Toilet Wars

As the weeks have passed in writing this blog, my initial omission of sanitation became too blinding to ignore. However, upon reflection of how "water is life, but sanitation is dignity" (Thieme, 2018), I've decided to explore the 'poolitics' of sanitation in Cape Town and attempt to 'examine the unmentionable' (George, 2008).

Within Cape Town, approximately 500,000 citizens experience insufficient sanitary services. This is partly attributed to colonial social stratification which forced Africans to the peripheries with minimal infrastructural investment (Laporte, 2000). Furthermore, rapid urbanisation has caused demand for municipality services to exceed supply (Enqvist and Ziervogel, 2019). Consequentially, citizens are forced to inhabit lower rungs of the 'sanitation ladder'. As seen in figure 1, open defecation is common. 

Figure 1: A child defecates along a motorway (Masixole Feni, 2016) 

Recent sanitation policies such as the eThekwini Water's Urine-Diversion toilets have been largely ineffective due them being situated on hilltops away from residential areas they serve (figure 2) (Bond, 2019). Moreover, female users and young children found funneling their urine into the required hole difficult in practice. Policies only catering for certain users suggests a lack of state visibility regarding sanitation across gendered and age-based characteristics.    

 

Figure2: Urive Diversion toilet (E. Muench via Flickr)

The ‘Toilet wars’ were a direct result of the infringement on sanitation-based human rights (Robins, 2014). During 2010, in Khayelitsha, 51 toilets were destroyed by the ANCYL. They reasoned as the toilets were insufficiently enclosed and located in a public space (re figure 3), their use was undignified (Ntliziywana and Ayele, 2010). This inverted spatiality of what should be private prohibited a fundamental requirement for inclusion in civil society. The ANCYL’s destruction of these toilets can therefore be seen as a claim to citizenship (Jackson and Robbins, 2018). This was a public challenge to the DA’s transfer of responsibility of producing sufficient enclosures and sanitation infrastructure onto the user. Here, the toilet symbolizes the failure of the state. 

Figure 3: Open toilet within informal settlement (Ella Smook)

In contrast, affluent areas are more embedded within the city’s sanitation network where flushing toilets allow users to 'flush and forget' (Penner, 2010). This difference in user responsibility became formalised when the eThekwini Water stated that sewage networks wouldn’t be extended to the peripheries due to economic restraints (Sutherland et al, 2014). The explicit division between servicing of core and peripheral areas reflects the inequity of access along these spatial and socio-economic boundaries (Jewitt, 2011). 

In other protests, protestors led by the ANC smeared the entrance to the provincial parliament with faeces (figure 4). Sanitation activism has a common theme of imposing the inhumane realities of those on the peripheries onto those in the ‘clean’ privileged centre. In doing so, they force policymakers to recognise and address the lived sanitary realities of those invisible to the state (McFarlane and Silver 2016). Sanitation therefore becomes an arena for representation, where marginalised groups can make claims for human rights.

Figure 4: Human waste being dumped on Western Cape's municipal 

building (CatalystJourn)

Alternatively, the SJC engage in ‘mobilisation from below’, implementing digital mapping, and enumeration to improve sanitation legibility for more effective lobbying (Overy 2013). 

Given urbanization and population expansion's projected growth, the Toilet wars are here to stay. As opposed to criminalizing activists, policymakers must look towards creating policies to prevent further materialisation of sanitation inequality.