Informality and water justice: community perspectives on water issues in Cape Town’s low-income neighbourhoods

Abstract

Cape Town’s water injustices are entrenched by the mismatch between government interventions and the lived realities in many informal settlements and other low-income areas. This transdisciplinary study draws on over 300 stories from such communities, showing overwhelming frustration with the municipality’s inability to address leaking pipes, faulty bills and poor sanitation. Cape Town’s interventions typically rely on technical solutions that tend to ignore or even exacerbate the complex social problems on the ground. Water justice requires attention be paid to the range of everyday realities that exist in the spectrum from formal to informal settlements.