On 9 October, The Herald reported that Gweru City Council is battling sewer blockages it blames on residents flushing plastic bags, nappies, sanitary products and rags, with sewage spilling into homes and streets in Mkoba, Mtapa, Senga and Ascot.
Mayor Martin Chivhoko told councillors that crews had responded to more than 300 blockages in a single quarter, with solid items flushed or thrown into drains identified as the main cause. That works out at more than three a day, every day, for three months.
Nobody should defend flushing a nappy. But three hundred blockages should prompt more than another lecture about civic responsibility.
Even the people who speak for residents concede the point. When Chivhoko previously complained of dead dogs, sanitary products and kitchen utensils being pulled from sewer lines, the Gweru Residents and Ratepayers Association agreed that no normal person should dump such things there. Residents are not innocent, and I will not pretend otherwise.
What interests me is how long this explanation has lasted. In his 2021 State of the City address, then-mayor Josiah Makombe also urged residents to stop throwing solid waste into drains and sewers. But he went further, acknowledging that low-lying homes near trunk lines were suffering serious backflows because wastewater stations were overwhelmed and could not cope with the flows.
That second half deserves as much attention as the sermon about nappies. A council that acknowledged overwhelmed wastewater infrastructure five years ago now risks presenting the problem as though the only variable is what households put down the toilet. Mayors have changed, the sermon has not, and the blockages have kept coming.
If appeals to civic virtue were going to solve this on their own, they would have worked by now.
The refuse collection system deserves a closer look because it sits upstream of the sewer. A 2025 NewsDay report quoted the mayor complaining about dead pets, sanitary products and kitchen utensils in sewer lines. At the time, he also said the council had cleared several dumpsites and returned to its normal refuse collection schedule, while acknowledging that it sometimes struggled to keep to it.
That admission matters. When refuse collection fails, rubbish does not politely wait for the council truck. It accumulates in streets and informal dumpsites, creating public health problems that do not disappear simply because the council has issued another appeal. Residents remain responsible for disposing of waste properly, but the availability and reliability of collection services are part of the same problem.
There is a plumbing question, too. Parts of Mkoba were reportedly left without running water for more than three months. Sewers need adequate water flow to carry waste through the network, and low flow can contribute to solids accumulating in pipes. The extent to which this explains Gweru’s current blockages is something the council’s engineers should establish, rather than something anyone should simply assume.
Then there are the failures that no household can cause. In Old Ascot, residents reportedly stopped using tap water because it smelled of sewage, with their ward councillor confirming the problem after it had persisted for three weeks. Another report described raw effluent flowing for three months from a burst main serving Ascot, Claremont Park and Tinshill, despite repeated reports to the engineering department.
A burst sewer main is not a nappy problem. It is an infrastructure and maintenance problem. The distinction matters because the remedies are different. Public education may stop people flushing unsuitable objects, but it cannot repair a broken pipe, restore an overwhelmed pumping station or replace infrastructure that has reached the end of its useful life.
Nor is sewage pollution new to the city and its surroundings. In 2018, villagers in Lower Gweru complained that raw sewage from the council was polluting a river, prompting condemnation from the Environmental Management Agency. The details of each incident differ, but the recurring presence of sewage in the environment should make the city interested in more than the contents of blocked pipes.
None of this proves the council is lying about the causes of the current blockages. Chivhoko says the city is increasing sewer jetting and inspection, which is a sensible response. The question is whether the council is prepared to publish enough information for residents to judge the scale of the problem and the effectiveness of that response.
How many of those 300 blockages were caused by foreign objects, and how many involved roots, sand, collapsed pipes or other infrastructure failures? Which suburbs account for the highest number? How quickly does the council respond to reports? How many kilometres of sewer has it replaced in the past year, and how much of its revenue is being spent on maintaining the network?
These are ordinary questions about public services, not an attempt to excuse residents who misuse the system. The answers would help establish whether Gweru is dealing with a problem of public behaviour, neglected infrastructure, inadequate refuse collection or, as seems entirely possible, several problems feeding into one another.
Residents can stop flushing nappies tomorrow. Whether the pipes, pumps and trucks can carry everything else is a question only the council can answer.
Until the council provides that evidence, it is asking a population dealing with unreliable water, uneven refuse collection and recurring sewage spills to carry the main burden of explaining a system it controls.
Residents should dispose of waste responsibly and report blockages rather than risk opening manholes themselves. The council should maintain its network, respond promptly and publish the evidence behind its claims. Both responsibilities can exist at once. The public should not have to choose between being told to behave better and being given the services it pays for.
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