Communities choke on dust as Vic Falls highway works drag on

Delays in rehabilitating the Bulawayo to Victoria Falls highway are exposing communities along construction detours to persistent clouds of dust, while diverted traffic is damaging local roads in Matabeleland North, Hwange East legislator Joseph Bonda has warned.

Bonda’s remarks add a public-health and community-access dimension to growing concerns over the slow and uneven rehabilitation of the strategic highway, which links Bulawayo to Victoria Falls and serves communities, businesses, mines and cross-border traffic.

Debating President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) last week in Parliament, Bonda said construction detours had remained in place longer than expected, leaving residents exposed to heavy dust clouds. 

He added vehicles diverting onto smaller community roads were worsening their condition.

“Communities along the detours have been subjected to airborne disease due to the heavy clouds of dust from the detours that have stayed longer than expected,” Bonda told Parliament.

He singled out the Cross-Dete to Dete stretch, warning the persistent dust could affect the health of nearby residents.

“For example, if you look at Cross-Dete to Dete, there is a very big cloud that is going to leave that community sick from diseases like psychosis and tuberculosis,” he said.

Bonda also said the deteriorating highway had forced heavy vehicles onto smaller community roads, including in Kulula, Lupane, where drivers were attempting to avoid gullies and damaged sections of the main road.

“The bad state of Victoria Falls Road has now caused destruction of village roads in areas like Kulula in Lupane communities as the trucks try to traverse and avoid the gullies on the main roads,” he said.

Bonda said the condition of the road was also undermining access to medical care, warning  some routes used to reach communities had become impassable and that long-distance ambulance transfers were increasingly difficult.

“Ambulances are no longer managing to reach the communities. Some roads to the communities are now impassable,” he said, citing journeys from Binga to Mpilo Central Hospital in Bulawayo and from Hwange to United Bulawayo Hospitals.

He argued that the government’s plan to rehabilitate another 50 kilometres was inadequate given the scale of deterioration along the highway.

“50 kilometres is too short for a stretch of 400 kilometres of damaged road. Only 70 of the 400 kilometres have been serviced and resurfaced,” Bonda said.

The figures he cited point to the gap between the scale of the rehabilitation required and the work completed so far. 

The Transport and Infrastructural Development Ministry reported that more than 57 kilometres had been opened to traffic by April 2026, rising to 59.9 kilometres by June.

The 440-kilometre Bulawayo-Victoria Falls highway is rehabilitated through a public-private partnership under the Emergency Road Rehabilitation Programme Phase Two.

 Launched in July 2025, the project initially carried a 10-month completion target.

Eight contractors, Fossil Contracting, Masimba Holdings, Syvern Investment, Bitumen Resources, Tensor Systems, Asphalt Products, Bitumen World and Linash Construction, were allocated sections of the highway, generally around 51 kilometres each. 

Five contractors were initially engaged before three more were added in an effort to accelerate progress.

However, work has been uneven, with some sections experiencing prolonged slowdowns. 

The government has attributed delays to funding constraints and said in August that rehabilitation was expected to accelerate when contractors resumed full-scale operations.

During his SONA last month, President Mnangagwa announced plans to rehabilitate a further 50 kilometres, despite the project falling behind its original schedule.

Bonda said the consequences of the slow rehabilitation extend beyond transport inconvenience to the regional economy and access to essential services.

He said the road’s condition was making Victoria Falls increasingly difficult for ordinary travellers to reach by road, arguing the resort town is “now marooned and only reachable by air, which a normal citizen in these communities struggles to afford.”

Bonda also warned the state of the highway could deter regional tourists planning to drive to Victoria Falls for the forthcoming Cricket World Cup, potentially depriving the country of tourism revenue.

He urged the government to increase the distance covered under the rehabilitation programme, saying the highway was a critical route serving several land border posts, an international airport, mining areas and the Gwayi-Shangani water project.

Bonda also raised concerns about the increasingly poor state of Cross Dete to Binga road, yet it was important to communities and tourism along the Zambezi Valley, including access to a recently opened border post between Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Apart from road rehabilitation, the legislator also criticised gaps in devolution, saying Hwange District lacked a government vocational college.

He said residents of Binga and Hwange faced difficulties accessing provincial administration services based in Bulawayo rather than Lupane, Matabeleland North’s designated provincial capital.