Highfield.

When Talking Harare visited Mbare, it noticed the mandimbandimbas controlling hundreds of residents who were trying to draw water from a mass tap near Mbare Netball Complex. Residents were being asked to pay ‘maintenance’ fees for the water tap which is apparently owned by council. The situation was similar at a borehole near Budiriro 2 Primary School and other suburbs like Glen Norah, Dzivarasekwa and Glen Norah. Those who were failing to pay were turned away and denied access to water.

The mandimbandimbas were recently chucked out of kombi ranks where they were forcing transport operators to pay them fees which were not justified since all bus termini in Harare are owned by Harare city council. Police and soldiers moved in to remove them following incessant complaints by members of the public, kombi operators and stakeholders that these were becoming a law unto themselves and causing havoc to the travelling public and transport business.

Meanwhile, some touts who were removed from kombi ranks are slowly trickling back after council failed to swiftly move in and reclaim its termini. Talking Harare observed that at Copacabana, Market Square and Fourth Street, the illegal touts are coming back and causing confusion once again.

From the Guardian.

The activists taking part in a ‘No To Nato Scotland Coalition’, using chalk to draw 24,000 figures on the pavement to represent the deaths of people that have been killed, to date, in the current Afghanistan campaign. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images