Nomathemba Neseni in June 2011 at a SuSanA side event. Photo: Flickr/SuSanA
“Sanitation is a passion, not a job,” said Noma Neseni last year at the Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene in Mumbai, India. “I became a human rights commissioner because of toilets. What is gender equality or poverty alleviation when we are forced to defecate in the open?”
Ms. Nomathemba (Noma) Neseni, the Director of the Institute of Water and Sanitation Development (IWSD) and Human Rights Commissioner in Zimbabwe passed away on 30 August after a short illness.
She took over the leadership of IWSD in mid-2007, after working for a number of years as Deputy Director. Ms. Neseni had extensive experience in the water and sanitation (WASH) sector, ranging from project planning to gender mainstreaming. She wrote a book [1] on WASH financing, which was published in May this year.
At IWSD, Deputy Director Mr. Lovemore Mujuru has taken up the post of Acting Executive Director.
Ms. Neseni served for many years as the National Coordinator for Zimbabwe for the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), and more recently she was elected as a member of the WSSCC Steering Committee.
IWSD has been an IRC partner for many years, most recently in the ZimWASH project [2]. In 2009 Noma Neseni wrote an article [3] in IRC’s Source Bulletin about how the decline in Zimbabwe’s sanitation services eventually led to the 2008 cholera outbreak, the deadliest in Africa for 15 years.
[1] Neseni, N, 2012. Financing of WASH in a declining economic environment: financing of WASH for sustainability. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. http://washurl.net/dou0ka>
[2] IRC - ZimWASH
[3] Noma Neseni, Sanitation perspectives in the new Zimbabwe. E-Source, May 2009
Source: WSSCC, 30 Aug 2012 ; The Herald / allAfrica.com, 01 Sep 2012
“Sanitation is a passion, not a job,” said Noma Neseni last year at the Global Forum on Sanitation and Hygiene in Mumbai, India. I fully endorse this position. I am very disappointed that my writings have no echo in Africa or India. I’m not famous because of industrial sanitation remove the pilot station earthworms in the soil which was revolutionary because it did not cost quite expensive. These are people who have equipped during the colonization city centers leaving rural populations and slum defecate in the open. Please if you do have the power to change this situation.
Yours
j’approuve pleinement cette position . Je suis très décu que mes écrits n’aient pas d’écho en Afrique ou en Inde . Je ne suis pas célébre parce que les industriels de l’assainissement ont supprimé la station pilote lombrics dans l’ humus qui était révolutionnaire , parce que ça ne coûtait pas assez cher . Ce sont ces gens qui n’ont équipé pendant la colonisation que les centres villes laissant les populations des campagnes et des bidonvilles déféquer en plein air . Je vous en prie si vous en avez le pouvoir faites évoluer cette situation .Il suffit de m’inviter pour faire un exemple auprès de populations de latrine humus par exemple ou de toilettes collectives . Nous n’avons besoin de rien seulement de fumier ou de végétation pour obtenir de l’humus . J’ai 68 ans il est de me consulter
Bien à vous
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