The first thing she did was cover her nose. The move was instinctive, immediate, and unfiltered. The district officer for Kuwadzana suburb in Harare had just stepped out of her gleaming vehicle into a reality she could not process fast enough.
Sharp waves of stench hit her first. They were thick, invasive and suffocating. Then came the sight of raw sewage surging through the streets, cutting across broken roads and crumbling drainage like a living, toxic river. For a brief moment, she recoiled, but for the residents watching her, that moment said everything.
For them, there is no recoiling or stepping back into air-conditioned comfort, or escape.
This is their everyday life.
In Kuwadzana — a fast crumbling former jewel of the city — the smell arrives before dawn, seeping through cracks in window frames, creeping under doors, settling into blankets, clothes and skin. It lingers in the throat, and is sour, heavy and unmistakable. By the time the sun rises, the source is already visible. A slow-moving stream of human waste winds through the suburb, carrying everything with it from excrement, toilet paper, rotting food, plastic and diapers. Flies swarm above it in thick, restless clouds, while dogs wander in and drink. Children step over on their way to school.
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“This isn’t waste,” says Lucy Kaseza, standing a few metres from the stream.
“This is a sickness. We breathe it and live in it, but nothing changes.”
Behind her, life continues with forced normalcy. A gate creaks open, and a broom scrapes against concrete. The routines of survival unfold around a hazard that should never exist, and inside homes, the crisis follows. One resident says she has abandoned her bedroom entirely because it sits closest to the sewage channel, where the smell at night becomes unbearable.
She says it is impossible to ignore.
“You wake up gasping,” she says quietly. “It feels like it is inside your chest.”
She now sleeps in the dining room, where it still is not comfortable, but survivable.
At the edge of the sewage stream, schoolchildren gather in uniforms, bags slung over their shoulders. Someone has placed stones across the flow. It is a makeshift bridge. One by one, the children step onto them, arms stretched out for balance, hopping over the dark current. They laugh as they cross. It looks like play, but it is not.
This is a way of adaptation. A generation is growing up learning how to navigate sewage before they learn to question why it is there in the first place, and that may be the most dangerous shift of all — when catastrophe becomes routine.
Public health experts have long warned that raw sewage is one of the most dangerous environmental hazards in urban areas. It carries pathogens that cause cholera, typhoid, dysentery and hepatitis A. These diseases do not require direct contact, but spread silently through contaminated water, on shoes, through flies, on hands and in the dust.
Zimbabwe has lived through this nightmare before. In 2008, a devastating cholera outbreak swept across the country, killing more than 4 000 people and infecting over 100 000. Hospitals were overwhelmed and burials became routine.
That memory is not distant, and in Kuwadzana, the conditions that fuel such outbreaks are already in place. At local clinics, the warning signs are emerging. Health workers report a steady rise in diarrhoeal diseases, skin infections and suspected typhoid cases, particularly among children.
“I am worried,” says Thandiwe Dowani, holding her infant daughter tightly. “We boil water and clean. We try everything but how do you protect a child from something that is everywhere?”
A nurse at a nearby clinic describes a grim routine. Children come in almost every day with diarrhoea and infections. They are treated, but they return to the same environment. It is a cycle of treatment without change, she says, or relief without resolution.
What is happening in Kuwadzana is not unique. It is part of a wider, systemic collapse stretching across Harare. In Glen View and Budiriro, sewage spills into yards and streets while in Highfield children cross contaminated streams on planks.
In Dzivaresekwa, it collects in potholes, hidden beneath murky water. In Mbare, the smell lingers even when the flow is not visible.
“It is everywhere,” says Gift Sibanda, a shopkeeper. “But it is like it does not exist to those who are supposed to fix it.”
That disconnect between lived reality and official response defines the crisis. It is not simply a service delivery failure, but a breakdown in recognition — a system that no longer responds to the conditions people are living in. Harare’s water and sewer infrastructure was built for a different city.
Designed decades ago, it was meant to serve between 300 000 and 500 000 residents. Today, the population exceeds two million. The system has not evolved to match that growth. Pipes are old, treatment plants are underfunded, maintenance is inconsistent and expansion has lagged behind urban sprawl. Under that pressure, failure is inevitable, analysts said. City officials often point to human behaviour such as garbage dumped into toilets, sand entering pipes, illegal connections overwhelming the system. There is truth in that. But it is only part of the story, one resident says. Even a well-managed system would struggle under the current load. What Harare is facing is structural collapse, says one expert.
For 2026, Harare’s budget stands at approximately US$690 million, but much of it is consumed by salaries and operational costs, leaving limited room for infrastructure renewal. At the same time, residents continue to be billed. Authorities say residents and businesses owe billions in unpaid rates, a debt they argue is crippling service delivery. But in Kuwadzana, that explanation feels inadequate.
“We pay,” says Brian Magube, who has lived in the suburb for more than three decades. “Water, refuse, everything. But what we get is this.”
Raw sewage flows past homes day after day. City officials maintain that many blockages are caused by residents themselves and urge the public to change behaviour.
Harare City Council spokesperson Stanley Gama attributed the blockages to garbage and sand dumped in manholes by residents.
“We have not received reports of a rise in diarrhea in the area,” Gama says.
“But, yes, if we have cases of sewer bursts, we promptly attend to make sure the sewer flows properly through sewer pipes. We urge residents to report as soon as they notice sewer pipe bursts. It is important to note that in the majority of cases, the sewer blockages we attend to are caused by garbage dumped in manholes and huge amounts of sand used by people to wash plates and pots. We urge residents not to dump garbage in our sewer systems,” Gama says.
Prominent medical practitioner Johannes Marisa says sewage exposure triggers bacterial and parasitic diseases.
“Sewage exposure is very stubborn in the transmission of a lot of diseases which include viral, bacterial, and parasitic diseases. The bacterial diseases are very stubborn. We also have viral infections which can come, one of the most stubborn of them being Hepatitis A, which can cause inflammation or swelling of the liver. These are very stubborn and they can be found in all sewage. Hence the need for councils or municipalities to take heed of sanitation,” Marisa says.
Daily life in Kuwadzana has become an exercise in avoidance. Women carrying water buckets walk carefully along narrow dry edges of contaminated streams, avoiding splashes. Shopkeepers sweep continuously, pushing back dirt and flies that return within minutes. The work is repetitive, exhausting and ultimately futile but nothing changes or improves.
The sewage keeps flowing and what leaves Kuwadzana does not disappear, but travels. Much of Harare’s untreated sewage eventually finds its way into Lake Chivero, the city’s main water source, where it enters an already strained treatment system before returning to households through taps. It is a closed loop.
Lake Chivero is already heavily polluted after years of untreated discharge. Its ecosystem has deteriorated with fish stocks declining, and communities that once depended on it are struggling. The consequences ripple outward into higher treatment costs, greater health risks and long-term environmental damage. The city is recycling its own neglect.
Beyond the physical dangers, there is a psychological cost. Residents speak of a gradual shift, and a quiet erosion of expectations. Over time, the presence of sewage becomes normal.
Children learn safe paths through contaminated streets. Parents develop routines to minimise exposure and conversations about the crisis lose urgency because it persists.
“It used to be different,” says Blessing Dowi. “If something broke, it was fixed. Now,” she pauses. “Now it is left.”
There is anger in her voice, but it is controlled, shaped by repetition and disappointment. “We pay for everything,” says Unique Piki. “But what we live with is sewage.”
As evening falls, Kuwadzana quiets, its doors close, streets empty, and the heat lifts slightly. But the sewage remains. It flows in the dark, unseen but not gone, continuing its slow journey through the suburb, the city, into the water system and back again.