ONCE the pride of urban planning in Zimbabwe, Bulawayo is drowning in its own filth. Quite literally.
The city council’s own report admits it: sewer bursts and sewage overflows have become part of daily life.
Raw sewage meanders through neighbourhoods, settling beside homes, flowing past boreholes — poisoning the very water people are forced to drink.
The predictable outcome? Outbreaks of diarrhoea and other waterborne diseases.
This is not a natural disaster. It is engineered neglect.
It is the cost of years of under-funding, mismanagement and misplaced priorities.
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The consequences are devastating.
Diarrhoea outbreaks have been reported in wards where sewage flows dangerously close to homes.
Councillors admit residents are now accustomed to living with sewage outside their doors.
Some even fetch water from boreholes contaminated by nearby bursts, despite repeated warning from council that such water is unsafe for drinking.
This amounts to a ticking health time bomb.
Diarrhoea is only the beginning.
History has already taught Zimbabwe, in the most painful way, that sewage mismanagement breeds deadly cholera and typhoid outbreaks.
The 2008 cholera epidemic claimed over 4 000 lives nationally.
If Bulawayo does not act decisively now, it risks reliving that dark chapter.
While councillors debate strategies, residents are left to improvise survival in conditions unfit for human dignity.
The danger is bigger than diarrhoea.
Boreholes, once the fallback in a collapsing water system, are compromised by seepage.
Councillors are right to raise alarm, but alarm alone is not enough.
Sadly, the burden of survival has been shifted to residents.
Families are forced to drink water from shallow wells, unsafe boreholes or wade through sewage to reach their homes.
These are conditions unfit for human dignity — a shameful indictment on the governance of Zimbabwe’s second-largest city.
Council cannot continue to issue warnings while failing to act.
It must treat sewer bursts with the urgency reserved for national disasters.
Funds must be mobilised, whether through reallocation of budgets, partnerships with government or emergency assistance.
Transparency is also critical: residents need to know how money meant for infrastructure is being spent and why systems continue to fail.
Bulawayo’s sewage crisis is not just about blocked pipes.
It is about public health, accountability and the right to live in a safe environment for every citizen.
Every day of delay risks seeing this manageable crisis degenerate into a full-scale epidemic.
Bulawayo needs to redirect resources to broken infrastructure before more lives are lost.
Council must treat sewer bursts with the urgency of a natural disaster, because that is what they are — silent disasters spreading sickness in slow motion.
A city is measured not by its buildings or its slogans, but by whether its people can live without fear of drinking their own waste.
Right now, Bulawayo has failed that test.
The truth is harsh but unavoidable: a city that cannot protect its residents from drinking their own waste has failed.
And unless leadership rises to the occasion, Bulawayo may soon find itself in the annals history not as Zimbabwe’s most liveable city — but a champion at poisoning its own people.