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A punishing heatwave is wreaking havoc in Zimbabwe, giving airline pilots a torrid time and literally sapping the energy out of a country that has seen its hydro-electric reservoir evaporate in the scorching heat.
As the El Niño phenomenon unleashes its fury, the Harare-based Meteorological Services Department says Zimbabwe is experiencing the highest temperatures in 60 years.
With millions of families now at risk of starvation and large numbers of cattle perishing in a frightening drought, a sullen-faced President Robert Mugabe told the ongoing Zanu-PF conference: “We continue to pray for more rain.”
On November 13, a 50-seater Air Zimbabwe turboprop travelling from Harare to Kariba failed to land as the mercury shot beyond 43°C.
The captain concluded it was too dangerous to touch down, considering the high likelihood of engine malfunction and the aircraft tyres bursting upon contact with the blazing asphalt.
Aborting the landing, the pilots flew instead to Victoria Falls International Airport, 500 kilometres away, where they waited for the temperatures to cool down.
Airline manager Chris Kwenda said climate change could soon force them to change flight schedules. Mike Tapfuma Moyo, a private pilot who flies in Africa and the Middle East, told African Independent that high temperatures make flying tricky. “At the best of times, landing an aircraft is no easy task. It takes skill, concentration and often nerves of steel. In the aviation industry, there’s a reason why we say take-off and landing are the most dangerous segments of a flight,” Moyo said.
All over the country, desperate Zimbabweans are gazing forlornly into the cloudless sky and it has dawned on everyone that climate change is no longer a dismissable mantra peddled by fringe scientists but a real danger to livelihoods.
The water level at Lake Kariba – the world’s largest man-made dam – has dwindled drastically in recent weeks, forcing Zimbabwe’s power utility to reduce electricity generation from 750 megawatts to 475MW.
Hydro-electricity is generated by drawing water from the lake through a short horizontal inlet to the turbines. Engineers say a depleted water level could damage expensive machinery.
The level of water is so low that the Zambezi River Authority is warning that power generation may have to be suspended if it does not rain soon. Engineers have revised the volume of water available for power generation from 45 billion cubic metres to 10bn. If the heavens do not open up in the next two weeks, Kariba could plummet to a meagre output of 245MW.
Interestingly, the Chinese government is providing a $533 million loan for the refurbishment of the Kariba turbines. With the lake running dry, is this money going down the drain? Electricity shortages are catastrophic for an economy whose industrial capacity utilisation is down to 25 percent. Most towns are receiving only six hours of power a day.
The Met Office says temperatures recorded so far averaged between 33 and 43 degrees Celsius throughout the country, while, comparatively, the highest temperatures recorded in the past 60 years ranged between 35 and 41°C. Bemused radio listeners are regularly bombarded with weather reports advising them to drink lots of water and wear appropriate clothing.
More than 90 days past the traditional maize-planting period, farmers have lost hope of salvaging the barren season. In the rural areas, relentless heat is decimating the small nutritional gardens that have been the lifeline of poor villagers. In the southern provinces of Masvingo and Matabeleland, which are perennially dry even in the best of years, hungry villagers are now surviving on wild fruit and children have dropped out of school in record numbers.
Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa last week allocated $300 000 for cloud seeding, where aircraft inject crystals into clouds to cause rain, but meteorologists say this method can only work in the presence of rain-bearing clouds. There are no promising clouds above Zimbabwe at present.
The United Nations has appealed for $86 million from the international community to feed 1,5 million Zimbabweans affected by drought-related food shortfalls. Another $43m has been pledged separately by the US Agency for International Development.
Economist and legislator Eddie Cross says El Niño portends disaster in the entire SADC region, although Zimbabwe will bear the brunt owing to its weak economy and non-existent social safety nets. “In Zimbabwe we will have to import over 1,2 million tonnes of maize this year. Some will come in as grain, some as maize meal.
“Then there are the financial implications… the country is broke, we do not have any financial reserves to talk of and access to no international credit lines large enough to help us meet any emergency in food supplies,” Cross said. He notes that the problem is daunting this time around because regional grain exporters South Africa, Malawi and Zambia are all facing drought-induced shortages of their own.
“If Zambia has a significantly smaller crop and South Africa has to import more than half their national requirements, then it is possible that both states would suspend exports to preserve local stocks. Both states hold less than three months’ supply in stock at any one point in time,” Cross said. He added rather ominously: ”We better all go to church this Sunday and pray for rain.”
Scientists say the climate in Southern Africa is becoming warmer and drier. The frequency of dry spells during the rainy season has increased, while the frequency of rainy days has reduced, exacting a heavy toll on agro-based economies.
Courtesy of thezimbabwedaily.com
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