By Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu

THE cholera outbreak has since claimed more than 30 lives in some of Zimbabwe’s urban areas at the time of writing this article (September 14 2018), while the newly appointed Minister of Health and Child Care, Dr Obadiah Moyo, has declared this outbreak a state of emergency.
The epicentre of the outbreak is officially said to be Harare, the country’s capital city.
Cholera is caused by germs taken into the body orally.
The germs can be in potable water, in some cooked cold food or in some fruits or vegetables.
The germs abound in dirty surroundings such as broken down sewage systems and uncollected rubbish dumps such as those now found in the country’s high density and other suburbs in urban centres.
Harare’s water supply system failed to meet the fast growing city’s population more than a decade ago.
That led to the sinking of boreholes and shallow wells, some, if not many, of which are located near decaying rubbish heaps or malfunctioning sewage pipes.
Some of the boreholes/wells have been contaminated by human faecal matter and bacteria-laden refuse fluids through seepage.
The siting of boreholes/wells did not obviously consider that of sewage pipes, or the lie of the land so that the flowing of subterranean streams could not contaminate them, that is, the boreholes/wells.
Since boreholes/wells are invariably much deeper than sewage pipes, they should always be on the upstream and not downstream vis-a-vis the sewage pipes.
No borehole/well should be located downstream to sewage pipes.
This important public hygiene precaution is observed at all United Nations refugee camps, especially where Blair toilets are in use.
Harare City Council, as well as those of other municipalities where boreholes supply water to some sections of the communities, has to consider this fact when residents sink boreholes/wells.
Hydrologists and geologists should be consulted whenever borehole sinking or deep well digging is contemplated on a relatively large scale in a highly populated locality.
Urban councils need to be very much sensitised that management of their respective communities is not a casual but a vital responsibility to the whole nation because a disease outbreak at one urban centre can affect the entire nation, region and continent in days rather than months.
Zimbabwe has a high per capita literacy rate, which should translate into a high sense of personal hygiene.
However, it is a matter of concern that many, if not most, such relatively educated black Zimbabweans prefer using their fingers and palms for eating such foods as sadza instead of utensils that can be sterilised by means of scalding water and soap more effectively than human hands.
Scalding hot water cannot be used on human flesh for obvious reasons, but its used on forks and knives, spoons, plates and cups as a matter of course.
People’s manual hygiene is seldom as high as we expect because of long fingernails under which germs and fungus are usually found.
It is also a matter of great concern that, in Zimbabwe today, some people cook and serve meals in very unhygienic places such as sanitary lanes and open spaces where dust abounds.
This should not be allowed, not only by municipal councils but also, by relevant health and medical institutions of the central government.
Taking into consideration the seriousness of the current cholera outbreak, it can serve a very useful purpose if the Zimbabwe Ministry of Health and Child Care were to order everyone to be vaccinated against cholera forthwith, beginning with school children.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) could be asked to play either the leading or subsidiary role in that cholera preventive campaign.
The Government should also look into the wisdom (or otherwise) of temporarily closing schools while all urban councils are vigorously cleaning up their areas by every possible means.
In 1946, Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) experienced a wave of diphtheria, a very serious, acute, contagious ailment caused by a bacillus of the same name. Schools were closed for about three weeks while a countrywide vaccination campaign was underway.
In the present case, town councils need to pull up their socks and clean up their streets, lanes and whatever place under their direct concern.
The writer of this article once lived in Salisbury, now Harare, in the early 1960s, at House Number 4341 Ardbennie Road, Harare Township to start with, and later in Highfield’s Lusaka section, then at Beatrice Cottages and lastly in Mufakose.
All those suburbs were scrupulously clean, and it was a pleasure to take a walk from George Stark School, along Arddibennie Road, past Mbare Musika, to the city.
Now, the area is a sickening sight as ZTV recently showed the whole nation — why and why and, again, why?
In Rimuka Township, Kadoma, and also in Bulawayo’s Makokoba Township, the same filthy conditions now prevail.
Meanwhile, the municipal councils are in our hands, and the various mayors are driven in the latest car models! How can they justify that?
Zimbabwe’s urban councillors owe it to the people who elected them to make sure their respective wards are livable.
The priorities of every urban council are:
– there should be practical and progressive attempts to provide affordable and accessible accommodation;
– there should be adequate potable, affordable and accessible water for every resident;
– there should be affordable and accessible health services such as medical clinics, refuse disposal facilities, infant and primary schools;
– there should be adequate security facilities such as tower lights and;
– roads must be regularly maintained.
It is simply indefensible for an urban council to say that it cannot remove refuse because it does not have foreign currency to import suitable motor vehicles for that purpose.
Urban councils can, and should, enter into contract with transport companies that have huge lorries that can remove the large heaps of refuse now found in literally every Zimbabwean town. In any case, areas such as sanitary lanes can be cleaned without using huge lorries.
We must admit that most African nations are absolutely poor and that their per capita incomes are very, very low.
Zimbabwe is not absolutely, but relatively, poor.
That does not, and cannot, justify some of its urban councils increasing their allowances and buying their mayors highly expensive motor vehicles while the towns are rotting under filth and residents are dying of either cholera or typhoid.
It is unadulterated corruption for a mayor to use the most expensive, chauffer-driven latest motor vehicle model while large areas of his town are being chocked to death by mounds and mounds of filth.
A good, people-oriented mayor would rather have a modest vehicle so that the little money his town generates can be used to maintain the town’s health standards.
Incidentally, is it not legally possible and necessary that the Health Ministry, together with that of Local Government, can and should give Zimbabwe’s various urban municipal councils orders to clean up their respective areas by a given deadline, and that should they fail, they should resign or, if they do not, they would be dismissed by the appropriate minister?
If there is no such law in Zimbabwe, it should be crafted and enacted most urgently to enable the appropriate ministry or ministries to act.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email: sgwakuba@gmail.com