WHEN police knocked down Joram Kombonyatsera’s home under President Mugabe’s notorious “Operation Sweep Out The Filth” in June, they were so thorough that they smashed the concrete drain that he had built to make sure that he would not return.

They used rubble from the houses that they had destroyed to fill in wells that served 750 families in this section of Epworth, a huge slum on the south-eastern boundary of the capital, Harare.

Mr Kombonyatsera did return, like many of the 700,000 people across the nation estimated to have lost their homes in the operation. He now lives in one broom-closet-sized room that survived the destruction. He draws water from newly dug shallow wells and defecates in a cleft in granite boulders close by. “Nowhere else to go,” he said.

The effect of such changes, the overloading of sewerage systems and a chronic shortage of fuel for refuse carts is now being felt as a wave of cholera, previously rare in Zimbabwe, sweeps the country.

The state-controlled Daily Herald newspaper reported yesterday that five people had died of cholera in Epworth and another twenty were being treated in a tent encampment there. They were believed to have drunk infected water at a wedding.

The Health Ministry announced another eight new deaths in the Kwekwe and Gokwe districts in central Zimbabwe. Twenty-seven people are reported to have died of cholera across the country in just over a month — eight of them in Harare. At least another 250 victims nationwide are being treated.

“The Government says it is nothing unusual, that we have seen cholera in Harare before,” said Peter Iliff, the secretary of Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights. “They’re wrong. It’s in the heartland now. Before, cases in Harare were traced to people who had brought the disease with them from neighbouring countries like Mozambique and Malawi. Now it’s home-grown.

“There is transmission inside the city now. There is going to be a lot of cholera,” Dr Iliff said.

Epworth has no water-borne sewerage system. Cylindrical pit latrine buildings stand alongside nearly every home in what is one of Zimbabwe’s most densely populated areas. “When it rains like this, the toilets can fill up and spill over,” said Edmore Chirenje. “When it is hot, the smell is terrible.” Even where there are sewers, they are often choked through lack of maintenance.

The Government reacted to the outbreaks of cholera in Harare by shutting the main township market near the city centre and relocating it to other townships where there is no provision for lavatories or water. Police have also banned street fish and meat vendors.

The threatening health catastrophe posed by the swamp of human waste in the townships is compounded by mountains of uncollected rubbish in the city, including one outside the gates of the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Sacred Heart.

HOW IT STRIKES

With quick treatment, fewer than 1 per cent die

Sources: WHO; Centres for Disease Control and Prevention

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