Potholes along Harare’s roads have achieved dam-like proportions. While residents cry for the city engineers to repair these death-traps, scruffy touts pray that the holes will get wider and deeper.
Few drivers have escaped the attentions of the ”slow jams” — local lingo for the creative unemployed youths who have taken to manning the CBD’s crumbling roads. It’s not that the slow-jams boys are legally mandated to look after them, but in the absence of a functioning roads department, these township touts have quickly learnt the basics of engineering. In other words, they extort money for what one weary motorist called ”pot-hole filling”.
”At least R10 today, baba,” smiled one youth to the driver of a shiny Toyota SUV slowing down to navigate a pothole at yet another ”tollbooth” set up by school dropouts with shovels in hand and torn overalls tied at their waists.
Since working out that the city council is too broke to summons a single truck to fill the growing number of potholes, the slow jams have taken on the job. Some seem to have a genuine sense of civic conviction — quite rare in Zimbabwe these days — though such adventures are not without rich pickings.
In the mornings they block the road when they see a smart car coming. The driver is then pressured to leave behind Z$5-billion (US20c) as a ”thanks and passage fee.” Harare’s drivers may appreciate the excellent civic work the pothole boys do, but they take strong exception to the charges, especially when, as one harassed motorist said: ”I’m expected to pay again on my way home in the evening.” Commuters also complain that the slow jams fill up the potholes at snail’s pace.
”If you fill up slowly you make more money, shaaz [pal],” confesses Tonde, a slow-jams boy, as he frantically waves down an approaching Gauteng registered Nissan Navara. ”We really love the GP cars — especially over Christmas and new year.” GP cars just make good business sense — for foreign registered cars the fee switches to South African rands.
Having collected his fee from the Navara, Tonde continues the interview. ”I wake up every morning at 4:30 and commute from Mufakose to man the holes,” he says, lighting up a Madison Toasted.
”What can I do? I am unemployed and the potholes are unattended by whoever still calls himself the city council here.”
On a good day the boys claim to make enough to buy a week’s worth of scarce beef and several six packs of imported Heineken lagers.
Thanks to the boys a number of hideous potholes are getting a new look in a city where council operations have ceased to exist. As trees and fish ponds threaten to emerge from the potholes, Tonde and company pray that the council stays shut.
Ray Mwareya is a local journalist
