We are now going into schools infrastructure development after identifying all problem areas but in the absence of infrastructure, what do you expect the people to do.
IT is early morning in Caledonia, the slum settlement at the outskirts of Harare. One has to carefully walk along the narrow stretch of grass and sand that runs between the shacks of this filthy commune and the plush suburb only a spitting distance away.
The path suddenly runs into the middle of an open ‘latrine’, full of human excreta in varying states of decomposition. An overwhelming odor assaults the senses such that one has to struggle to fight his/her gag reflex.
Cars, mostly from Damofalls, rush past as morning traffic heads into the city centre.
Women emerge from their shacks carrying buckets containing (no need to guess) what was accrued during the previous night, which they carelessly throw to the ground.
Two little boys, barefoot and clad in tatters, race towards the ‘latrine’.
Under the cover of tufted grass, they squat and relieve themselves.
And more would come.
This is a typical daily routine here, where a major humanitarian catastrophe is looming.
Lives are already gravely endangered and defenceless children extremely exposed.
Now home to close to 100 000 people, Caledonia is one of the fastest growing informal settlements in Zimbabwe.
In a place where going to the toilet means putting your life at risk, the situation is calamitous, more so for children, who lack access to basic services and opportunities and who have almost none of their constitutional rights honoured.
Caledonia is what used to be a rich farmland, but now a vast human settlement.
The first occupiers were veterans of the liberation war, who drove out three white settlers at the height of farm invasions in 2003.
The first moves to urbanise it were made after the infamous operation Murambatsvina in 2005 after it was gazette as State land.
Victims of the operation were sent there under the Garikai/Hlanani Kuhle emergency housing scheme and since then, it has witnessed phenomenal population growth, spurred by excessive housing demands in Harare which force poorer residents to cheaper communities.
Faced with the reality of a swelling population, government regularised three phases but surrendered the initiative to uncanny land barons, who went on to illegally crate 17 more phases that operated wantonly, without any development.
Caledonia spans 3000ha and boasts of 23 000 stands, making it bigger than whole towns like Marondera, Bindura and Rusape.
Over 200 housing cooperatives operate there.
Local government expert, Percy Toriro, who was appointed by Local Government Minister Ignatius Chombo to compile a report on the state of affairs there, described Caledonia as a giant squatter camp.
Government has ordered a halt to any development there pending investigations and a handover of the entire place to City of Harare, which itself is struggling to deliver services of its own.
Without any meaningful development – no roads, no water and sewer reticulation infrastructure, no proper schools or health facilities – yet flourishing with people – Caledonia is a ticking time bomb which can explode anytime.
Inside, it sums up the unhappy lives of the unfortunate with painful tales of an ingratitude lifestyle, condemned to perpetual poverty and social neglect.
This is despite the fact Zimbabwe is a signatory to the 1990 United Nations General Assembly Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Signed by 194 countries, the Convention remains the most widely ratified international human rights treaty.
Among the rights listed in the CRC are the right to education, protection from violence and abuse, as well as a standard of living that meets the physical and mental needs of children – rights never respected here.
There is not a single government school at Caledonia and as such, children have to walk at least 15km to Tafara, the nearest high density suburb.
The only other alternative is to go to the backyard schools, littered around the vast place, without any meaningful infrastructure and staffed by what Toriro referred to in a report presented to Chombo recently to “a cocktail of semi-skilled and unqualified teachers”.
The Financial Gazette stumbled upon one such disadvantaged child.
As his peers leave for school, 11-year-old Trevor Nyathi, sets off too.
But instead of heading to school, he walks half a kilometre to Caledonia’s biggest shopping centre, where he is seen arranging firewood for sale.
“Nothing,” he responds to a question why he had not gone to school.
Asked if he does not go to school at all, the boy by replies: “I am a Grade 5 pupil at that school over there.”
He is pointing at a grass thatched farm-brick building with open windows, and thereafter is not interested in entertaining strangers.
Asked what was being done to avert the impending catastrophe, Education Minister, Lazarus Dokora, said government was aware of the issue and is in the process of rectifying it.
“We are now going into schools infrastructure development after identifying all problem areas but in the absence of infrastructure, what do you expect the people to do,” Dokora said.
Ironically, the Toriro report indicates that there should be 45 schools in Caledonia but currently, only 22 are shown on the site maps, of which have already been taken up by ruthless land barons who parcel school land into residential stands, selling them to homeseekers in a move indicative of a community without regard for its children for the love of money and pursuit of wealth.
Aside from shortage of schools, Caledonia is a health hazard in the making.
It is shocking that in an area of 23 000 stands and about 100 000 dwellers, there is only one makeshift clinic and thanks to the international humanitarian organisation, Medicins San Frontiers even for that.
An official at the clinic, manned by shiftless City of Harare health staff, who briefed the Financial Gazette of the record, said it is overwhelmed by patients and treats at least 600 of them daily.
“Most of these cases are sexually transmitted diseases affecting especially youths and diarrhoea,” the official said.
This paper witnessed hordes of mothers waiting in long winding queues in the sun to get their crying babies attended to.
For health awareness, Caledonia relies solely on unsalaried community workers who must be commended for a sterling job.
This writer witnessed a group of elderly women walking around shouting cholera awareness through sound enhancement gadgets.
But even with such efforts, Caledonia children are an endangered specie that requires urgent policy and practical intervention to save them. — Andrew Kunambura
newsdesk@fingaz.co.zw