Harare Residents Trust Community Watch

Mbare Report:
Shawasha Hostels‐
The True Story
10 April 2010
Produced by Precious Shumba, the Coordinator of the Harare Residents’ Trust
Email: hretrust@yahoo.com /hretrust79@gmail.com 0912 869 294
***
Mobile: Mr Arnold Mangezi‐ Vice Chairman Mbare Residents’ Trust‐ 0733 543 928
Rosemary Madamombe‐ Committee Member 0912 804 565
Samson Mutsadyanga‐ Committee Member 0915 873 356
2
1. OBJECTIVE OF REPORT:
a. To highlight the plight of Shawasha Hostel tenants in Mbare
b. To recommend ways to address the challenges facing the hostel tenants.
2. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
The Harare Residents Trust (HRT) undertook this tour on Saturday 10 April 2010
following widespread reports by tenants who have attended residents’ meetings in
Mbare, at Mai Musodzi Community and Stodart Gym Halls. The delegation comprised of
the HRT Coordinator Precious Shumba, Kadoma Residents Association (KRA)
Coordinator Mrs Shorai Domingo, Mr Arnold Mangezi, Vice Chairman Mbare Residents’
Trust (MRT), Mrs Rosemary Madamombe, MRT Committee Member, Samson
Mutsadyanga, MRT Committee Member and Rudo Mudeyi, the MRT Treasurer.
The tenants’ problems range from inadequate representation by their elected
representatives, poor service delivery, high water bills and unaffordable rentals, as well
as deplorable living conditions tenants have endured for a long time. The challenges of
burst sewer pipes has been resolved by the City of Harare following the laying down of
bigger pipes, replacing the archaic pipes that had constantly burst, spewing sewage all
over the place. During this tour it emerged that City employees who earn monthly
salaries to provide cleansing services in the hostels have not been doing their work. In
separate interviews with City council employees, it was established that each block at
Shawasha Hostels is serviced by two employees who have to clean the flats, particularly
the toilets, the bathrooms and the surroundings to ensure they conform to the expected
minimum standard health regulations in terms of urban regulations and the Public
Health Act.
Sadly, these workers have not serviced the community as expected in terms of their job
descriptions. Tenants claimed that the workers lacked ‘seriousness, commitment and
lack tight monitoring’ owing to ‘politics’ whatever that meant. On further enquiry it
emerged that some of the workers were improperly recruited as they were employed
through their political superiors in higher authority which renders the supervisor
powerless to exert his authority on them. It is said that these workers are constantly
shielded from scrutiny by their influential handlers.
Some of the workers come to work late and leave very early, usually from 8.30am until
around 11 am, meaning they receive their full salaries which they have not earned.
The focus of this report is to explore the opportunities arising from this crisis for the City
council, the Ministry of Local Government, Rural and Urban Development and other key
stakeholders. From observations made during the tour, interviews with some City
workers and speaking to tenants, it is apparent that the major challenge compounding
the health crisis at Shawasha Hostels is the inaction of the City authorities in the
departments that oversee all carpentry and plumbing work.
For how else would the authorities justify the continued delay in the partitioning of
male and female toilets, leaving men and women to almost share the same toilet, with
superficial demarcations that directly undermine Zimbabwe’s cultural values. According
to some officials, these requests for the purchase of all plumbing and carpentry items
were made a long time ago but there is lack of commitment to address this situation.
3
The threat to the health of around 7 000 tenants cannot be overemphasised.
This report critically looks at the living conditions, water supplies, hygiene in Shawasha
Hostels and makes recommendations, informed by the expectations of the tenants.
3. REPORT ASSUMPTION AND THE THEORY
The HRT expects that the City of Harare, the Minister of Local Government, Rural
and Urban Development will take this report seriously and attend to the issues
affecting tenants living in Shawasha Hostels, and other hostels in Mbare. The
situation as observed during this tour was pathetic. Human waste filled the passages
and dirty stagnant water covered the floors of the bathrooms and toilets. While this
situation has been made know to the authorities, still no action has been taken. Each
block at the hostels has six toilets and six bathrooms.
5. TOUR DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY
During the tour, the HRT observed the status of the hostels and the living conditions
of the tenants. Interviews were conducted with tenants in all the hostels, mindful of
the need to be gender sensitive. Focus group discussions were held with
representatives of Mbare Residents’ Trust (MRT), tenants and some City of Harare
employees during and after the tour.
6. LIVING CONDITIONS IN THE SHAWASHA HOSTELS:
a. Situation
There are 12 blocks of flats constituting Shawasha Hostels, each floor has 28
housing units, and there are three floors. In each housing unit, there are seven
people crammed in one room, making an approximate total population of 196 in
each floor. When they were built during the Rhodesian era, these flats were
meant to contain single male employees of local industry, while their wives
stayed in the rural areas. They were expected to move out once they decided to
stay with their families.
People reportedly slip all the time and get injured when they take their baths
because the floors have become slippery. There is no cleaning taking place
despite tenants making monthly payments to the local authority. Below are key
observations made during the tour;
• The toilets are unclean, human waste is everywhere on the floors
• The bathrooms have single taps functioning. The bathroom floors are flooded
with dirty water. On the other side of the bathrooms are sinks, which have
mostly collapsed.
• The taps on the sinks have ceased to function. Women were observed
washing plates in the filthy sinks, while their feet rested on human waste
scattered on the floors.
• In Block 1, C‐Floor, the sinks have fallen, the floors are water logged, and the
stench nauseating and the whole place is an eyesore.
• Cast irons have become rotten and there is unending leakages. Thick pastes
of human waste and dirty water leaking from the C‐floor, pours into the sinks
4
in B and A floors, making the sinks horrible to use, but the tenants use them
anyway. There is no choice. In some of the sinks it was observed that the
tenants have placed some buckets to try to minimise the splashing of human
waste but they overflowed.
• The toilets in all blocks, in the C‐Floor have knee high cardboards dividing the
female and male toilets, rendering privacy non‐existent.
• There are no lights in the corridors and at night there is always a looming
threat of muggings and rape to girls and women.
The C‐ Hall in Block 9 Hostels:
• The C‐Hall in Block 9 is occupied by nine tenants relocated from Block 4
Matapi flats which were burnt down on 5 January 2009 following an
electrical fault. On 9 January 2009, the victims of the fire were allocated
open spaces in the C‐halls in Blocks 9 and 10 at Shawasha Hostels. Prior to
the burning down of part of Block 4, Matapi Hostels, these tenants lived in
addresses ranging from C53 to C70. But despite not staying in their burnt
down quarters, the tenants have received statements from the City of Harare
indicating they owe the local authority amounts ranging from US$825 to
above a thousand dollars. It remains a mystery how they have calculated
these figures when these tenants have been without adequate
accommodation for nearly 15 months. For example, Mr C. Makasu of C65,
Block 4 Matapi, of Account Number 192004371000007 has received bills
indicating the following figures, stretching from October 2009. October‐ 586,
November‐ US$630, December‐ US$675, January 2010‐ US$724, February
2010 – US$774, and March US$825.
• These tenants in the hall face multiple problems.
• The tenants have sub‐divided the hall into nine housing units, using
cardboards. There are averagely nine people in each cubicle they call houses.
• The situation is the same across other C‐halls at Shawasha Hostels with
people sub‐dividing the halls into housing cubicles where an average nine
people share one room. Block 8 C‐hall is the only exception because it burnt
down three years ago and has not been repaired.
• Tenants in these C‐halls face another hurdle in their attempts to have a life.
Rats are breeding fast and destroying what remains of their personal
belongings.
• Ceilings are falling in and leak heavily during the rainy season.
• Windowpanes are all broken and they have to endure winds throughout the
day, worst at night.
• Lice and mosquitoes have become a common menace.
• Electricity cables hang loose above the sub‐divided shacks, and there is
potential for fire breaking out, in the case of a short circuit.
• This situation with electricity has spread to the surroundings of the hostels
with members of the Zimbabwe Republic Police who patrol during the night
5
allegedly beating up people returning to their workplaces at night, especially
in Machingura Street, nearby. The HRT heard of how the police have waylaid
residents going or returning from schools.
• Within the hostels’ corridors, drug abuse is rampant with teenage boys and
men, including some women engaging in orgies of sex, capitalising on the
darkness. This has led to unwanted pregnancies and subsequently to risky
backyard abortions, creating health complexities among the victims.
• Used condoms are daily removed from the corridors. This might be traced
back to the issue of conjugal rights by married couples and partners. While
this could be attributed to prostitution, the tenants also believe that some
desperate couples decided to have their sex in the corridors and return into
their sleeping quarters afterwards.
b. Water Supplies:
The tenants in Shawasha Hostels face constant water shortages. In the A floors
across the 12 blocks there is only one tap functioning out of the six available.
People who want to do their washing have to wait till around 10pm to midnight
in order to get some water. This is difficult for tenants who live in the C and B
floors who have to climb down and up those stairs to fetch some water for all
domestic purposes. This places a burden on the aged who still live in the hostels.
Residents have to fetch water from the A‐floor so that council employees can do
the cleaning of their bathrooms, toilets and sinks. If tenants fail to provide the
water, there is no cleaning that takes place because the city employees refuse to
fetch the Water on their own.
The hostels’ tenants have an added responsibility of fetching water from the Afloors
to the other floors in order to have their places cleaned. However, the
challenge is that the cast irons that should be linking the whole water and sewer
system to the main sewer pipes have blocked, rendering all cleaning activities
irrelevant.
The clogging of the bathrooms and toilets is attributed to the negligence of the
tenants, who constantly pour bones, cloths, sand, cotton wool and pads.
c. Response:
Recognising their living conditions and the failure by the local authority to
provide them with a clean living environment, the tenants, led by Mrs Rosemary
Madamombe, a tenant in Block 9, have set an example in Block 9. They now take
turns to clean the walls, the bathrooms and toilets, and the floors have been
regularly scrubbed to remove any dirty.
The Mbare Residents’ Trust (MRT), through the initiative of their Vice Chairman
Arnold Mangezi and Committee Members Rosemary Madamombe and Samson
Mutsadyanga and their adviser Tawanda Nyahuye, has come up with an initiative
dubbed ‘Chenesa Musha‐ Mbare’. This initiative’s objective is to;
• Mobilise resources to constantly clean the hostels and transform people’s
lives in all hostels in Mbare. These include sweeping brooms, gloves, repair of
6
sinks, sub‐dividing the toilets, purchase of taps, cleaning detergents,
respirators, gumboots, and repainting of the inside and outside walls. The
tenants have established cleaning teams that will oversee the whole
initiative, meaning they want to take an active role in the whole exercise.
• Make the City of Harare and other key stakeholders aware of the situation.
They seek a partnership that endures the test of time.
.
7. SITUATIONAL ANALYSIS:
a. Women’s Rights:
According to Mrs Madamombe, the situation has been worse on women.
Relatives have ceased to visit them in the hostels due to the living conditions.
The dirty is overwhelming. In a representative situation, there is the father, the
mother, three teenage boys, two teenage girls, extended family‐ three more
males and two more females, primary school kids‐ boys and girls, totalling about
nine people, sharing one room. In the same room there are two other families
with approximately equal number of people, making the room accommodate an
average of 16 people. However, each family receives a bill from the City council
giving them the same room number as an official address, but with their
respective names. From the viewpoint of the City of Harare, they expect to
receive a total amount of around US$360 from the same room, from the average
four families sharing the room.
Husbands and wives, or partners no longer can have their conjugal rights as and
when they desire to. From the focus group discussions, it also emerged that
unfaithfulness has become the order of the day, putting the families at a higher
risk of HIV/Aids infection and other sexually transmitted infections. The women
accused their men of sneaking to other women for sex. The problems arise once
the men want their conjugal rights. The women said they cannot have sex in a
room full of people. Even when the children and other adults have gone to sleep
it is still a challenge to really enjoy your sex with your husband, Mrs
Madamombe said. Even if you just proceed to do it, there is always the risk that
your husband’s young brother, your child or young sister might wake up and
witness us in action.
‘It is un‐African to do that. We are now being beaten up by our husbands,” said
Mrs Madamombe. “There is no way any woman would accept to have sex with
her man in a crowded room unless you have become very desperate.”
If the woman refuses to have sex, the women said they are accused of infidelity,
forcing these ladies to simply go against their values, having sex in the same
room with your adolescent children.
Like the majority of the women in the hostels, they do not make reports to the
police in terms of the Domestic Violence Act. There are varying reasons they do
not report to the police‐ the husband is the breadwinner, if one makes the bold
step of making a report, the police allegedly demand bribes in order to withdraw
the charges.
7
Instead of houses being private sanctuaries for married couples, they have
become prisoners of hope as they struggle to preserve their marriages, and to
contain the rising anger against each other. Tempers flare easily, the tenants said
about their relationships, raising the stakes for domestic violence monitors.
The girl child has been devalued. She has to endure witnessing her brothers and
parents taking turns to close eyes while they changed clothes. The kids are
witnessing their parents beating each other up, psychologically impacting on
their lives. In one case, a 12‐year old boy raped seven girls aged from six to nine
years in Block 10, Shawasha Hostels. When the girls’ parents made an official
report at Matapi Police Station, they were told that ‘children living in those
circumstances usually do that kind of thing” and nothing else was done to
address the situation.
Women now face constant harassment from their husbands owing to several
issues. They are usually accused of infidelity if they delay returning from fetching
water downstairs or Mukuvisi River if the situation is desperate enough.
This has left most marriages on the brink of collapse in the hostels. Occasionally
one witnesses couples seated in the open grounds nearby outside their hostels
just to have a quite time to talk about their private issues alone.
b. Maintenance of Hostels:
The council has abandoned its responsibility of repainting the outside and inside
of the hostels. Council employees used to be available to monitor how tenants
behaved around the hostels. They also closely monitored how the women doing
dishes did it, preventing them from using sand, as it blocks pipes. Tenants caught
misbehaving were constantly reminded of their terms of occupancy of those
rooms, with threats to repossess their houses. The rentals were affordable in the
past but now the charges have gone beyond their incomes. For a long time, the
City of Harare has not devoted any resources towards the maintenance of the
hostels, and years of neglect have affected the piping system, the walls, the sinks
and general orderliness. Walls across all the hostels, the interior and exterior are
written all sorts of things like: Zanu PF chete, Vote Savanhu, MDC Ndizvo, Hatidi
Uchapa, marara panze. Graffiti is everywhere.
8. APPROXIMATE POPULATION IN THE HOSTELS:
NAME OF HOSTEL No. OF BLOCKS APPROXIMATE POPULATION
Matapi 14 9, 120 people
Nenyere 13 7 644 people
Shawasha 12 About 7, 056 people in all the hostels with
588 on an average of 7 people in each
housing unit per block. There are about 28
housing units in each floor. There are three
floors on each hostel
Mbare 9 2 400 people
8
Matererini 10 2 500 people
9. RECOMMENDATIONS:
The residents in Shawasha Hostels deserve better. There is nothing being done to
suggest that the City of Harare has taken the necessary steps towards addressing the
concerns of the hostels’ tenants.
• The overcrowding can only be overcome if the City of Harare or Central Government
provides land for these tenants to build their own houses.
• The Carpentry Division at City of Harare should urgently sub‐divide all the toilets to
clearly separate men and women.
• The corporate sector can provide 108 brooms, 60 litres of toilet cleaner every month for
each of the 12 blocks, 36 pairs of gloves and gumshoes per block, floor polish, paint for
all the blocks,
• Residents to provide all labour in this initiative as long as these materials are available.
• To hold civic education seminars for all tenants so that they understand their
responsibilities towards their community infrastructure, on health and environment.
ENDS