Business Chat With Victor Madzinga Of late, I have noticed something interesting: The many things I heard from my teachers at school are being replayed now – many years down the line.
For example, there is this Geography teacher, Mr Tichareva, who did not take lightly to students who
waffled when answering questions. His comments would go like: Perfect waffle; Off at a tangent; Get
to the point and fast; You are not only confused but confusing as well.
The reason why students – nay people- waffle is that they will not be clear in their minds about how
to tackle the problem at hand. They will go for the “lace frills” in an attempt to either impress or
confuse. This could be in the form of flowery language or meaningless jargon. Tawdry flamboyance.
Not long ago, this column carried an instalment under the caption “When the journey becomes
more important than the destination”. (This is when you recognise a problem but in an attempt to
get a solution you get distracted by unimportant issues along the way and you ultimately lose focus).
Ever since, it has dawned on me that much of whatever we do is sadly in keeping with this notion.
We are constantly waffling away from solving the real issues. And by the way, the extent by which
the journey becomes more important than the destination varies greatly. For instance we go off at a
tangent when right from the start we miss the bus at Mbare Musika while we are quaffing Super in
Rambanai Beer Hall. Or it can be much later in the journey, when on account of drunkenness or
darkness we miss the destination.
Recently I was checking with a friend who works at the municipality about the requirements for a
town to get city status. Besides infrastructural expansion, the quality and extent of service delivery is
also a critical consideration. Solid waste management is one of the key services. Apart from blighting
the environment, poor solid waste management leads to such disease outbreaks as typhoid and
cholera.
In their bid to manage garbage, city councils and municipalities across the country have spent
fortunes in acquiring at least one of those fanciful state-of-the-art vehicles- the garbage compactor
truck. A brand new compactor truck can gobble as much as USD 35 000. The compactor truck has
become synonymous with solid waste management. But is that really so? The unique function of this
special vehicle is that it can compact or compress a large volume of garbage into a much smaller
volume. This capability makes it suitable for solid waste collection and disposal in industrialised
countries, where they are fast running out of land for land refills. Space is not as much of an urgent
matter in developing countries like Zimbabwe. Moreover, the garbage in industrialised countries is
typically ~low density~ which means it largely consists of compressible material like cans and plastic
containers.
On the other hand, in developing countries, the garbage is high-density, which means it is hardly
compressible since it is made up of organic and vegetable material. The compactor truck is operated
by a hydraulic system which makes the vehicle highly fragile. This means the vehicle can only move
safely on even paved surfaces. The story is very different in developing countries.
In Zimbabwe, the Garikai/Hlalani Kuhle residential areas in most towns are situated on hilly or
rugged terrain. This is the main reason why these vehicles are operational just for a few months
after acquisition and thereafter lie broken down in the municipal yard. This results in refuse going
for days without being collected.
This is why less than 20 percent of the 2,5 million tonnes of garbage generated annually in
Zimbabwe is not collected and disposed of correctly (Mudzengerere, 2002; Practical Action, 2015;
UN Habitat, 2006).
Spare parts for the compactor are very expensive and can only be imported from outside the
country. Due to its design, the compactor truck cannot contain the smelly fluids in the garbage and
as a result this leaks out onto the street, producing odours which attract flies.
In Asia and Latin America, municipalities have awakened to the “inappropriate technology” of the
compactor truck. They have long realised that due to their circumstances which are very different
from those of the industrialised countries, the use of labour-intensive technology in solid waste
management is more desirable compared to the capital-intensive technology, which is used in
industrialised countries.
There are two reasons, which make labour-intensive technology particularly attractive to developing
countries: There are no sufficient funds to purchase specialised equipment and secondly the high
rates of unemployment which characterise developing economies, will ensure abundant cheap
labour for the labour-intensity technology (Medina, 2012; Mudzengerere, 2012).
In countries like Vietnam, India, Brazil and Colombia “scavenger cooperatives” have been set up with
the help of municipalities. The municipality contracts out its garbage collection and disposal function
to the cooperatives. The municipality provides open trucks for carrying the garbage. Where the
terrain is rugged and not easily accessible, donkey-drawn carts can be used (Medina, 2002). There
are a lot of donkeys which are always wandering in towns like Gwanda.
The cooperatives get paid upon satisfactory performance, making it cheaper and more effective than
having a full-time municipal workforce (Acurio, 1998). These cooperatives are typically staffed by
women-and there are two good reasons for this: In the urban areas, a large number of families are
women-headed. Chant (2011) writes about the “feminisation of urban poverty. In other words,
women bear the brunt of poverty in the urban areas and therefore need financial resources.
Secondly, owing to their upbringing, women are better “cleaners” than men (Tacoli, 2012; Dang Kim,
2001; Holmes and Jones, 2011). In Zimbabwe, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs can be instrumental
in the formation of such cooperatives.
In view of the foregoing realities, municipalities may need to re-think how best they can manage
their solid waste and come up with the right solutions. They need to get to the point and fast. They
need to make a reasoned choice between flamboyance and functionality. Otherwise we remain
stranded at Mbare Musika.
