Water under the bridge?
A CELEBRATION of mediocrity – or water under the bridge? What do awards mean? There are Nobel peace laureates like our Archbishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, the latter denied a South African visa for the third time in five years, scorned by the ANC government as the apartheid masters are replaced by the followers of Chairman Mao Tse-tung).
Then there are awards like Durban being judged “Africa’s best managed city” (1998), and the ZK Matthews Achievement Award 2000 for good governance in terms of “finance, direction and style”.
In contrast, the 7 000 pages of the Manase Report on corruption and mis-management in Durban tells another story.
Durban received yet another dubious accolade when its Water and Sanitation Department was decorated with a 2014 Stockholm Industry Water Award for “its transformative and inclusive approach to providing water and sanitation services”.
The irony is that in recent years the media have reported regularly about sewerage flowing freely in rivers around Durban, which subsequently led to the city’s beaches losing their coveted ‘blue flag’ status.
And former and current city managers deny any culpability. More significantly, will the hundreds of thousands of black people living in informal settlements in Durban endorse this award?
According to Professor Patrick Bond, “there are still 9 270 bucket latrines in Durban, along with 148 688 unventilated pit latrines and 41 880 chemical toilets”.
In 2008 Neil Macleod (former head of Water and Sanitation) conceded that about 200 000 families did not have access to basic sanitation in Durban.
Geographically, these areas of water and sanitation deprivation coincide with black squatter settlements, a form of neo-apartheid. Oxford scholar Alex Loftus contended that in 2003, one thousand families in Durban were “disconnected from full, highpressure water”.
Several recent studies have suggested that the sanitation crisis is a growing pandemic in Durban and is exacerbated by increasing poverty, lack of political will, poor institutional response, corruption, misallocation of financial resources, and violation of the rights of the poor, especially African women in areas such as Inanda.
Inadequate sanitation facilities expose communities to the hazards of crime, disease, indignity, perpetuation of poverty and discrimination, as well as a perception that, 20 years into the democratic era, government has failed the people, as most households in Inanda still do not have their own toilets. They remain forgotten, ‘second class’
Disgracefully, women in Inanda were found to suffer a triple burden because of inadequate sanitation facilities. They were more susceptible to disease when defecating in the open. They suffered loss of opportunity to engage in income-generating activities because of the burden of maintaining toilet facilities (as well as assisting the aged, infirm and children), and the risk of crime when accessing shared facilities far from their dwellings. They were also deprived of educational benefits, as absenteeism at schools was high among girls due to the lack of toilets.
In Inanda it was evident that poor sanitation caused several illnesses which afflicted children and the aged. Diarrhoea- related illness and rashes caused by faecal contamination were rife in the area. The poor felt helpless in the light of limited access to water in by households, where sanitary practices such as bathing and frequent handwashing were considered a luxury.
Shared facilities were deemed inadequate, and the lack of facilities forced residents to resort to primitive methods of defecating in the open or in plastic bags and buckets.
Their human rights were being violated and their dignity compromised through lack of access to adequate sanitation. All they had access to was inadequate, interrupted, unclean water supplies and smelly, insectinfested toilets, with overflowing pits.
In Inanda, communities battled with poor quality sanitation infrastructure provided by the municipality which took the form of ventilated improved pit (VIP) latrines. Toilet-top structures broke in inclement weather or due to poor quality building materials. Communities were unable to repair them due to the replacement cost
They had to contend with limited or no access, reverting to open defecation. Poor design and quality of the pit resulted in seepage and environmental contamination. Pits filled at a faster rate due to the sharing of facilities by three or more families.
The Constitution (Act 108 of 1996) of South Africa recognised the inter-dependent and intertwined nature of basic human rights, including water and sanitation
The lack of water and sanitation in many parts of Durban and beyond is a violation of the human rights of the poor.
In SA service delivery failures are covered-up by socalled prestigious awards. In other words, these are a celebration of mediocrity – or water under the bridge!