That the borehole motor was burnt was obvious. The metal casing was blue, there was oil in the water and it wasn’t pumping water. But the reason? The borehole in question has given me endless trouble. It has gone through more than a few motors over the years. We thought we’d finally got it solved last year when it became evident that the old steel borehole casing had rusted away and was collapsing and dumping mud into the pump. It was re-lined with a PVC liner, the pump and motor replaced and I thought our worries were over for the foreseeable future. I was wrong.
Marianne suggested I try contacting Allan, listed on my phone as “Borehole Repair Recommended”. When I described the problem he was straight forward – “Is the pump protected against running dry?” When I answered in the negative he said “That’s your problem. The pump controller you have installed does recognize when the pump is dry but it doesn’t work that well and the pump inevitably cooks. At this time of year (it’s winter and the dry season) the water levels drop and the pumps inevitably run dry. Get yourself a smart controller with liquid level detection and your problems will be over”.
There’s a irrigation equipment supplier close to my business so I paid them a visit to get a new motor and whilst there asked if they had an intelligent controller. Whilst perusing the manual I noticed Nathan, a plumber, who’d done the plumbing on our new on-suite bathroom, was also there. When he heard what I was looking for he recommended going to a nearby hardware store for the controller – “I have personal experience with them and I know they work” he added. I took his advice and installed the new pump and controller and, after decoding the bad Chinese English in the manual, managed to get everything working.
A mere two weeks later Fabian (one of the foremen who does the maintenance amongst other tasks) came to me with a long face and reported that another borehole had stopped working. I told him to get the pump and motor up and sure enough, the motor had all of the characteristics of being burnt. Another trip to the supplier, more cash changed hands, and this time I came away with a replacement motor and two intelligent controllers – including one for the third borehole that I was hoping to preempt the motor burning out.
It all seemed straight forward at first – after all we’ve had plenty of practice at getting borehole pumps and motors up and changed. This one was no different but the intelligent controller just wouldn’t cooperate. The motor drew current like it was working but nothing else happened. Allan was mystified – “I’ve never had a problem like that” so I just had to take a deep breath and book one of his teams to come out this Friday and have a look.
Driving back from work at lunch time I took a more scenic route than usual past the old Mount Pleasant golf course. It hasn’t been used for that purpose for many years now and is largely over grown. It’s not prime development land being low lying and very wet in the rainy season so is untouched – for now. Houses adjoining the area seem to have good ground water and sprinklers were merrily whirring over verdant verges oblivious to (or ignoring) the Harare City Council’s directive that it’s illegal to do so for, make no mistake, Harare is running dry.
Harare’s main water supply is Lake Chivero to the south-west of the city. It is downstream and it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to grasp the scale of the pollution. It’s nothing new, as an eight year-old child I attended a sailing school on the reservoir and can remember a deep revulsion of the state of the water. It recently made headlines when four rhino and various other animals at a lakeside national park were killed by the polluted water. Very little of the available water in the lake now makes it’s way into the Harare water supply. It requires pumping and there’s seldom power to do that and the water purification works have long ago fallen into disrepair. So in true Zimbabwean fashion we’ve had to “make a plan” – usually in the form of having a borehole drilled. That of course is no guarantee that it will not be dry (and most are) but for those of us lucky enough it can be a massive relief and money saver. The unlucky majority have to rely on the burgeoning water supply business and at US$50 for 5,000 litres it isn’t cheap. Water tankers are ubiquitous on the streets and come in all shapes and sizes. Some are made for the purpose but most are just plastic tanks strapped onto disheveled trucks. They source their water from outside the city limits.
Nathan is succinct – “Harare will run dry in five years at the most”. We are luckier than most in having a working borehole but it is not prolific. Tested at 1,000 litres per hour we don’t push our luck and the lawn dies off in the dry season. This year we’ve pumped the swimming pool dry (it’s filled with rainwater runoff collected off the roof) so that we can get the leaks fixed and the pool tiled. Grey water from the kitchen and shower is collected and used on the garden too. We keep our fingers crossed and try to balance having a nice garden without having to recourse to buying in water.
That there is no interest on the part of the government in changing the situation is best summarized in a conversation I had with Anton, my personal trainer, at a nearby gym. His wife, also a person trainer, used to have the Egyptian ambassador as a client. She, the ambassador, told Anton’s wife that Egypt had offered to completely rebuild the water treatment works at Lake Chivero. It would have been a gift from Egypt to Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwean government turned it down; there was nothing in it for them. The ambassador commented that she’d worked in a number of African countries but had never encountered one in which the government cared less for it’s people.
Zimbabwe Absurdity 
The missing concept of maintenance
30 07 2025“The lack of a strong maintenance culture is a significant obstacle to sustainable development in many African countries, leading to premature deterioration of infrastructure and equipment. This “missing concept” stems from a combination of factors, including a perception that new items don’t require maintenance, inadequate financial resources, lack of skilled personnel, and a lack of clear O&M policies“
The above quote is the Google AI overview of a search for – “missing concept of maintenance in Africa“. There are a whole host of links listed but my attention was drawn to this one on Instagram. The presenter argues that there is no concept of maintenance and indeed no word for it in many African cultures. Zimbabwe is not an exception.
Having watched the above clip I asked my staff what the local Shona word for maintenance is. They replied that it is chengeta which actually means “to look after” as in “chengeta mbudzi” – look after the goats. It’s a sore point in Zimbabwe that the road system, and indeed the country’s infrastructure in general, has been sorely neglected. The cynic in me says this is largely due to the kleptocratic nature of those in power – a concept that is highly developed.
Alpes Road along which my business is situated has been spectacular example of neglect for quite some time now. There was a splurge of road maintenance and building a couple of years back in preparation for the upcoming 2024 SADC summit and opening of the new Houses of Parliament, the latter being funded by the Chinese. An existing two lane road to the parliament was refurbished and another two lanes added. Roads along which visiting dignitaries might travel were re-tarred and road markings painted. Alpes Road (photo above) was partially restored but only as far as President Mnangagwa’s son’s waste dump project that aims to bring order to Harare’s waste disposal “system”. The remaining three kilometers to the Hatcliff suburb was ignored. Like a lot of Zimbabwe’s road system, both urban and rural, it is beyond repair and has to be rebuilt.
Driving along a near totally destroyed road to work every day is more than a bit tedious for me. Customers have either complained bitterly or gone somewhere else; few put up with the drive. I looked around in the area for an outlet site for these cash customers but nothing was available. There were occasional efforts to grade over the potholes but this resulted in clouds of dust that have necessitated washing our greenhouses every two weeks as the seedlings were being affected by the resulting shade. A regional petition was circulated and a few hundred signatures gathered, pleading for something to be done. It was passed on to the relevant authorities with more than a bit of cynicism. Nothing happened.
About three weeks ago piles of rubble started to appear on the road. Speculation was rife: was this really a rebuild or just a bit of gravel to temporarily fill the potholes? It seems that it’s a real rebuild. A message appeared on the WhatsApp group for the road (it really does warrant a group of its own) stating that the government road department (CMED) had responded to the petition and “engagement of community members” and was going to rebuild some 3km of the road. In return they were asking for assistance with fuel and lunch for the workers involved! Yes, all cash donations would be receipted.
A barrier has been erected by the rubbish tip to stop unnecessary traffic driving along the road whilst the construction vehicles are working. I have no trouble getting past it given that my company logo is on the door of my pickup but others have had difficulty and the trickle of customers coming to the nursery for cash sales has become less than a dribble. A large contract customer complained that she had to bully her way past. I teased her that $2 would have made it much easier – she said “never!”
Yesterday I had to get in a load of rooted gum tree cuttings from South Africa for a local company that has been tasked with re-afforesting large parts of the country where the native trees have been cut down for curing tobacco grown by small-scale farmers. All 320,000 of them were in a big truck with tri-axle trailer. I had to get permission to bring it through the neigbouring farm in case the road was impassable for such a big rig. At first the answer was a flat no, it would never fit down the narrow roads or gates but maybe we could use tractors and trailers to ferry the boxes from one side of the farm to the other – an option I was really hoping to avoid. I mentioned the issue to Miriam, who represented the company importing the gum cuttings, she told her boss who asked for the farm manager’s contact and suddenly permission was granted to get the truck through.
I took the truck driver along the proposed route and he said it was doable. An hour later we were offloading the boxes and by 5.30 p.m. he was out the gate and down the road being repaired.
This afternoon, whilst grappling with the logistics of transplanting the gum seedlings into trays to hold over for the customer, Jane called by for a donation to help pay for the diesel for the heavy machinery on the road. She was optimistic that she’d reach the target of $30,000 but did mention that roads engineer had admitted that government funding would probably not cover the rebuild of the last 800m or so.
Today I asked one of my foremen, Fabian, who’d just come back from Zambia if it was any better than Zimbabwe. “Not really” he replied. “Lusaka is filthy. The road to the parliament is new and clean and the rest of the roads are terrible with potholes.”
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Tags: maintenance, road maintenance
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