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Flood Victims Flee Refugee Camps

Homestead completely destroyed in Nsungwale, Sinakoma Ward in Binga after heavy floods in February this year. Image by International Organisation for Migration


BY NOKUTHABA DLAMINI | @The_CBNews | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | OCT 16, 2020

Flooding earlier this year displaced a community in Binga, COVID-19 became a bigger blow, cutting them from the world and alienating them. The villagers have fled camps set up for them by the government and nonprofit entities reportedly to engage in unauthorized activities. They say they have been abandoned and forgotten; they just want to rebuild what they have lost.


BINGA (The Citizen Bulletin)— Nine months after their lives were turned upside down by raging floods, some women and children are still struggling to cope. Limited access to health and starvation have emerged as the biggest threat to their lives.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the situation with non-governmental organisations that initially came to the rescue of the affected families facing difficulties in accessing them.

Flooding hit the area around the confluence of Sibwambwa, Sikande, Namapande and Manyenyengwa rivers in February, destroying 181 homesteads within the floodplain. The villagers lost their livestock, property and stored food, roads to the area were also destroyed, making it difficult for cars and buses to pass through.

The Nsungwale area under Chief Sinakoma was the hardest hit. Initially the government and non-governmental organisations rushed to the victims’ rescue, but a month later COVID-19 struck in Zimbabwe and the government imposed a lock down that restricted travel across the country.

The victims, including men who have been cut off from health institutions in one of the remotest districts in Zimbabwe, say they feel abandoned.

They have fled government provided temporary structures as there is no humanitarian assistance has been rendered to them.


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At the camp, their children and the elderly have not been able to access health facilities for immunisation and treatment of various ailments.

Lingani Nyoni, a teenage mother from Chitete ward says she fears for her child’s health who has not been immunised and is often sick.


“My child is six months old and I have not been able to get him immunised.”

Lingani Nyoni, distraught teenage mother


“I had been staying at the camp since he was born and there is no medical treatment that was given to him or other young children there.  I decided to leave the place in August as many of my fellow victims had deserted the camps to look for food and rebuild their homes. We had no choice because the government left us around March and never reported back to us.”

Nyoni says they had to sleep without food on several occasions and relied on food handouts from other villagers living in the area.

She now lives in Kamativi where some of her relatives are.

Lenziwe Siachilaba, 57 from Sikande village deserted the camp after spending several weeks feeling sick and without any medical care.

“I was vomiting severely until at some point my other neighbors in the camp told me that I had passed out. Life in the camp was extremely hard because we were never given food, toiletries and medication. We have come back to our homesteads that were destroyed and we are in the process of trying to rebuild before the rains begin.”

For Siachilaba and others picking the pieces left when the floods pounced on them is better than being at the camp.


“We are scared that if the floods strike again, our lives will be turned upside down, but that for now does not matter because the camp felt as if we were being punished for this disaster.”
Lenziwe Siachilaba, camp deserter after falling sick


Nyoni and Siachilaba’s experiences at the camp have been confirmed by former member of parliament for Binga North, Prince Dubeko Sibanda who says the government has not done justice for the flood victims.

However, the minister of State for Matabeleland North province Richard Moyo says the flood victims moved away from the camp to engage in illegal activities like poaching in parks. Moyo says the government has already set aside land for the 181 families to rebuild their homesteads in the upper land of the same area, but there has been resistance from the villagers.


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