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Amplifying Apartheid ywp15 conference kuala lumpur
1. The 2nd IWA Malaysia Young
Water Professionals Conference
Vivatel Kuala Lumpur
17 - 20 MARCH 2015
2. Amplifying Apartheid:
Access to the City of Cape Town’s
Water and Sanitation Fault Reporting
System
Wesley Hill & Ulrike Rivett
17 MARCH 2015
3. 3
STATE OF WATER & SANITATION
• Constitutional right to clean drinking water.
• Inequality of access between rich and poor areas.
• 176 service delivery protests in 2014.
• Service faults can be reported cheaply via SMS.
5. 5
DEMOGRAPHICS
Imizamo Yethu
Population Age 65+
- 0.6%
Population With
Disability
- 3.8% (Provincial total)
Eastern Cape
Population Age 65+
- 6.7%
Population With
Disability
- 5.8%
9. 9
METHODS
• 168 Interviews
• Randomized With Replacement Sampling
Technique
• Obtained Data on…
- Socio-Cultural traits
- Use of mobile technology
- Access to water & sanitation
• Results Analyzed using Chi-Square
10. 10
TRAVEL TIME TO ACCESSIBLE TOILET
- General Population 10 mins.
- Population with Disabilities 14 mins.
- Population with Poor Health 15 mins.
- Elderly Population 20 mins.
FREQUENCY OF TOILET CLEANING
- General Population 25 days
- Population with Disabilities 28 days
- Population with Poor Health 35 days
13. 13
CONCLUSIONS
- Access to information and communication technology is
highly unequal, therefore it is a poor fit for combating
unequal access to water and sanitation services.
RECOMMENDATIONS
- Enforcement of disability laws would improve equality of
access.
- Develop remote sensing systems to reduce the
dependence on user generated fault reports.
- Integrate data collection with the distribution of
government grants.
14.
15. 15
STEPS TO REDUCE CONSTRUCTION
COSTS
• Prioritize universal accessibility from the start of a projects
• Focus on a few key features.
- Ramps
- Wide doorways
- Enlarged toilet cubicles
- Avoid hazards to visually impaired people
17. 17
GLOBAL RELEVANCE OF RESEARCH
- 66% of the global population will live in cities by 2050.
- 90% of the urban growth will take place in Africa and Asia.
- One-fifth of the world's population lives in water scarce
environments.
- Another 1.6 billion people face economic water shortage.
- 7 billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide.
- Three-quarters of global mobile phone subscriptions are in
developing countries.
Editor's Notes
Thank you all for coming to this presentation. Amplifying Apartheid is the culmination of nearly two years of research in Cape Town, and highlights some of the difficulties facing South African municipalities in undoing inequality caused by apartheid.
During today’s presentation, I am going to briefly explain South Africa’s influx control laws which were in place during apartheid, and how despite efforts to undo their effects, they still shape access to essential services in Cape Town’s informal settlements today.
I will then provide an overview of the City of Cape Town’s water and sanitation fault reporting system, and explain how it may actually encourage unequal access to these services.
I will proceed by describing our research methods and study site, before explaining our results.
I will wrap up the presentation with a few suggestions on how municipalities can reduce service delivery inequalities.
The state of Water and Sanitation services in Cape Town are characterized by extreme inequality. Despite a constitution that guarantees all South Africans access to basic essential services, predominately white, middle and upper class parts of the city enjoy access to world-class services, while poor black African townships make due with overburdened and poorly maintained infrastructure. The root cause of these disparities lies in apartheid policies that segregated the population based on race and prioritized the well being of white South Africans over all others.
The responsibility of undoing these structural inequalities largely falls to municipal governments. However, municipalities often struggle to met these demands, and in the past few years, destructive protests, spurred by resentment over service delivery failures, have become alarmingly common. According to a report by the University of the Free State, South Africa experienced 176 major service delivery protests in 2014, up from just 11-recorded protests in 2004.
The City of Cape Town is aware of the urgent need to address these issues, and has made efforts to ease the reporting of service delivery problems. One such effort was the establishments of an SMS based fault-reporting system that allows people to cheaply and quickly communicate issues to government. However, introducing information and communication technologies, such as SMS, into a system will not change its outcomes, but will simply act to amplify whatever intents and capacities are already present.
Therefore we undertook this study to examine whether marginalized populations can advocate for improvements using the city’s SMS based system. Because, if these populations are unable to communicate their needs, than it is likely that the system is contributing to the problem it attempts to solve.
I’ve pulled up this map to help explain the nature of segregation and environmental inequality in South Africa. In this map we are shown what were known as Native Reserves, Homelands, or Bantustans during the apartheid era. The Orange and Yellow areas in the South are Transkei and Ciskei, the green area in the far north is Venda, the teal area in the East is KwaZulu, so on and so forth. One of the hallmarks of the time was influx control laws, which consigned black Africans to these areas. Though the majority of the population at the time was required to live in native reserves, they only accounted for about 13% of the country’s landmass.
As it were, they lacked enough natural resources or industry to support their populations. Thus, it was common for people to temporarily migrate to so-called ‘white areas’ such as Cape Town and Johannesburg to find work. The apartheid authorities generally allowed this, so long as the migrant was able to secure legal employment. Even then, however, black South Africans were forced to live in under resourced townships located on the edge of cities to prevent them from mixing with the white population. Since black people were not allowed to live permanently in white areas, they were obliged to return to the native reserves when their employment ended.
This type of movement is known as circular migration, and it was assumed that after influx controls were abolished in the late 1980s that black families would settle together in places that offered employment opportunities.
However nearly 30 years have passed since the abolition of influx controls, yet circular migration still characterizes settlement in Cape Town today. One explanation as to why families are not settling together is that the built environment of the townships, which was inherited from the apartheid state, was not designed to support permanent settlement, rather they were designed only for those physically fit enough to participate in the workforce. Since families are made up of multiple generations, and often have physically challenged members, essential services need to be accessible to these populations, as well, in order for families to settle together.
SLIDE 4
Because residency in Cape Town was dependent on employment, we undertook this study to examine the barriers that the physically challenged, the elderly, and the infirm, face in accessing water and sanitation services, as well as their ability to communicate problems to municipal authorities. These populations are significant to consider because they are unlikely to be employed, and therefore would not have been welcome in Cape Town during apartheid.
It’s worth nothing that even today, the city’s predominantly black African townships have relatively few elderly people or people with disabilities compared to the Eastern Cape Province where most township residents originate. For instance, in our study site, Imizamo Yethu. Less than 1% of the population is age 65 or older, compared to nearly 7% in the Eastern Cape. While we don’t have township specific data on the prevalence of disability, The Western Cape Province, which is where Cape Town is located, also has a much smaller disabled population than the Eastern Cape. This is likely a result of Cape Town’s environment not supporting these populations’ needs.
SLIDE 6
To help illustrate the continued prominence of circular migration, I put together this chart that shows the percentage of residents aged 65 or older in every predominately black African township in Cape Town as well as every municipality in the Eastern Cape. I know it may be a bit hard to read, but if you count two lines in from the left, that is the 4% mark. Every bar that ends to the left of that line represents a township in Cape Town, while every bar to the right is an Eastern Cape municipality. This means that people aged 65 or older make up less than 4% of the population in every township in Cape Town, while every Eastern Cape municipality has over 4%, with about a quarter of them having between 8% - 12% of the population falling into this age bracket. As you can see the Eastern Cape has a much higher percentage of elderly, but Imizamo Yethu, has a considerably larger percentage of working age adults, indicating that people are living in Cape Town only in their prime years, thus perpetuating influx controls despite them being repealed for nearly 3 decades.
As I have already mentioned, Our field work took place in the township of Imizamo Yethu, which is located in the suburb of Hout Bay, about 20 km south of the Cape Town CBD. Though the township is located a considerable distance from the central city, it is still administered by the City of Cape Town municipality.
The population density of the settlement is extremely high, as it is tightly contained on three sides by upper and upper-middle class neighborhoods, and on one side by Table Mountain National Park. The contrasts between Imizamo Yethu and its surrounding area are quite stark, as you can see from the photo above, shack dwelling residents of the township have a amazing view of the large homes and grassy lawns across the valley. A defining characteristic of Imizamo Yethu is its location on a steep mountainside. The terrain becomes steeper, and housing more informal, as one travels up the slope. And water and sanitation infrastructure generally declines as one moves higher up the mountain.
Xhosa speaking people from the Eastern Cape form the bulk of the population, but there is a large minority made up of people from across the African continent and even as far away as China (Tokwe 2014). Since it’s founding, Imizamo Yethu has experienced rapid population growth that has outpaced the development of infrastructure and houses. In 1991 there were only 450 families living in the township, but since then the population has grown substantially, with some estimates putting the current population as high as 60,000. Due to overcrowding, most public toilets are in various states of disrepair and some have become unsanitary to the point that they were no longer usable.
The questionnaire used in the survey allowed us to collect information on social and cultural factors, such as: age, sex, place of birth, and family size; as well as the quality of water and sanitation facilities; and the use of mobile phones. This allowed us to do a simple Chi Square analysis to identify where correlations exist between sociocultural traits and access to water and sanitation facilities, as well as between sociocultural traits and mobile phone use. Having this knowledge allowed us to see if segments of the population who experienced comparatively marginal access to services had the ability to advocate for improvements using the City of Cape Town’s SMS based reporting system,
We carried out one hundred sixty-eight surveys, over the course of 3 days with the help of local translators who speak Xhosa. In an attempt to ensure our sample was evenly spread throughout the township we did our best to count 15 houses between those where we conducted interviews. The township is largely made up of informal housing without defined paths between the shacks; therefore it was not always easy to keep track of our location. To make sure we weren’t conducting all of our interviews in one small area, we carried aerial maps and marked off the location of each place we conducted a survey.
Not surprisingly, the results indicated that mobility challenged respondents make due with comparatively low quality water and sanitation facilities. Among those respondents who were dependent on public toilets, the elderly, people with disabilities and those with poor health spent significantly more time traveling from their home to access facilities than the general population. On Average It takes respondents aged 50 or over close to 20 minutes to get to an accessible toilet, whereas respondents aged between 25 and 40 can typically get to a toilet in about 10 minutes. A similar trend can be seen among physically challenged and infirm respondents, who were traveling between 14 and 15 minutes.
In addition to spending more time traveling, people with disabilities and the infirm, are also using toilets that are cleaned less frequently than those used by respondents without health or mobility issues. respondents with disabilities claimed the toilets they use are cleaned, on average, every twenty-eight days and those with poor health claimed their toilets are cleaned only every thirty-five days; this is compared to those without any health or mobility issues who claim their toilets are cleaned on average every twenty-five days.
The disparities we found could be due to most toilets being inaccessible to mobility challenged individuals, so therefore they must travel further to find a toilet that supports their abilities. I’ve pulled up this photo to give an example of a public toilets that may be difficult to access. This photo shows portable toilets that were brought in by the City of Cape Town to alleviate overcrowding of the toilet blocks, but they were placed in such a way that you literally have to climb over boulders to get to the door.
As I’ve explained, in Imizamo Yethu, people with disabilities and the elderly make up a relatively small portion of the population. It is likely that the built environment of the township prevents a large mobility challenged population from developing. Evidence of this can be seen in studies that have shown that mobility problems in older adults leads to a reduced willingness to encounter environmental challenges, such as; climbing stairs, crossing busy streets, and stepping over curbs. Access to public toilets in the township, often involves squeezing through narrow passageways, climbing un-paved paths, and crossing pools of mud and water, while the toilets themselves lack any sort of railing or other assistive devices that might be needed for the physically challenged. It can be assumed that if people with mobility issues avoid stairs and curbs, they would probably avoid (or simply not be able to access) most public water and sanitation facilities in the township. This echoes research examining environmental barriers in South Africa, which found that disabled people living in Cape Town’s informal settlements faced significantly more barriers to accessing services and infrastructure, than their rural Eastern Cape counterparts.
The difficulty these populations face in accessing essential services may explain why circular migration continues to be so common. Unfortunately, as long as the environment in the townships continues to be inaccessible, only the young and healthy will be able to settle in Cape Town. In fact, studies have shown that South African migrants, who leave home in search of work, typically return to rural areas if they become seriously ill or otherwise physically handicapped.
Because people with mobility challenges find it difficult, if not impossible to access many public facilities, it is all the more critical that the ones they can use are properly maintained. However, our analysis indicates that these populations have limited opportunities to report problems to authorities, as their technological capacity is comparatively low. Our results indicate that there is a sharp decline after age 40 in the use of SMS communications.
Lower rates of SMS use also appear to be associated with poor health. Only about 30% of respondents who claimed to have serious health problems used SMS, compared to nearly 70% of those who claimed to have good health. The same pattern is seen among physically challenged respondents, with just about 30% of respondents with disabilities using SMS, compared to 70% of those without disabilities.
Because everyone gets older and our health and mobility decline over time, it is imperative that governments ensure essential services are universally accessible. Unfortunately by depending on user generated fault reports, or at least those that necessitate the use of SMS, the city is likely reinforcing the marginalization of these populations
Perhaps the greatest step the City of Cape Town could take to fight this inequality would be to strictly enforce accessibility laws, and ensure public facilities are built to appropriate standards. South Africa has progressive laws protecting the rights of those with disabilities. Unfortunately these laws are rarely enforced. However, The City of Cape Town is currently attempting in-situ upgrading of informal settlements, which provides a golden opportunity to design environments that are accessible to all. Furthermore, many civil servants and people with disabilities are unfamiliar with national housing policies specific to physically challenged populations. For instance, while the general population must either have children or be in a legally recognized relationship to benefit from public housing programs, people with disabilities are exempted from these requirements, furthermore they are entitled to additional grant money to retrofit their homes to support their needs. Educating civil servants about these provisions could go a long way in building equitable environments.
While enforcing building codes would offer an immediate improvement, the city would still need to collect data to ensure these facilities are maintained. Remote sensing technology has shown some promise in monitoring water systems, and perhaps could be used to fill some of Cape Town’s data collection gaps (Panchard, et al. 2006; Chaudhri, et al. 2012). The application of this technology could potentially lessen service providers’ dependence on user generated fault reports, reducing disparities caused by unequal technological capacity between various social groups.
Unfortunately, due to the cost and expertise needed to develop, install, and maintain a network of remote sensors, it is likely not feasible as an immediate solution. A more immediate option would be to integrate data collection with the distribution of disability and pension grants, as the majority of these populations receive some form of government assistance. A worthy topic of research would be to identify areas where the South African Social Security Agency, known as SASSA, could act as an intermediary between mobility challenged populations and municipal governments.
In its current form, E-Governance in the water and sanitation sector is unlikely to mitigate systemic inequalities caused by apartheid since Information and Communication Technologies can merely enhance the intents and capacities present within a system, and the intent of the apartheid system was to ensure a constant supply of cheap labour, while preventing permanent black settlement in white areas.
The built environment of Cape Town’s townships still encourages settlement only by those physically well off. Furthermore, those who are not physically fit, in addition to facing barriers to accessing water and sanitation services, also face barriers to using mobile technology. Therefore, introducing e-governance into the system is not going to be enough to correct the inequalities built into it. Meaningful change will depend on strict enforcement of existing regulations, and eventually moving past a dependence on user generated fault reports. That concludes today’s presentation, thank you for being such a great audience. I will now open the floor to questions.
