Trudging home along a dusty street in the Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo, Sikhathele Ndlovu balances a 20-liter (5-gallon) bucket of water on her head, a ritual she\u2019s performed daily for almost a decade.<\/p>\n
Persistent drought on top of existing faulty piping means there\u2019s little prospect of an end to her back-breaking trek to the communal borehole.<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing comes from the pipes to our homes now,\u201d the 51-year-old widow said during a break on her 20-minute journey through the city\u2019s Cowdray Park township. \u201cOpen the tap and not even a drip.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ndlovu is one of tens of thousands of Zimbabweans, most of them women, forced to lug water from boreholes or wells as piping, pumping stations and other infrastructure crumbles. Their plight is being aggravated by what the Zimbabwe Farmers Union says is the worst dry spell in at least three years.<\/p>\n
Zimbabwe is in the grip of a nationwide drought that\u2019s depleted dams, cut output by hydropower plants, caused harvests to fail and prompted the government to appeal for $464 million in aid to stave off famine. It\u2019s disastrous for a nation whose economy has been driven to the brink of collapse by two decades of mismanagement, meaning the authorities can\u2019t afford to effect repairs, let alone extend water access to a burgeoning urban population.<\/p>\n
But Zimbabwe\u2019s location means it\u2019s likely to experience more frequent droughts in future. The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change has identified southern Africa as a so-called hotspot\u2014a region that faces increased risks of heat extremes and less rainfall as the planet\u2019s temperature rises.<\/p>\n
The effects are already being felt in other African cities including Cape Town in neighboring South Africa and Maputo, Mozambique\u2019s capital. Both have been plagued by water shortages brought on by drought, population growth, urbanization and insufficient investment in dams and other infrastructure.<\/p>\n
\u201cClimate change does not see boundaries or borders,\u201d said Tich Zinyemba, head of the public weather service at Zimbabwe\u2019s Meteorological Service Department. \u201cSome of the things which we are seeing now such as prolonged droughts, dry spells are as a result of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n
The consequences are plain to see in Zimbabwe\u2019s second city of Bulawayo, in the west of the country. Once a thriving industrial hub, most manufacturing has come to a standstill and the city council has begun rationing water from the pumps and pipes that still work in a bid to stretch supplies until November when the rainy season normally begins.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re hoping that by rationing, people will adjust so that we can continue supplying water,\u201d said Simela Dube, the council\u2019s director of engineering services. The city is targeting a reduction in consumption of about 20% per day.<\/p>\n
Many of Bulawayo\u2019s 1.5 million residents who do still have access to piped water can\u2019t afford it\u2014less than 10% of Zimbabwe\u2019s workforce has formal employment\u2014and resort to using free communal supplies when their homes are cut off for not paying.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are back in the olden days, but now it\u2019s worse because everyone\u2019s broke,\u201d said Jessica Moyo, 60, as she pushed a barrow laden with empty containers to collect water from a shared faucet in Bulawayo\u2019s Khumalo township, her grandson, Mikey, shuffling behind her. \u201cNot one person in my family has a job. We live hand-to-mouth selling some tomatoes and cabbages.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bulawayo will need at least $522 million over the next two decades to repair and upgrade its existing water and sewer systems, according to Mercy Ncube, the city\u2019s engineer. The council and debt-stricken central government doesn\u2019t have the money and even if it can somehow be raised, it won\u2019t alleviate the current supply deficit.<\/p>\n
A plan to build a 384-kilometer (240-mile) pipeline to bring water from the Zambezi River to Bulawayo\u2014costed at about $5 billion a decade ago\u2014was never implemented. While the central government, which is dominated by Shona-speaking officials, say the outlay was prohibitive, many residents of Bulawayo and the surrounding Matabeleland provinces say the inaction amounts to deliberate discrimination against their minority ethnic Ndebele group.<\/p>\n
The water crisis is not as acute in Harare, Zimbabwe\u2019s capital, which typically has more rain that Bulawayo. But even here, some of its suburbs haven\u2019t had piped water for a decade.<\/p>\n
Globally more than 2 billion people live in countries experiencing high water stress, and the UN warns the problem is set to worsen, with demand expected to grow as much as 30% by 2050.<\/p>\n
Ndlovu, the Bulawayo widow, is testimony to the hardship that will bring.<\/p>\n
\u201cLife here goes backwards,\u201d she said. \u201cFirst there was no water, now there\u2019s usually no electricity. That\u2019s our life now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trudging home along a dusty street in the Zimbabwean city of Bulawayo, Sikhathele Ndlovu balances a 20-liter (5-gallon) bucket of water on her head, a ritual she\u2019s performed daily for almost a decade. Persistent drought on top of existing faulty piping means there\u2019s little prospect of an end to her back-breaking trek to the communal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":13531,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,8],"tags":[344,815,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-13530","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all-news","8":"category-community","9":"category-head-lines","10":"tag-drought","11":"tag-food-shortage","12":"tag-water-supplies"},"yoast_head":"\n