By Dr Michelina Andreucci

THE water crisis in Zimbabwe is not a new story.
From as early as the Stone Age, the San people of Southern Africa, particularly Zimbabwe, held rain ceremonies to intercede to the Supreme Being for rain and water.
These age-old ceremonies have continued into our times, where most of the indigenous people of Central and Southern Africa conducted rain-praying ceremonies, for the fertility of the land and the survival of the species.
With the growth of towns came municipalities.
Beginning during the early part of the last century, the separate municipalities of Salisbury (Harare), Bulawayo, Gwelo (Gweru), Umtali (Mutare) and Gatooma (Kadoma) generated their own thermal electricity, until the enactment of the Electricity Act of 1936, when the establishment of the Electricity Supply Commission (ESC) took over the power stations at Gwelo (Gweru), Umtali (Mutare) and Gatooma (Kadoma), increasing the national generating capacity and the distribution network outside of the main towns.
The municipalities of Harare, Bulawayo, Gweru and Mutare continued to supply thermal power to their customers at their own tariffs.
Elsewhere the ESC sold electricity to an ever-increasing number of rural and urban customers.
By 1950, the ESC had a generating capacity of 54,8MW and just under
6 000 kilometres of power lines, all this before the construction of the Kariba hydro-electricity power station.
Today Zimbabwe is experiencing a deficit in electricity supply, which we need to come to terms with; therefore, for historical clarity we will go back in time.
From the early ventures into the dense hot Zambezi Valley and the wild, mysterious impassable Kariba Gorge left strong impressions on all its visitors.
Its inviolate vastness was said to be the home of the BaTonga’s dreaded river deity Nyaminyami.
References to Kariba were made over 100 years before the construction of Kariba by Scottish explorers David and Charles Livingstone who first went up the Gorge in a canoe.
In 1877, the hunter Frederick Courtney Selous was said to have reached the Kariba Gorge after a long trek along the North Bank at the Western entrance.
The area was explored again in 1891, for the prospect of a railway line connecting the navigable stretches along the Zambezi by William Keppel Stier who wrote: “This Gorge is impassable.
“Had the Sanyati River proved navigable, an obstacle in the shape of the Kariba Gorge would have been met with scorn.”
In 1912 geologist A.J.C. Molyneux, recorded as one of the first to work on the mapping of Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), visited the Gorge.
And in 1913, the British South Africa Company (BSAC), began to seriously survey for a railway line from Sinoia (Chinhoyi), to Kafue (Zambia), across the Zambezi at Kariba.
By 1914 with settler farming activities increasing, a village management board was established at Sinoia (Chinhoyi); the railhead of the present day line between Salisbury (Harare) and the Ayrshire Mine.
However, at the time the settlements did not extend beyond the Angwa River, 65 km away.
The Zambezi had been considered as a source of hydro-power as far back as 1901, when the African Concessions Syndicate Limited secured a grant from the BSAC for the use of the water power of the Victoria Falls and the Zambezi for 75 years.
The grant was subsequently ceded to the Victoria Falls Power Company in 1906.
The scheme to take water from the Zambezi (above the Eastern Cataract), and lead it by a canal to a generating station in the second bend of the Gorge below the bridge.
The intention was to supply energy equal to 200 000 hp (horse-power) to Johannesburg over 1 126km away.
The project was estimated to cost £131 000, excluding generating equipment (equivalent to US$1,3 billion today).
Between April 9 and 21 1927, assistant government irrigation engineer, P.H. Haviland, carried out a general reconnaissance of the water power resources of the Zambezi in the Kariba Gorge area; consideration was already being given to the possibility of a dam at Kariba for hydro-electricity power generation.
By 1928, discussions were held between the Northern and Southern governments on the possibility of a road route to cross the Zambezi Valley.
In 1935, a six-day expedition lead by anthropologist and geographer, John Keigwin, together with an expedition from Cambridge, visited the Gorge sketching and mapping the upper and lower part of the area.
Anthropological and ethnographic work was also carried out in the surrounding area with the same idea.
By 1941, Engineer J. L. Feffars explored the Zambezi Valley and Kariba Gorge again on behest of the Electricity Supply Commission (ESC).
Feffars’ report in 1947 made after repeated visits to the area in the course of three years, formed the basis on which the Inter-Territorial Hydro-electric Power Commission, set up by the Central African Council.
The first human cost was recorded on the night of February 18 1950 when the Kariba project recorded the loss of an engineer’s and mechanic’s life, as a result of a disastrous landslide during the course of carrying out further vital investigative work on proposed site.
By 1951 the decision to build a dam at Kariba was conclusive and the Southern Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe), government set up a Kariba Gorge and Railway Project standing co-coordinating committee.
1953 saw the formation of the Federation of Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and Nyasaland (Malawi).
This brought with it many new related and unrelated problems.
Among them, water boundaries and the choice of site for the proposed dam.
Nevertheless, in 1955, the first skip of concrete for the main dam wall was poured by the then Federal Prime Minister Lord Malvern.
Soon the outstanding double-curvature of the dam wall began to cast its shadow over the Kariba Gorge, and change forever the peaceful Eden of its inhabitants – mostly the indigenous BaTonga and Nambiya people of the valley.
Dr Michelina Rudo Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian Researcher, Industrial Design Consultant and Specialist Interior Decorator. She is a published author in her field.