Cape Town’s indigent residents cannot be expected to survive on water trickling out of a tap. Proposing yet another technological fix for the problem of poor infrastructure and historic inequality is racist, inhumane and disingenuous. It can neither advance a partnership between the city’s citizens and its leaders, nor improve the lives of most of its residents. Water needs to be dramatically redistributed if any systemic change is going to take place in this city.
Suraya Scheba is a lecturer in the department of environmental and geographical sciences at the University of Cape Town. Faeza Meyer is a member of the African Water Commons Collective. Koni Benson is a research fellow and organiser with the Blue Planet Project. Meera Karunananthan is the director of the Blue Planet Project. Vanessa Farr is a member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Academic Network. Lesley Green is director of Environmental Humanities South at the University of Cape Town.
The City of Cape Town seems to have finally realised — after 15 years of grassroots organising against the dreaded water management device (WMD) — that the system needs to go. However, the proposal merely offers fresh strategies in the form of…
