Harare, Zimbabwe – The cholera epidemic that swept Zimbabwe in 2008-2009 killed more than 4,000 people and overshadowed nearly 100,000. Some parts of Harare and its surrounding suburbs were particularly affected and, the next day, the attention fell on the lack of reliability of the aging infrastructure of the capital. The government finally obtained a loan of US $ 144 million from China Exim Bank to revise the city’s water treatment network.
The promised upgrades have never come, but now the city wants taxpayers to pay the bill with a water tax introduced in March.
The loaned funds were supposed to modernize the water treatment plants and pump stations and deploy prepared meters for 500,000 households.
Now, almost two decades later, citizens are invited to reimburse a loan which, according to them, has brought them no advantage.
“If the water situation had improved, it might make sense,” said Prudence Hanyani, who was born and grew up in Mabvuku, a suburb of the capital that falls in its service area. “We have never seen the development of infrastructure or better services. So why are we paying exactly? “
The daily production of Harare water has regularly dropped over the years due to a mixture of maintenance, contamination and valves that flee to the distribution network, according to a 2015 World Bank report. In 2005, the city produced around 600 megalitters per day – or 600 million liters, or 158.5 million gallons, enough to fill 240 Olympic pools. In 2008, daily production fell to around 400 megalitters, then fluctuated between 400 and 600 megalitters in the coming years. However, in February of this year, the offer fell further at 350 megalitters per day.
Harare needs this amount more than three times, some 1,200 megalitters per day (317 million gallons), to meet the needs of residents and businesses, explains Hardlife Mudzingwa, director of the Community Water Alliance advocacy group.
“Government’s responsibility is now discharged on ordinary households that are already struggling with economic difficulties,” said Mudzingwa, who has asked the government to take into account how money was used.
The Mabvuku taps were dry during the year 2000, said Hanyani, and the residents have not had running water since. With six children to take care of, it now spends up to US $ 3 per day to buy water to drink, cooking, cleaning and sanitation, an additional burden in a country where household monthly income fell to only US $ 88 in 2024. From now on, an additional water withdrawal of $ 1 US is expected every month.
Zimbabwe’s infrastructure financing gap is enormous.
The country needs around $ 2 billion a year until 2032, the government of which can only finance around 20%. Key projects, such as the upgrade of Harare Water and the sewers and the main developments in dams, were financed by loans, in particular China Exim Bank. But many of these projects, including upgrading of harare, blocked after the loan disbursements were suspended due to contractual violations.
Zimbabwe turned to China for loans in the early 2000s, mainly due to limited access to more established sources of funding, after years of economic sanctions, political isolation and deterioration of the credit rating. China has emerged as a voluntary lender, offering loans and investments in infrastructure under its assets and its road initiative and the East Look policy of Zimbabwe. However, the country has faced challenges in reimbursement of these loans, leading to significant arrears.
In 2018, China Exim Bank granted a government concession loan of $ 153 million for the expansion of Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport. Although the project aimed to increase the capacity of the airport by 2.5 million to 6 million passengers per year, it was hampered by delays and poor financial management. At the end of 2021, Zimbabwe had accumulated $ 3 million backwards on the loan.
Likewise, the renovation and expansion project of Victoria Falls airport relied on a loan of US 149.9 million dollars, issued in 2012. The project was completed in 2016, but the arrears of Zimbabwe is still reached by $ 54 million at the end of 2021.
The Chinese water and sewer loan occurred at a time when various partners financed infrastructure improvements in the sector, says Mudzingwa. After the 2008 cholera epidemic, international development partners, including the United Nations Children’s Fund, the African Development Bank and the World Bank, intervened with additional support. In Harare, a large part of this funding has been wasted because the city did not consult residents in project planning or installation of systems to follow income, manage budgets and detect fraud and waste. Consequently, there has never been clarity on how money was used, even if millions of Zimbabweans have been left without access to safe and reliable water.
The water loan from China Exim Bank had a reimbursement duration of 11 years with a period of grace of four years and variable interest set at around 3.5%.
Although the project officially started in 2013, progress quickly blocked when the non-reimbursement of Zimbabwe to reimburse a previous loan prompted the bank to freeze disbursements. The previous loan concerned renovations planned for the dormant state steel company Ziscosteel, which has never been completed. The Harare Municipal Council spent $ 8 million in the water treatment loan on 25 luxury vehicles. The council said that cars were necessary for the provision of services, but the lender did not agree. In 2017, only half of the loan had been released and disbursements remained frozen until 2020.
In 2021, the Harare Water project alone represented nearly $ 67 million in unpaid debt. In its portfolio, Zimbabwe owed China Exim Bank of more than $ 260 million backwards covering many sectors, from telecommunications to Airports in La Défense.
“We are those who drink water,” explains the mayor of Harare, Jacob Mafume. “Surely, if the residents of Harare drink the water, they should pay it themselves instead of asking the dollar for the tax of certain chininge residents busy pursuing a big frog.”
The district advisor 16 Denford Ngadzziore requests an audit. “If there are people who have abused money, they should be prosecuted. I presented this solution during the complete meeting of the council, but other advisers did not agree with me, “he said. “We cannot make residents pay the loan without a clear relationship on how the loan has been used.”
Mafume insists that everything was done above the board of directors, arguing that the defenders of Land Rover and the Amarok vans bought for the project were not, in fact, luxury vehicles and that the public service was hampered by its inability to buy water treatment chemicals, which cost $ 3 million a month, according to the office of the mayor. “Overall, the equipment that has been bought is there so that anyone who goes. And the right thing is that the new pumps and the old pumps, you can see the difference in performance, ”he says. “Look at the old pumps, they seem to be able to explode at any time. So the work that the Chinese has done on the plant speaks of itself. ”
Mudzingwa maintains that the loan acquisition process itself has been defective because a section of the Zimbabwe Constitution in 2013 says that any international treaty signed or carried out by the president or on behalf of the president is not legally binding unless it is approved for the first time by Parliament.
He says that the provision strengthens the principle of legislative surveillance in the process of concluding treaties. “The agreement was ratified by the Council in December 2013, but at that time, the money had already been spent. The ratification should have come first, ”he says.
“Look at the old pumps, they seem to be able to explode at any time.”
Mudzingwa also disputes the mayor’s assertion that promised improvements in equipment were made. “There is no visible infrastructure to justify the cost. Now residents are invited to pay a loan from which they did not benefit from. It’s unfair, ”he says.
Mudzingwa is concerned that the levy establishes a precedent for ordinary citizens to pay the bill for loan projects characterized by inappropriate procedure, opaque expenditure and inexplicable leadership.
Zimbabwe’s experience reflects similar challenges observed in other countries that depend on Chinese infrastructure funding. Zambia canceled $ 1.6 billion in Chinese loans not dissolved in 2022 in the midst of an increasing debt crisis, while Sri Lanka was forced to give a Chinese company a 99 -year -old lease on a newly constructed port after having failure on the construction loans that China had granted.
Back in Mabvuku, the water struggle remains deeply personal.
Violet Razau, hairdresser and mother of two, has lived in the region since 1998. “As a child, I sprinkled our garden with a pipe. My 13-year-old son has never seen this. Now, I don’t even get a drop in council taps, so why should I pay?”
For Hanyani’s 70 -year -old mother, Precious Mudimu, age has made the crisis more difficult. “I can’t transport buckets of water. I count on the others, but they are not always there. I’m old, I can’t work to pay samples, ”she says. “This place looks like a desert.”