issue 11 

Viable Sanitation Options Do Exist

By Jessica Wilson, Karen Goldberg, Jeff Rudin and Mary Galvin

Unnoticed in the battle between the DA and ANC Youth League over exposed toilets is a disgraceful and much larger problem.

In 2008, The Water Dialogues-South Africa, (www.waterdialogues.org), a multi-stakeholder initiative, commissioned research on Cape Town's portable sanitation services in informal settlements, as one of nine national case studies. This article is drawn from that research and subsequent engagement between civil society groups and the City of Cape Town.

For those with means, Cape Town is a first-class city: if you live in a middle- or upper-income area, potholes, burst pipes and blocked stormwater drains are fixed quickly; street lights illuminate your neighbourhood at night; amenities are conveniently placed; and the natural splendours are easily accessible.

For those without means, living in one of the city's 250 informal settlements is an entirely different reality. Access to safe, hygienic and dignified sanitation is a distant hope for an estimated half a million Cape Town residents: at least 250 00 people do not have access to any sanitation whatsoever, while a further 200 000 people are forced to use container toilets which are effectively a communal bucket system.

In 2006/7, only 1.7 percent of the city's water and sanitation budget was allocated to sanitation in informal settlements, yet 15 percent of Cape Town homes are in these areas.
You don't want to be caught needing the toilet in an informal settlement. The risks you face include being attacked or knocked down as you try and cross the N2 highway to relieve yourself. If you have access to a communal toilet, you dare not risk your life using it at night and will have to resort to a bucket or plastic bag in the confines of your tiny shack. To experience this fear, humiliation and health risk even once would be overwhelming. Yet for thousands of Capetonians this is daily life. In addition, raw sewage could run underfoot, spilt by contract bucket workers as they buckle under the weight of transferring full containers to their vehicles. These containers may be rinsed out at the communal stand-pipes, where women and children collect their daily drinking water and do their washing.

Despite the fact that up to half a million people in this world class city have less than basic sanitation, as defined in the Strategic Framework for Water Services (2003), the City of Cape Town's leadership seems determined to deny the dire reality of a large sector of the city's population. It does this by hiding the realities behind misleading statistics; by outsourcing not only service delivery but also its responsibilities as a water services provider; and then by accusing anyone who challenges or criticises it of a political plot. People are blamed for the poverty and indignity they find themselves in.

Furthermore, the city has shown extreme reluctance to talk with - in an open and mature manner - residents who are genuinely seeking sanitation solutions. This attitude - of sweeping painful realities under the proverbial carpet - underscores the city's general approach towards the surplus people of Cape Town.

In 2006, in line with the national call by Thabo Mbeki, the city declared it would eradicate by 2007 the bucket system - a hated form of sanitation whereby members of individual households defecate and urinate into black buckets which are collected periodically. It is no surprise, but indeed laudable, that the city, has, for the most part, eradicated black buckets.
The statistics presented reflect this progress. However, they hide something worse, a communal bucket system. Twenty-five-litre black buckets have been replaced by 100-litre rectangular containers for five households. Instead of abluting in the privacy of your home, people must walk to a communal structure, which is often locked. If accessible, not only are the risks and indignities of the black bucket still there, but there are additional risks inherent to unsupervised and poorly maintained communal facilities.

Despite the fact that container toilets are a form of bucket toilet, this sanitation technology has become the city's preferred choice for informal settlements, mainly because it is the cheapest by far.

In 2001, approximately 50 000 people used 2 000 of these toilets; by last year, the figure was estimated at 200 000 people using 7 500 toilets. Because this particular sanitation technology is not nationally defined as a bucket toilet, the city appears to have met its obligations of bucket eradication.
In reality, however, it has simply substituted one kind of bucket for another.

Apart from the hidden realities behind the statistics, there are blatant inaccuracies in the city's official statistics. According to the city's Integrated Development Plan (IDP) 2009/2010 review, 97.5 percent of all households in Cape Town have access to sanitation. How can this be when, by the city's own figures (2008), about 50 000 informal settlement households (more than 5 percent of all Cape Town households) have no access to sanitation whatsoever and another 50 000 have access to inadequate sanitation?

Across the country, the dire state of the water and sanitation sector is exacerbated by systems that reward good performance. At a management level, members of staff are remunerated for meeting targets; at a status level, cities compete globally to attract investment and tourism; and at an international level, there is pressure for countries to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals. Without proper oversight and regulation, there are considerable incentives to fudge the realities. This negation of reality is an affront to the thousands of people who live in fear each time they have to go the toilet.

Cape Town claims that it does not have the internal capacity to provide sanitation to its informal settlements, and that contractors can do it more cheaply. In reality, the city is legally responsible for ensuring provision of basic sanitation but is unwilling or unable to regulate the contractors. It has effectively outsourced not just the service, but the problem. And when contractors cut corners or don't meet basic standards, the city expresses surprise and dismay, but not culpability: it sees this incompetence as a failure on the part of the private operators. But the failure and the responsibility lie with the city.

While quick to blame others, the city does not accept criticism of its own shortcomings. Take Makhaza as a recent example. If reports are to be believed, both the ANC Youth League and DA-run city have behaved appallingly, trying to score political points while those living in Makhaza struggle to hold on to what dignity they can. This is not unique to Makhaza, nor to Cape Town.

Polarisation of views and party politics continues to undermine effective service delivery across South Africa. However, the degree of denialism and blame meted out by the City of Cape Town, combined with its unwillingness to listen, lack of leadership and insistence on world-class status, is truly remarkable.

The question "who is to blame?" has deep roots and complex answers. It is not solved simply by who shouts the enemy's name loudest.
Behind this question lies a pertinent and constructive question: "Why are things like this?"

It points to causes and conditions, to history and humanity. It is an exploration that could be the beginning of finding the answers we are looking for. But this open exploration is not what is happening. Instead a scapegoat is sought. Blame has become the flip-side of denial, and is equally unhelpful in finding a way forward.

Straight talk is needed.

The way forward takes courage and integrity. It requires all stakeholders, and in particular the city, to acknowledge that there is a problem. It requires interrogation of the way in which those involved have engaged with the issue - through denial, blame, polarisation, politicisation - and seeing that these approaches are not working. By looking carefully, honestly, and without immediately assigning blame, an alternative approach emerges.

This Third Way encourages open honest debate and creates space to develop strategies based on people's goodwill, experience, skills, and recognises that the city, residents, technicians, and public interest groups have a contribution to make. This is exactly what The Water Dialogues, an international initiative operating in five countries, tried to do: it aimed to find a middle way within the then highly polarised and antagonistic positions on water privatisation. As a participating country, South Africa set up a working group comprised of committed and engaged individuals from the private sector, national and local government, civil society, trade unions and research institutions.

Original case study research and dialogue within the working group were key to moving past blame and denial into a space where the complexity and difficulties associated with service delivery could be looked at honestly, and a way forward developed. The strongest legacy of The Water Dialogues could be the courage to face the facts and in so doing, find a way to improve and extend water and sanitation services, particularly to poor and vulnerable people.

We need to meet and talk. Viable alternatives that offer some modicum of dignity to citizens in slums do exist. It will be a compounded tragedy if this is lost in the current party political bickering that disguises the real problems and challenges.

{Wilson and Goldberg are part of the Environmental Monitoring Group, Rudin is from the SA Municipal Workers' Union, and Galvin from umphilo waManzi}

Photo: Police stand behind burning barricades in Cape Town's Khayelitsha township during protests over service delivery which includes housing and sanitation, June 1, 2010. REUTERS/Mark Wessels

Story source: Cape Times (30/6/10)