The Rule of Law or the Rule of Men?
Dear Family and Friends,
Turning the corner in a remote rural area I was faced with a giant pothole full of red muddy water which spanned the entire width of the road and looked three or four meters long. Three men were sitting in the open back of a parked pick- up truck watching and commentating. Behind me a bus was trying to do a U-turn in a muddy, sticky, slippery mess. I got out and went to talk to the men in the pick-up truck. Greetings were exchanged and I asked if they knew how deep the muddy pothole was and which part was safest to drive through. There was no way round the giant pothole and three men had three opinions, one of which was “there are people around that can help pull you out if you get stuck.”
That wasn’t very encouraging and so I waited until another car came along and watched where it crossed. The water was deep, their exhaust blew bubbles, muddy water splashed high up onto their windows but they made it. When their wave subsided, I reversed, took a deep breath, got the momentum steady and drove through the muddy pool, the odd little sideways slip under my wheels getting my adrenalin pumping.
Don’t stop, was the lesson I’d learned about mud, but just clear of the puddle and around the next bend I had no choice and stopped in a hurry. There were no verges to stop on, just deep jagged gullies. Four overhead power cables had fallen and were hanging about a meter above the road. Getting out, looking, talking to another driver all made no difference and there was nothing to do but go back, face the first muddy puddle again and retreat.
This is the state of Zimbabwe half way through our rainy season and it’s the same everywhere off the main highways: town or country, industrial, suburban or residential areas. The big propaganda bubble being spun by authorities that Zimbabwe is booming stops as soon as you turn off the highways. Tourists arriving at Harare airport only have to go 9 kilometers when the bubble bursts at the roundabout.
All hell breaks loose in all directions: huge potholes, subsiding chunks of tar, rivers of muddy water running along the roads, traffic lights that don’t work and private commuter taxi drivers pushing in on the left and right of you making five lanes where there are only two. Year after year there is so little road maintenance that everything off the highways is in a diabolical mess. There is no drain and litter clearance, no stabilization of verges and no fixing of potholes by local councils. Again and again we have no option but to retreat and find another way to go.
Braving the mud and potholes in another direction a friend and I took a trip out to Mazowe Dam last week expecting to see a rapidly filling dam but we were shocked at what we saw. The national capacity of Zimbabwe’s dams is currently at 89%; some big dams are already 100% full but Mazowe Dam was just 8% full. While lunch time visitors ate fish and chips with gold cutlery overlooking the almost empty Dam, my friend reminisced about days spent here as a member of the Hunyani Rowing Club.
“The 45-minnute drive to Mazowe Dam on a Sunday with Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke On The Water’ playing on the cassette deck. Rowing out towards the wall till we got to the barricade which stopped you getting too close to the spillways. Later a braai under the trees at the waterside.” “I certainly wouldn’t need a row boat to get out to the dam wall now” my friend said, “there’s so little water it would be easier to just float across there on a Lilo (air filled floating mattress).”
It was so painful to look at the low level of Mazowe Dam in a year of such good rain; clearly more water is being pumped out than is flowing in. The capacity of Mazowe Dam is 35 million cubic meters but it is currently holding only 3.6 million cubic meters. The 37-meter-high wall is 163 meters long and they say the water has all gone to irrigation and we can but wonder what is being irrigated in the middle of a prolific rainy season. As we left Mazowe Dam a convoy of VIP cars came towards us, black cars, tinted windows, sirens, blue flashing lights and when you see them you get right off the road and stop, or face dire consequences. This is the reality of Zimbabwe in January 2026.
I end my Letter this week with the news that 66-year-old Zimbabwean businessman Mutumwa Mawere has died. Mr Mawere had lived in exile in South Africa for nearly two decades after his Shabani Mashaba Mines were seized by the Zimbabwe government in the early 2000s. Mr Mawere’s words will long remain in our minds: “It is about whether the rule of law or the rule of men will govern economic life in Africa. Secure property rights are the bedrock of any investment and development.”
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Until next time, thanks for reading this Letter From Zimbabwe now in its 26th year, and my books about life in Zimbabwe, a country in waiting.
Ndini shamwari yenyu (I am your friend)
Love Cathy 22nd January 2026. Copyright © Cathy Buckle https://cathybuckle.co.zw/
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