Bulawayo's disused factories turned into squatter homes

A couple of years ago I posted that while I was driving around the industrial areas in Bulawayo on a Sunday morning the place was abuzz with sounds of musical instruments and people deep in prayer instead of the traditional thundering of industrial machines because the factories had been turned into churches due to the economic slump.

Today, I was visiting someone in the City and he directed me to Donnington Industrial Site. I wondered what the fellow was doing at the industrial sites because for all I knew he was unemployed and he kept insisting that he will be available at the place anytime the entire day.

When I got there, he was at a disused clearly once very viable factory but now turned into a squatter home. The factory is housing easily over ten families and is completely not fit to be a residential place. There is only four toilets and two water points. Electrical cables from an illegal connection point outside the premises run all over the place going into the different type of material made divisions of the factory space.

This good friend of mine is a liberation war veteran who has a home in rural Gwanda South where I met his battling wife a couple of weeks ago complaining of neglect from the husband who according to her was "living large in the city."

When I asked him how he had found himself squatting in the disused factory under those conditions he told me that they had broken into the factory about a year ago after leaving another factory dwelling where they were renting and the rentals kept spiralling up until they could no longer afford them.

This is when I realised that this factory building was not the only one of the buildings in the area that have been turned into squatter camps. There is quite a number such building in between the few that are still operating as factories in very low levels of capacity.

I asked him how then they were living in that factory for this long with no rentals he indicated to me that the owner or owners of the building are somewhere in Harare or abroad and they have never been to the place since a church which was leasing the place left about two years ago also because of high rentals.

This got me thinking:
First even the churches that used to occupy our factories can also no longer afford the rentals of the buildings quitting them and leaving the once very viable industries to be turned into squatter camps and even brothels. Perhaps while they operated as churches there would have been a glimmer of divine intervention hope.

Secondly, there is owners somewhere out there in the world outside Bulawayo who delight in being identified just as owners of factory buildings in Bulawayo that they careless about other than just collecting rent or leaving to rot after collecting enough.

Thirdly, I am in Harare so frequent and just last week I had to meet someone at the industrial site around Cocacola area along Chitungwiza Road. I saw factories forcing each other to share a building in threes and fours because there is no more factory space available.

Small factory buildings all around the city are being turned into factory shells and home industries. Several once Bulawayo based companies are squeezed in small crowded industrial buildings while spacious buildings still proudly displaying their names on the outside are either churches or squatter camps.

4) Something which I noted and asked my good war veteran friend and did not get an answer was that is this kind of discrimination in development really what they went to war for? His wife and community have very high regard of him back in the rural areas as a liberator of repute but he is stuck in a squatter camp which in reality should be a place where he is employed and fully taking care of his wife and children.

What pains me the most when we see such scenarios is the kind of attitude from amongst some of us from the region who would rather we close ourselves in some corner of denial and say we must never do anything in the direction of us manipulating the spaces that will allow us to have a voice to change our situation.

The troubles that the smoking pipe endures are certainly more than what we endure and yet we seem to gladly embrace. Which ever direction the dissenting voices shall come from some of us will never be silenced until we are duly recognised as equal citizens and no matter the space available to get our voice through we shall manipulate loved or hated. We must get out of our corners and urgently so Bantu bakithi.