Residents slam ZINARA: Toll profits over road repairs
BULAWAYO — The Zimbabwe National Road Administration (ZINARA) recently took to social media to trumpet the progress of the Umguza Tollgate Lane Widening Project. In their narrative, the expansion—which increases tollgate approaches to three lanes in each direction and adds an e-Tag Express Lane—is a triumph of operational efficiency, collaboration, and modernization. However, for the average Zimbabwean motorist navigating the country’s crumbling infrastructure, this announcement serves as a bitter reminder of an organization that seems far more interested in refining the process of collecting money than in facilitating the act of travel.
ZINARA’s obsession with renovating and expanding tollgates while neglecting the actual state of the nation’s highways has become a glaring indictment of the country’s infrastructure management. The irony is suffocating: the very roads leading to these “modernized” tollgates are often structurally rotten. Motorists are forced to navigate treacherous, pothole-riddled stretches only to be greeted by a polished, efficient tolling plaza. It is a cynical strategy that prioritizes the funneling of revenue over the safety and dignity of the road user.
The pattern is consistent and infuriating: ZINARA appears to only temporarily fix the immediate vicinity where they collect money, while the vast majority of the road network remains in a state of decay. The current reality of Zimbabwean travel is a testament to this failure.
Consider the route to Victoria Falls. A journey that should be a standard drive has become an arduous, near-impossible trek taking 10 hours or more. The condition of the road is so dire that the traveling public has resorted to an embarrassing alternative: they are now driving through Botswana, entering through Kazungula, and crossing back into Zimbabwe just to avoid the destruction of their vehicles on local roads. That Zimbabwean citizens are choosing to navigate the border formalities of a foreign nation rather than traverse their own highways is a profound humiliation for the national transport authority.
The disconnect between ZINARA’s bureaucratic enthusiasm for tollgate aesthetics and the lived experience on the ground is stark. If the agency truly cared about “improving traffic flow” and “enhancing the motorist experience,” they would pivot their focus away from the toll plazas and toward the asphalt.
The strategy should be flipped: ZINARA needs to stop surrounding Bulawayo and other major centers with endless tollgate expansions and start directing those resources toward urgent construction where it is actually needed. For instance, while Bulawayo finds itself encircled by tolling infrastructure, rural districts like Bikita suffer from a glaring lack of basic road development. The focus should be on building durable, safe roads in underserved regions, not on widening the bottlenecks that feed a system that fails to reinvest in the journey itself.
Until ZINARA reconciles its mandate with the harsh reality of Zimbabwe’s road conditions, these “widening projects” will remain little more than window dressing. A tollgate is meant to be a checkpoint on a journey; it should not be the only part of the road that receives investment. Motorists are tired of paying for luxury tolling experiences on roads that belong in the last century. It is time for ZINARA to stop counting the change and start fixing the road.
