Zimbabwe Communist Party statement on the outbreak of Cholera in Harare
First of all, the Zimbabwe Communist Party offers its condolences to the families of all those who have died in the recent cholera outbreak.
We wish for the speedy recovery of all that are sick from cholera and other waterborne diseases.
Secondly, we call for maximum cooperation between all those engaged in fighting this epidemic including health services national and international and between organs of both national and local government. Now is not the time for bickering. Now is the time to save lives.
But in the longer term, we must look at how we go forward and understand how things went so terribly wrong.
At Independence Zimbabwe had an infrastructure for water and electricity supply which was far superior to that in most African countries. This was due to state planning and to prioritisation. Nothing. We repeat, nothing, is more important to the sustainability of life than the provision of clean water. True, in the modern world, sometimes, practically, electricity has to be provided first in order to pump that water. But essentially water is the first requisite for human beings and of all life.
In 1991, Zimbabwe adopted the neo-liberal Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) pushed internationally by the international institutions IMF and the World Bank and those countries posing as the champions of “Human Rights” which we refer to in Africa as the ‘FUKUS’ countries, France, UK and US. On a national level, this agenda was pushed by the well-qualified ‘expert’, Finance Minister Bernard Chidzero ― and how Zimbabweans love ‘experts’ regardless of whose class interests those experts represent!
What were the results of ESAP?
Firstly, government ministers were no longer constrained by the leadership code. It was now alright to use one’s political position for self-enrichment, “After all, we did not fight the
liberation struggle to remain poor, did we?”
Secondly, instead of building strong well-managed state-owned enterprises staffed by well-trained technicians and artisans, everybody was expected to become an ‘entrepreneur’.
For most that meant that instead of growing tomatoes, we must now compete selling them in the streets of our major urban centres.
Thirdly, worldwide, the removal of planning has in many, many countries led to people migrating away from smaller centres towards one or two major centres.
In Zimbabwe, factories were closed in Bulawayo (leading to cries of ‘tribalism’) and reopening in Harare.
Consequently the population of Harare and its dormitory Chitungwiza has increased far beyond the water and sewerage infrastructure left behind by the Rhodesians. This last factor, the concentration of population in one urban sprawl without adequate planned infrastructure is the major cause of the current outbreak of cholera and typhoid.
The ZCP therefore calls for:
(1) Maximum co-operation between all Zimbabweans to solve the immediate crisis.
(2) A National Water Plan linked to devolution of power down to District level.
(3) National Economic Dialogue to solve Zimbabwe’s national problems on a long-term
basis.
Issued by the Secretariat;
Contact: Ngqabutho Mabhena
General Secretary