Death of Block and Payne big blow for Matabeleland water project

THE death of two prominent Bulawayo activists Eric Bloch and Arnold Payne is a big blow to the success of the National Matabeleland Water Project (NMZWP) which successive governments have been failing to complete more than a century after it was mooted by the Rhodesian government.
Bloch - a prominent economist succumbed to pneumonia yesterday after a long illness while Payne – a water activist succumbed to heart attack last month.
The two activists shared a similar history of pushing for the realisation of the Matabeleland water project although both have passed on without the realisation of the dream of ending Bulawayo's perennial water woes.
The water issue has burn a thorny issue which the country's successive governments have been failing to address due to financial constraints and political-motivated delays. In 1912 the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project was mooted while in 1970s the "Help a thirsty Matebele" initiative was launched to complement in a bid to end the region's water woes but to date no water project has materialised.
In 1992 Payne pushed a wheelbarrow carrying 210lt of water from the Zambezi River to Bulawayo and then Gwanda in a symbolic gesture to raise the urgency of the crisis to authorities to speed up implementation of the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project but upon his death, 22 years later his dream had not been fulfilled. On the other hand, in 1993 Block - a critic of the Zanu PF government asserted that "no development will trickle down to Matabeleland unless three million Shonas, including the President, are relocated to that province'. 
NMZWP is among the major highlights of the ambitious list of infrastructural developments government has set itself in its economic blueprint - the Zimbabwe Agenda for Socio-Economic Transformation (ZimAsset) but analysts are skeptical the project will be funded as repeated efforts by government - which is broke and struggling to lure investors wary of its controversial empowerment policy - to secure loans have so far hit a brick-wall.