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How full Bulawayo's six supply dams are — the latest published figures with their dates, why full dams don't guarantee water, and the Gwayi-Shangani story.
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Bulawayo drinks from six dams roughly 45 km south-east of the city, topped up by the Nyamandlovu boreholes. Their levels are the most-watched numbers in town: each year's rains, roughly November to April, decide how severe water-shedding will be for the rest of the year.
Neither council nor the national water authority publishes a live feed — council's 'Dam Watch' notices and ZINWA's dam-level table are updated by hand — so this page transcribes the most recent published figures with their dates, and points at where newer ones appear.
66%
Combined storage across the supply dams (council figure, 23 July 2026 — reported as 65–66%)
Newest figures from 23 July 2026 (last month) —
Insiza Mayfair
85% full
as of 23 July 2026 · The city's largest supply dam, and one of only two still above 80% this deep into the dry season. Council's May 2026 projection had it able to keep supplying the city into November 2029.
Mtshabezi
99% full
as of 23 July 2026 · Effectively full — but pipeline limits mean only about 9 megalitres a day reach the city from it.
Upper Ncema
55% full
as of 8 April 2026 · Taken off supply in October 2024 at the depth of the drought; back on the operational list by January 2026. Council reported all four of the smaller dams below 50% on 23 July 2026 — this April figure is the last per-dam number published for it.
Umzingwane
48% full
as of 8 April 2026 · Decommissioned in November 2023 and recommissioned in January 2026 after strong inflows. Its 1970s pump station got new pumps in June 2026, lifting pumping capacity 39% to 43 megalitres a day. Below 50% as of council's 23 July 2026 figures.
Inyankuni
31% full
These are the published figures on their dates — transcribed, not live readings. Newer notices may exist.
Almost all of Bulawayo's rain falls November to April, so inflow news in January–March reads like a forecast of the whole year. The 2025–26 season was a good one: combined storage climbed from about 43% in mid-January to about 70% by the end of March, and council eased weekly shedding in steps — down to 72 hours a week from May 2026. The dry season has since drawn storage back to about 65–66% by late July, which is a gentle decline and not, this year, the thing keeping the taps dry. The 72-hour programme stayed in force through July anyway.
A full dam is not a promise of water. The dams sit about 45 km out, and the water is pumped a long way uphill on grid power — so pump breakdowns and power cuts at the stations cut supply even when storage is good. Mayor David Coltart put it plainly in April 2026: 'We can have 100% full dams at the end of this season and still not be able to deliver sufficient quantities of water to residents.'
The July 2026 figures show what he meant. Council engineer Sikhumbuzo Ncube told councillors on 23 July that only one of the two raw-water pumping lines was running — the Sulzer line, about 51 megalitres a day — where the two lines together can move about 105. And of the water that does arrive, council's finance director said in July 2026 that 42% is lost to leaks and bursts in ageing pipes before anyone is billed for it. Council wants that loss down to 30% before round-the-clock supply is realistic.
Nyamandlovu aquifer
Boreholes about 60 km north-west of the city, designed to deliver 16,000 cubic metres a day but actually delivering roughly 3,000–6,000 because many boreholes are broken; the Epping Forest wellfield expansion has been part-finished for years.
A dam on the Gwayi River plus a 252 km pipeline to Bulawayo — the Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project, first mooted in 1912 and under construction since 2004. The two halves are in very different places. The dam wall reached about 80% complete by a National Matabeleland Zambezi Water Project progress report dated 10 July 2026, having grown from 39 to 55 metres high since July 2025. The pipeline that would actually carry the water to Bulawayo is about 16% built, and has been largely stalled since 2022 for lack of funding.
The money explains the gap. The four main outstanding packages — pipeline, pump stations, treatment plant and pipe supply — are contracted at about US$554 million between them, against a 2026 national budget line of ZiG273 million, roughly US$11 million. The project is currently drawing about US$4 million a month on presidential direction, which officials say covers the dam wall alone.
as of 8 April 2026 · Council said in July 2026 that rehabilitation of the pumping infrastructure here would start in September. Below 50% as of council's 23 July 2026 figures.
Lower Ncema
30% full
as of 8 April 2026 · Part of the Ncema system, which council says carries about 70% of the city's water and whose pumps were under repair through mid-2026. Below 50% as of council's 23 July 2026 figures.
66% combined storage
Published figures, as of 23 July 2026
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