S*** gets real.

Last week the Crown season four stormed Netflix with 29 million viewers. Besides the turbulent romance between Prince Charles and Diana, Thatcher's refusal to impose economic sanctions on South Africa's apartheid regime in 1986 was aired. It got me thinking about the severe effects the 60- year apartheid had on the marginalised South African population and the services provided to them. 

For instance, Enqvist and Zierhogel (2019:4) write that "during the oppression, black and mixed race communities were removed to the urban fringe, known as townships which lacked infrastructure and basic amenities" such as wastewater pipes. The removal was linked to sanitation discourses known as the 'sanitation syndrome,' (Swanson 1977) as racial stereotypes of bad hygiene were said to threaten public health. 

What did this cause?

The land policy has caused long lasting urban segregation as the townships still exist today with an estimated 500,000 living in informal settlements who experience inadequate services. Less than 2% of the city's water and sanitation budget is spent on the informal settlements, compared to the high maintenance costs in more affluent areas (McFarlane 2017).  Khayelitsha, a township located in the Cape Flats houses one of the world's five biggest informal settlements, where per 20,000 people, there are 380 communal portaloos, shown below. The conditions comprise privacy and are often unhygienic and unsafe for women. 

Moreover, when I think of portaloos, I think building site- a provisional use. What do you think of- certainly not citizenship?!

Figure 1, portaloos in Khayelitsha, next to a stream exposed to leaking effluent. (Source: Reuters).

 

The article by McFarlane and Silver (2017) on "poolitical city",  meaning a politics concerned with sanitation depicts an intriguing movement this has led to. In Cape Town, 2011, Ayanda Kota dumped a bucket of human waste in a government building in Grahamstown in protest of the poor service delivery in the townships and the overflowing portaloos. He was angered that disposal of waste was a private shame rather than a government infrastructural matter. This led to the 'poo wars' as people joined and targeted the centre of the city's political, cultural and economic powers - the airport and steps of provincial parliament (figure 2). 

Historically, there have been many obstacles against the topic of private matters entering the public domain, however, events such as this are expanding the ongoing politicisation and mobilisation of the discussion of human waste. 

Figure 2, poo protestors. Source eNCA

McFarlane and Silver (2017) suggest that analysing a states provision of sanitation can act as a lens to understand the relations between state and people. Here we can see it is a deeply historical process of racialised segregation that can be traced back to colonial settlements ( Fanon 1967 cited in Staples 1976). Therefore, papers such as Iossifova (2020) are pre-eminent in discussing a unified approach to sanitation is needed which accounts culture, identity, representation and economical and ecological processes. 

Summary

A lack of sanitation facilities has shown to perpetuate unequal citizenship and social segregation. The flow of poo in a city exposes racial geographies and sociospatial trajectories. Therefore, urban planning means recognising the racialised geographies in a city and communicating with locals to move forward.