Walter Nyamukondiwa

Herald Reporter

It is sunset and silhouette-tinged water mirrors fleeting shapes of boats, riverine vegetation, a multifarious array of architecture.

Unfazed saddle-billed storks and kingfishers plunge into the deep waters, shattering each illusion with acrobatic splashes.

At every plunge, the water turns silver and gold, rippling to the shores with a wash and swash on sump of sand between a steep bank and gurgling shallows. The azure coves froth with each water movement.

A huge crocodile stealthily marshals the shoreline, attacking its prey with sporadic sluggishness, driven by life’s ancient rhythm to survive.

A distance away, an elephant grazes on the shoreline, body half submerged in water, munching on the lush green riverine vegetation.

A school of hippos huddles and intermittently explodes as male rivalry heats up. The vanquished male escapes for dear life, mooting to mount another challenge someday.    

On the deep waters, a fisherman is on the hunt for tiger fish. On catching it, the tiger fish’s initial run is fast and strong and is followed by spectacular leaps of one or two metres into the air to try and shake off the hook, and then a series of deep, determined runs, which chews every ounce of strength from this game fish.

Finally, after about 10 minutes of fighting, he pulls the tiger fish, belly-up, to the side of the boat, where it tries to make one or two last breaks to freedom — like a man trying to break from chains — but is gaffed and brought onto the boat.

Welcome to Kariba Dam.

The concrete arch-shaped Kariba Dam stands out as one of man’s engineering ingenuity, an enduring investment that has served the people of Zimbabwe and Zambia well for the past 60 years.

While the initial plan was a visionary desire to offset a power deficit and sustain industries by damming the mighty Zambezi River at the Kariba Gorge for hydropower stations on both South and North banks, ancillary activities such as tourism and fishing have since dominated.

The Kariba Dam and lake are part of the itinerary and repertoire of sites to be visited by many since its completion.

For 60 years, thousands have come from far and wide to marvel, if not to just walk across the arch-shaped dam wall.

A vast expanse of water that disappears into the horizon on one side of the dam, in contrast pales into the original course of the Zambezi River as it flows to the Indian Ocean.

Touring the dam is one opportunity cherished by visitors who cross into either Zimbabwe or Zambia without a passport, albeit for up to 100 metres on either side, as once on the crest, the unmanned boundary is denoted by a steel rod in the concrete structure.

It was on May 17, 1960 when Queen Elizabeth 11, officially opened the dam by switching on a generator after about four years of sweat and blood as workmen struggled to put up the humongous structure.

It remains one of the biggest dams by volume in the world today.

With that single investment estimated at around US$80 million, power generation defined the primary growth trajectory of the Siamese twin towns of Kariba and Siavonga.

Quietly, the Diamond Jubilee milestone went by last Sunday, courtesy of the coronavirus.

No festivities to mark one of the key features and installations whose disturbance by any cause or reason, be they climatic or wear and tear, could have far reaching consequences.

If something was to happen affecting the ecosystem of the lake and its ability to support power generation as climate change threatens in recent years, it will mean more!

No electricity, no fishing, no tourism and all.

Too ghastly to contemplate.

Festivities had been lined up to mark the important milestone, but a combination of factors have disturbed the plans.

The Covid-19 tune has drowned all other melodies.

Zambezi River Authority (ZRA) spokesperson Mrs Elizabeth Karonga said that Kariba@60 festivities were expected to go on throughout the course of the year.

“There was a committee spearheading the Kariba@60 project chaired by Professor Hilary Masundire, formerly of Lake Kariba Research Station. The celebrations were supposed to go on this whole year and culminate into an academic symposium. Various sectors represented on the committee could use different platforms for commemorations,” said Mrs Karonga.

She said the Zimbabwe National Gallery had an exhibition on the Kariba Dam which has so far toured the world and was meant to showcase in Kariba, but finances hampered the project. An ecological system has developed with power generation as the microsystem, fishing industry as the mesosystem, while tourism forms the exosystem, going with the Urie Bronfenbrenner Ecological Systems Theory.

The development of Kariba Town can be linked to these layers of activities, which formed around power generation.

From the workers who worked variously on the dam and installations, the town, which at best is haphazard, has grown to have a population of more than 30 000 people.

A significant number of the population is employed at the Zimbabwe Power Company (ZPC) in various departments directly or indirectly involved in power generation.

Zambezi River Authority (ZRA), which manages the structure and lake on behalf of Zimbabwe and Zambia, also employs a sizeable number of workers on both sides of the Kariba border. As a result of their relative affluence, the two companies own the biggest portfolio of properties in the town while their employees also own a significant number of the nearly 6 000 properties. They have a bigger say in the spending patterns of the town, claiming the choicest spots in bars where ordinary “Karibeans” would not dare to visit.

Kariba South Power Station has an installed capacity of 1 050MW from the initial 666MW from six generators on commissioning in 1962.

Further upgrades were made by adding another 125MW per unit to rave the installed capacity 750MW before two more units with a capacity of 300MW were added at a total cost of $$533 million starting in 2014.

It was commissioned in 2018, making the power station the country’s biggest power plant. The power generation industry birthed the fishing industry when exotic fish including kapenta and the tilapia breams among others were introduced after the lake filled in 1963.

Fishermen of various kinds have fished from the lake using nets, boats and rods for subsistence purposes.

Tourism also started in those early years while some companies specialising in aquaculture including Lake Harvest, set up cages in the lake and on the shores.

They breed the tilapia bream.

Other companies like Padenga Holdings have ventured into crocodile farming, tapping into the large volumes of what the lake provides.

All these activities bank on a thriving lake with any disturbance spelling doom in relatively similar proportions for the riparian states. Climate change has emerged as a major threat to the well-being of the lake and subsequently power generation, tourism and fishing.

Lake levels dropped to near record levels in 2019, which ominously raised prospects of the power station being decommissioned with disastrous consequences for the life and economy of the two neighbouring countries.

Withdrawal of power from Kariba has an impact that hits the country’s socio-economic standing as Kariba South supplies the bulk of electricity needs.

Hydropower is regarded as a cheaper and reliable form of electricity.

Climatic and regulatory factors have been blamed for the uncertain future of the fishing industry, which provides about 70 percent of the country’s protein requirements as yields have been declining over the years.

The kapenta industry has morphed into a sector that generated around US$450 000, according to the 2012 official figures of 9 000 tonnes of kapenta.

Significant volumes being produced by artisanal fishermen are unaccounted for.

Lake levels have been picking up this year, surpassing 2019 levels.

ZRA has decided to be proactive and curtailed the amount of water allocated for power generation to build reserves against unpredictable rainfall patterns.

Weather forecast for the 2019/2020 season projected less than received rains with floods upstream of the Zambezi River, resulting in above projected inflows.

It is time to find sustainable ways of producing power while optimising utilisation and preservation of water used for generating power at the power stations in Kariba.