Bulawayo, Zimbabwe -
Twice a week, Nothi Mlalazi joins a long line with dozens of
other people - some of whom have slept there overnight - and
stands for hours waiting for water in Zimbabwe's second-largest
city.
As the parched southern African country endures its worst
drought in years - a problem scientists link to climate change -
ongoing water shortages in Bulawayo have left residents in some
suburbs without running water for more than three months.
The tankers that the city council sends to deliver water
every few days are often the residents' only hope for clean
water.
Many will spend the night at the delivery point to make sure
they can fill their buckets before the tankers - or bowsers -
run dry.
"Receiving water from bowsers is a huge challenge for many
residents. We spend most of our time in long, winding queues,
impatiently waiting to fill up our containers," said Mlalazi,
45, who lives in the poor, crowded suburb of Pumula South.
"You will find (people) as early as 1am already there,"
she added, as she stood in line with two of her daughters, who
watched to make sure nobody stole their water buckets.
After several years of drought and patchy rains, reservoir
levels have fallen dangerously low, pushing the Bulawayo City
Council (BCC) to limit water supplies in an attempt to conserve
the resource until the rainy season starts in October.
Last month, city authorities began shutting off piped water
six days a week, reporting that the three dams acting as the
city's primary water sources were at less than 30% of capacity.
The city had already decommissioned three other dams due to
the water dropping below pumping levels.
Some residents have resorted to drawing the water they need
for washing from unprotected sources such as ponds and leaking
water pipes, or tapping into sewage gutters for water to flush
their toilets, said Pumula South resident Charles Siziba.
Siziba said the situation is made even more dire by the
coronavirus pandemic, as the lack of running water increases the
risk that people will catch the illness and infect others.
It is almost impossible to practice the regular handwashing
that health experts say is one of the best weapons against the
virus, he noted.
"And there is also no social distancing to speak of, because
when the bowser comes through, residents push and shove in the
water queue to fill up their buckets," Siziba said.
Many central and western parts of southern Africa -
including Zimbabwe - have experienced their lowest rainfall
since 1981 over the past year, according to the United Nations.
Attributing the low reservoir levels to back-to-back
droughts since 2018, Bulawayo Mayor Solomon Mguni compared the
city's struggles to those during a devastating dry period in the
early 1990s.
"The city's water situation is almost a recurrence of the
1992 situation where the city experienced a crippling drought
that affected the city's raw water storage and supply," he said
in a June statement.
Mguni added that the city council had made repeated appeals
to Zimbabwe's Ministry of Local Government, Public Works and
National Housing for Bulawayo to be officially declared a water
shortage area, which would channel resources toward
rehabilitating the city's water infrastructure.
In April, an independent engineering consultant hired by the
ministry concluded that Bulawayo's dams had enough water to last
14 months and that a crumbling water supply system is to blame
for the shortages.
Local officials disputed the findings, saying the water
shortages were not solely an infrastructure problem.
More than 30% of the water running through the city's pipes
leaks out before it reaches consumers, city council spokeswoman
Nesisa Mpofu told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Even on the one day of the week that the water is turned on
in Mlalazi's section of the city, she and her neighbours still
find their taps run dry, as the water network struggles to get
the resource up to their homes on higher ground.
Simela Dube, the director of engineering services at the
city council, confirmed to the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a
phone interview that some residents don't get any water at all
because of low pressure in the city's pumping systems.
"When pressure is low in our reservoirs, it doesn't flow
into high-elevated areas," he said.
"Because of this situation, bowsers are dispatched to those
areas that don't get water."
But the water tankers are not always reliable, say local
residents and authorities.
Sichelesile Mahlangu, a member of parliament for Pumula
constituency, said she recently met some residents who had been
in line for 12 hours waiting for drivers to dispense water.
To ease the situation, Dube, the water engineer, said the
council has started the process of installing 10,000-litre
"water-tank kiosks" in 25 sites where more than 6,000 homes are
in need of emergency water supplies.
The kiosks, which cost $4,500 each, consist of a large tank
with multiple taps. The bowsers fill the tanks each week and
residents can collect water at any time of day, cutting down on
queuing times.
According to Mpofu, the council spokeswoman, one kiosk has
already been installed in the Pumula East suburb and the city
has identified sites for six more so far.
Last month, Thabo Siziba, a Zimbabwean real estate investor
based in Canada, launched a campaign using the online fundraiser
GoFundMe to try to gather $15,000 to build at least two of those
water kiosks.
The campaign has raised more than $4,000 so far.
In Pumula South, resident Nelson Mande Lunga told the
Thomson Reuters Foundation that he stopped getting running water
in his home weeks before the city started limiting water
supplies to one day a week.
"I have resorted to asking for water from my neighbours who
can get water on low pressure," he said.
"Otherwise, I also rely on my friends who fill up my water
containers from town," Lunga lamented as he stood next to his
seven buckets in a long queue for the water tanker.