| Tracking shots of Mbare streets | Music | 00:00 |
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| FRANK TORE: This is the most affected place | 00:08 |
| Tore and Geoghegan in car | where cholera is victimising people. | 00:11 |
| Mbare slums | Music | 00:14 |
| Tore and Geoghegan in car | GEOGHEGAN: Why is that? FRANK TORE: It’s overpopulated. | 00:17 |
| Mbare slums | They don’t have a sufficient water supply, sufficient toilets… because it’s like, out of 150 people, | 00:20 |
| Tore and Geoghegan in car | they use one bathroom, one toilet. | 00:31 |
| Mbare slums | Music | 00:34 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Frank Tore is taking us on a tour of his now ravaged Harare. This is an inner suburb, Mbare, home to many of his extended family. Sewage weaves its way between piles of rubbish and the decaying buildings. The only thing thriving here is disease. TORE: My sister-in-law, | 00:37 |
| Tore. Super: | my sister died from cholera, her son died from cholera and my brother-in-law died from cholera. | 00:59 |
| Inside apartment block | Music | 01:07 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Ten of Frank Tore’s relatives live in this small room. They tell us twenty people have died of cholera in their building and nearby. | 01:18 |
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| FRANK TORE: There was no water supply, | 01:27 |
| Tore with residents | so from there I think most of the people died from cholera. | 01:29 |
| Communal toilets | GEOGHEGAN: Now the only running water in these flats is down the hall in the communal toilets. A broken sewerage pipe spews excrement from the ceiling. | 01:43 |
| Woman filling water can | SOLLOM: People get cholera through contact, through eating contaminated food which has been washed with contaminated water or more likely just drinking contaminated water. | 01:59 |
| Sollom. Super: | When I say contaminated, I mean water that has human faeces that contain the vibrio, the bacteria in it. | 02:11 |
| Women at well collecting water | GEOGHEGAN: The cholera epidemic had been raging for four months when Richard Sollom and a team from Physicians for Human Rights, travelled to Zimbabwe. | 02:19 |
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| RICHARD SOLLOM: Not only do people acquire cholera very quickly, it has an incubation period of one to two days, | 02:32 |
| Sollom | but you can also die as quickly from cholera within a matter of, you know… two to three hours you can die, and that is the frightful thing. | 02:40 |
| Tore and family at home | Music | 02:49 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Frank Tore, like many Zimbabweans, has had a hellish life. He was an organiser for the then opposition party Movement for Democratic Change when he was tortured by Mugabe’s thugs and left to die. | 03:00 |
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| Music | 03:13 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: His brother was murdered and his wife and daughters raped. Now for this family it’s all about staying alive in a time of cholera. | 03:18 |
| On bridge looking at dirty water in stream | ‘So do the people in Harare know they’re drinking this dirty water?’ FRANK TORE: Yes, really they do. | 03:30 |
| Tore and Geoghegan on bridge | You know, all the sewage which is coming from the floods flows into this region which was straight into the dam from which we use to drink our water. GEOGHEGAN: So they have no choice? | 03:35 |
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| FRANK TORE: They have no choice because at times you can go for a week without water, so when you get it, it will be like gold. | 03:50 |
| Sewage in drains | Music | 03:59 |
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| RICHARD SOLLOM: It was around the year 2005 that the Zanu PF regime nationalised the municipal water authorities. So for the past several years, | 04:04 |
| Sollom | the fact that water has not been treated effectively, that the sewage pipes and the water pipes that are broken have not been repaired, that these civil engineers and public health people have not been paid, is absolutely directly linked to Zanu PF negligence. | 04:15 |
| Geoghegan by pool of sewage | GEOGHEGAN: This is what the residents of Harare are living with, raw sewage in the streets. The stench is overpowering. Kids are just walking through here in their bare feet. It’s little wonder cholera is spreading so rapidly. | 04:40 |
| Coffin leaning against tree. Children pass | Music | 04:53 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Currently there are around four thousand cases a week and one hundred deaths. Every street we turn into, we’re confronted by human waste. | 04:57 |
| Collecting water from drain | The desperate risk their lives in search of water. Cholera has killed many in this community. | 05:10 |
| Vox pop - woman with bucket full of water | ‘Why are you getting water from here?’ WOMAN: There’s no water from the tap. GEOGHEGAN: Do you think this water is safe to drink? WOMAN: It’s not safe. GEOGHEGAN: So why are you drinking it? WOMAN: There’s nothing we can do, so we can just use it. | 05:22 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Do you worry about getting cholera from drinking this water? WOMAN: Of course we do… but there’s no option. | 05:39 |
| Collecting water from drain | GEOGHEGAN: The Mugabe controlled National Water Authority, ZINWA, is directly responsible for the scarcity of clean water. SOLLOM: ZINWA did not procure sodium sulphate. They just ran out. This is not expensive, | 05:46 |
| Sollom. Super: | this is just sodium sulphate and it is available in South Africa. You know they could have driven across the border, bought the chemical, brought it back and, you know, treated the water. What do they do instead? They stopped the water. | 06:08 |
| Driving to Glenview clinic | Music | 06:23 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Glenview on the outskirts of Harare was one of the first areas to be hit by the cholera explosion. There are now about three hundred and sixty treatment centres like this one around the country.. | 06:33 |
| Inside clinic | Music | 06:47 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Facilities are basic. Camp beds and buckets and not much more for people with chronic diarrhoea, stomach cramps and vomiting. These people are the lucky ones, they made it to a clinic | 06:51 |
| Geoghegan with patient | WOMAN CHOLERA PATIENT: My husband brought me here. GEOGHEGAN: Are the rest of your family okay? WOMAN CHOLERA PATIENT: They’re okay. GEOGHEGAN: Do you have children? WOMAN CHOLERA PATIENT: I’ve got children, yes. GEOGHEGAN: Do you worry that they may get cholera? WOMAN, CHOLERA PATIENT: I’m very worried. | 07:09 |
| Geoghegan with minders | GEOGHEGAN: We quickly discover that the fear of cholera is far less potent than the fear of the government. MAN: They’re saying you may not film us. You mustn’t film. GEOGHEGAN: Why can’t we film? MAN: Because… they’re concerned… GEOGHEGAN: They’re worried about the government? MAN: Yes. | 07:26 |
| Hidden camera Harare hospital | Music | 07:50 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: The cruel irony in Zimbabwe is that while a deadly epidemic sweeps the country, government hospitals lie empty. | 07:51 |
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| Most doctors have fled and little medicine is on hand. We’re told Harare Hospital has more corpses than patients. To see for ourselves, we make our way to the morgue and secretly film. | 08:00 |
| Hospital morgue | It’s shocking. Bodies have literally been dumped. | 08:17 |
| Geoghegan to camera | I’m told these are all cholera victims and there must be a hundred bodies here just stacked one top of the other and they’re not wrapped…. not wrapped at all. | 08:22 |
| Cadavers on morgue tables | It’s considered standard practice to prevent cholera spreading from the remains of victims, and yet clearly no attempt has been made here to contain the bacteria that’s still very much alive in these corpses. | 08:35 |
| Red Cross footage. Cholera patients | The cholera epidemic took hold in August last year. President Robert Mugabe, in power for almost thirty years, was in denial. MUGABE: Our doctors have now arrested cholera, | 08:53 |
| Mugabe. Super: | so now that there is no cholera, there is no cause for war. | 09:06 |
| Cholera patients | RICHARD SOLLOM: They actually did not even state that there was a cholera epidemic until | 09:16 |
| Sollom | December 4th of 2008. That’s four months following the initial outbreak and that’s one of the problems. That’s why we see such a high case fatality rate, which is actually five times greater than the international norm of 1%. | 09:20 |
| Hospital exteriors/Interiors – late night | Music | 09:33 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: But combating cholera is also a task for the international agencies led by the United Nations. We’re secretly ushered into a Harare private hospital to meet the United Nation’s insider. | 09:38 |
| Tadonki in hospital l bed | Georges Tadonki has just suffered a heart attack, but despite the stress, he’s speaking out even if it means breaking UN confidentiality. | 09:54 |
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| GEORGES TADONKI: Cholera is not a disease that kills so many people. We’ve had four thousand people dying of cholera in Zimbabwe. It’s not acceptable. We could have planned it better, earlier. We knew that it could happen. The deterioration of the water sanitation in most Zimbabwean urban centres, the lack of water in rural site and so on, it’s not rocket science. | 10:04 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Georges Tadonki was until recently the head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs or OCHA. He claims the UN | 10:33 |
| Mugabe | deliberately downplayed the crisis to avoid confrontation with President Mugabe and his Zanu-PF regime. | 10:41 |
| Geoghegan at bedside | TADONKI: Because we wanted to talk nice and that has endangered the lives of so many people. | 10:54 |
| Tadonki in hospital bed. Super: | And I think that’s a massive failure, not telling the story as it was and actually misleading even the government of Zimbabwe that we were trying to pat on the back. | 10:59 |
| Schenkenberg. Super: | SCHENKENBERG: Here what we have in Zimbabwe is not a classic development situation, it’s a serious humanitarian emergency and that requires really a different attitude and a different approach. | 11:10 |
| Geneva/ Schenke nberg on street | GEOGHEGAN: Thousands of kilometres away in Geneva, the International Council of Voluntary Agencies’ head, Ed Schenkenberg, is based next door to the United Nations. | 11:25 |
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| When the cholera epidemic took hold at the end of last year, he travelled to Harare to investigate the actions of the head of the UN’s humanitarian mission, | 11:35 |
| Photo. Zacharias | the Humanitarian Coordinator, a man named Augustino Zacharias. | 11:44 |
| Schenkenberg | ED SCHENKENBERG: Clearly there’s a feeling on the part of many in the humanitarian communities, particularly on the NGO side that he’s too closely related to the government and that he hasn’t spoken out, that he hasn’t done his duties in terms of actually banging his fist on the table and saying there’s a serious crisis in this country. | 11:52 |
| Travelling to Zacharias’s house | Music | 12:11 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: The UN Humanitarian Coordinator lives in one of Harare’s most exclusive suburbs, a world apart from ordinary Zimbabweans. It takes numerous phone calls before Augustino Zacharias finally agrees to meet us to explain his relationship with Mugabe’s Zanu PF. | 12:16 |
| Zacharias. Super: | ZACHARIAS: I would have to have dialogue with any government who should be in place and that’s the primary responsibility of UN organisations. | 12:40 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Well people have said that various aid groups, and many UN and non UN people say you think it is more important to please the government than it is to provide humanitarian aid. ZACHARIAS: That’s a false accusation that I dismiss. | 12:49 |
| Tadonki in hospital bed. Super: | TADONKI: The Humanitarian Coordinator in Zimbabwe has always put first the need for him to maintain a door open with Zanu, first before anything, and in that situation he has also always portrayed himself as being the person who is capable of talking to Zanu. GEOGHEGAN: Are you saying that he compromised the lives of perhaps millions of people? GEORGES TADONKI: Absolutely. I have no doubt for that, absolutely. | 13:06 |
| Tadonki in hospital. Freeze frames | Music | 13:35 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Georges Tadonki was dismissed from his position in Zimbabwe at the end of January. He claims he was removed because he challenged the Humanitarian Co-ordinator. He’s the third person forced out of that position in four years, but can the UN hierarchy have confidence in Augustino Zacharias? He may deny having a close relationship with the government, but he seems very reluctant to criticise Robert Mugabe’s response to the cholera epidemic. | 13:40 |
| Zacharias. Super: | ZACHARIAS: There has been an absence of the government throughout 2008 which has affected, you know, even if we went to the offices to discuss you would not see much enthusiasm for taking that leadership, or let’s say, taking the bull from the horn…the bull by the horns. GEOGHEGAN: But doesn’t it go beyond lack of enthusiasm, the government that’s been obstructive in many cases hasn’t it? | 14:12 |
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| ZACHARIAS: From the dialogue we’re having on a daily basis in trying to get them to do something you will see that they are cooperative. | 14:41 |
| Schenkenberg. Super: | SCHENKENBERG: They should at least recognise that the humanitarian coordinator, who has been in charge, has not been effective in doing his job. That is very obvious I think, and in that sense, indeed I would say the next step is then to say we should put somebody else in his place, somebody who knows the job. | 14:49 |
| UN flag | GEOGHEGAN: But the United Nations defends Augustino Zacharias, telling us in a written response he’s done much to save lives during the cholera epidemic. | 15:09 |
| Geoghegan in car. Super: | We’ve just been told about an outbreak of cholera 100 km north west of Harare so we’re going to have a look. We’re also told that it’s a Zanu PF stronghold, so we’re not sure what to expect. | 15:24 |
| Cholera patient in cart | A bullock-drawn cart delivers a new victim to hospital. This woman was struck down by the disease during the night - she’s gravely ill. We won’t find out whether she survives. We’re ordered to stop filming and leave the clinic. | 15:40 |
| Hidden camera footage at clinic | Music | 16:01 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: At another clinic we strike the same resistance. The hidden camera is the only way we were able to film. | 16:07 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Has a Zanu representative been here? HOSPITAL OFFICIAL: Yes. GEOGHEGAN: Did they offer anything? HOSPITAL OFFICIAL: Just moral support. | 16:14 |
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| Music | 16:24 |
| Hidden camera footage of patients | GEOGHEGAN: We hear things are now under control, but at the beginning of the year they were losing one in five cholera patients. It’s the same story across the country. In the central town of Kadoma the hidden camera shows tent after tent filled with cholera patients. | 16:24 |
| Geoghegan walks through graveyard | A walk through the nearby graveyard reveals the carnage caused by the disease. | 16:45 |
| Geoghegan to camera in graveyard | This town of Kadoma obviously feels there’s no end in sight to the cholera epidemic. Dozens of graves are still being dug in preparation for many more victims. | 16:54 |
| Clinic at Kwekwe | An hour down the road is Kwekwe. Just a few weeks ago this clinic was inundated with cholera cases. The dead lay next to patients fighting for their lives. Clinics are seeing only a fraction of the cholera cases. | 17:04 |
| Man in clinic | MAN: I feel better, much better. GEOGHEGAN: This man knows he’d be dead if he’d stayed at home. MAN: I was carried by motor vehicle, there was somebody who picked me up from the road because I was unable to walk for myself. | 17:27 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: But if no one had found you… MAN: I would have died. I would have died because I had no power to walk. | 17:40 |
| Women sing |
| 17:52 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: For some Zimbabweans there is renewed hope that after many desperate years they may finally be able to help themselves. Certainly there’s optimism among supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change. | 17:58 |
| Rally | They now have a role in government and their leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, is Prime Minister. TSVANGIRAI: In the immediate days | 18:16 |
| Tsvangirai addresses rally. Super: | ahead we will focus on the cholera crisis. We will urgently reduce both the number of outbreaks and unacceptably high mortality levels. | 18:22 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: But the new government has no money to fix the broken pipes and staff the run down hospitals. | 18:33 |
| Tore and wife at graveyard | Music | 18:40 |
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| GEOGHEGAN: Zimbabwe will need massive support from the international community to fix the problems, and unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen until Robert Mugabe shows a genuine willingness to share power and releases his grip on a dying nation. | 18:50 |