JOHANNESBURG — David Coltart is an anomaly. The White mayor of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second-largest city, was placed in office by an overwhelmingly Black electorate.
The 66-year-old human rights lawyer has tangled with the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) for more than 40 years, representing people who had been tortured or abducted or had their relatives marched away by the army, never to be seen again.
Mr. Coltart’s family has been in Africa since 1820. He has engaged in opposition politics for nearly three decades as a member of Parliament and as education minister in a coalition government after President Robert Mugabe lost his legislative majority in 2008.
Now, as the mayor of a city of 1.3 million, he is struggling to pave roads, remove trash and restore water to the taps.
“Not just flowing,” he said in an interview, “but drinkable as well.”
The fix won’t be quick. Many dams built before ZANU-PF came to power in 1980, when the country was known as Rhodesia, have silted with mud. Illegal gold mining in the catchment areas has loosened tons of soil, which washes downstream and into the dams. An Al Jazeera documentary last year said President Emmerson Mnangagwa was linked to the illicit gold trade, though the president denied the allegation.
A drought scorching the continent from Kenya to South Africa has worsened the problem. Winters here are dry, and most of the rainfall is during the summer. It was well below average last year, and meteorologists predict 2025 could be worse.
Zimbabwe, however, is blessed with major rivers. The Zambezi creates the spectacular Victoria Falls, the world’s largest curtain of water. What author Rudyard Kipling called the “great gray greasy Limpopo” forms the border with South Africa.
Mr. Coltart wants to raise $140 million to build a dam on the Mzingwane River, a tributary of the Limpopo, 42 miles southeast of Bulawayo. A feasibility study projected that the dam could supply up to 70% of the city’s water demand, which is 8 million gallons a day and set to double within the next decade.
The U.S. has no trade sanctions against Zimbabwe, but Congress has personal bans on several members of ZANU-PF, including Mr. Mnangagwa, who overthrew Mugabe in a 2018 coup. Observers from Western nations, including the U.S., have rated elections before and after the change as neither free nor fair. Human rights groups rank the country among the world’s worst offenders.
In March, Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused the government in Harare of having carried out “multiple cases of abductions, physical abuse and unlawful killings that have left citizens living in fear.”
Transparency International placed Zimbabwe below Colombia and Pakistan in its most recent global corruption ranking.
In that uneasy context, Mr. Coltart said the City Council he has headed for a year marks “a new beginning” for Bulawayo and that financing for the dam will be under his direct control.
“We have to explain very clearly that this money is not for central government, but to improve the quality of life for millions of people,” Mr. Coltart told The Washington Times.
He has made a personal pledge to “account for every cent.” Work on the project will be stopped if any attempt is made to divert the funds, he said. “This money will be audited, and the dam will create a vast number of jobs in an area where perhaps 90% of people are out of work.”
Water wars
The need to store more water is clear. Residents in Johannesburg and Cape Town have been warned, not for the first time, that neighboring South Africa is on a countdown to the day when the taps run dry.
Environmental movements say holding back river water would damage the ecosystem and cause havoc if the wall fails.
In recent months, four dams have collapsed in South Africa, damaging property and leaving hundreds of people homeless. In August, a dam breach in Sudan displaced an estimated 136,000 people.
Engineering groups say hundreds of reservoirs across the continent are hazardous because of a lack of repairs.
Mr. Coltart said Bulawayo would be different. The hefty $140 million price tag would go toward hiring only the best engineers and using the highest-grade materials.
Funding for water projects has become more complicated in recent years because of the financial and reputational risks for investors, engineers and contractors. A court case in London could make the problem worse.
In 2015, the Mariana dam in Brazil owned by two of the world’s largest mining companies — Vale and its Australian partner, BHP — sustained a breach. Nineteen people were killed when 2 billion cubic feet of water and toxic mining sludge engulfed the village of Bento Rodrigues.
BHP and Vale are in discussions with Brazilian authorities over a $25.7 billion settlement, but the companies also face a more than $45 billion class action lawsuit for victims filed in a London court in 2018. If successful, the payout would create a precedent large enough to completely redraw the risk for any project designed to hold back water.
Rubens Barbosa, Brazil’s ambassador to Washington from 1999 to 2004, warned of “a global fallout” for dam construction.
“The opportunism is striking,” he said, “with serious consequences for individuals and legal entities. If these actions continue, they will pose a threat to foreign investment and national interest.”
Mr. Coltart insists that nothing will stop his efforts to supply his constituents with the water they need.
“Risks are always there with a big development, but it would be tragic if any event damaged the chance of a project this important,” he said.
Not a cloud is in sight in the blue sky over Bulawayo. The great rivers of Africa never stop flowing, from the Nile in Egypt to the Congo basin and the Limpopo with its tributary, the Mzingwane.
“With water, we can develop more industry, the dam can serve as a resort, the community will be able to catch fish, and drought will no longer be a threat,” said Mr. Coltart. But first, he must find the money and assure investors that his dam will be “safe, secure and able to serve Bulawayo for years to come.”
Please read our comment policy before commenting.