THE “pop” of bursting sewage pipes has become a grim, rhythmic soundtrack to urban life in Zimbabwe, where a thick, suffocating stench engulfs most high-density suburbs.
From the narrow lanes of Budiriro in Harare to the sprawling streets of Chitungwiza, raw effluent has transitioned from an occasional infrastructure failure to a permanent, toxic fixture of the landscape.
Life in these neighbourhoods continues with a haunting sense of normalcy; residents appear seemingly oblivious to the fact that this is neither the first nor the last time they will navigate a river of filth.
People go about their daily duties hanging laundry, selling produce, and commuting to work as if the waste at their feet were a natural geographic feature they have simply learned to live with.
Children, in their innocence and vulnerability, hop through the green slime, playing games mere inches from the source of medieval diseases like cholera and typhoid, which are no longer terrifying novelties but recurring neighbours.
This normalisation of decay sparked a fierce political debate that reached a boiling point in Parliament this week.
When a question regarding the nationwide sewage crisis asked by Budiriro legislator Darlington Chigumbu to the Local Government and Public Works minister, it was the Agriculture, Mechanisation and Water Resources minister Anxious Masuka, who took the floor to draw a sharp line in the sand between central government oversight and local authorities' accountability.
The statistics of the crisis are written in the dirt, etched in a sewage system designed for a fraction of the current population during the pre-independence era.
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These pipes are now buckling under the weight of rapid urban migration and decades of deferred maintenance, leading many residents to stop reporting bursts altogether because they know any ‘fix’ will be a temporary patch on a pipe that has fundamentally disintegrated.
Masuka’s parliamentary intervention was a departure from technical jargon, framing the crisis instead as one of character and leadership.
Pointing the finger directly at elected council representatives, he argued that corruption has drained the financial resources meant for service delivery, leaving the electorate with the ultimate responsibility to choose people who are able to do the work in the next election.
“Firstly, I want to thank you because you have noted that there is a problem with elected council representatives. That is where corruption is.
“I want to encourage that when we go for elections, we elect people who are able to do the work because the local authorities have a task to do service delivery — water, sewage and refuse.
“Currently, the government under the leadership of President (Emmerson) Mnangagwa has intervened because councils have failed to provide service delivery.
“We now have Geo Pomona which intervened by providing service in the removal of waste but council is charging for the service. So, in the next elections, let us know who to elect.”
To the government, the sewage on the streets is a testament to municipal incompetence; to the councils, it is the result of a central government that is slow to disburse devolution funds and a crippling lack of foreign currency needed for chemicals and repairs.
Central to this debate is the rise of the “interventionist” model, epitomised by the Geo Pomona project.
Once a mountain of burning trash, is now a modern waste-to-energy plant born out of a presidential intervention that bypassed failing municipal structures.
While the government sees this as a blueprint for the future, critics fear it undermines the essence of devolution, turning local authorities into hollow shells while residents pay twice for the same service.
As the political blame game intensifies, the five-year election cycle feels like an eternity to the mother in Glen View or the shopkeeper in Mbare.
As the hallowed halls ring with debate, the reality on the ground remains unchanged.
For now, the pipes continue to burst, children continue to play near contaminated water and the stench remains a constant reminder that until governance issues are resolved, urban residents will continue to live in deteriorating conditions — waiting for accountability to catch up with infrastructure collapse.
