Urban Poolitics - Cape Town

Welcome back! After touching on WASH infrastructure inequalities as a result of colonial legacies, in this week's post I hope to contextualise this in present-day Cape Town through exploring the struggles and rebellions of its urban population. 

Who gives a shit? 

For European political theorists such as Arendt, the private domain of the household and everything that takes place within it were not considered political matters of concern. However, in 2013, the BBC published an article on what was referred to as the "poo wars", where citizens of Cape Town protested over the lack of proper sanitation in their urban residences (figure 1). Actively rejecting the current portaloos and current methods of sanitation and disposal, residents pushed for their want of modern flush toilets - just like the ones middle-class people all have. 

Figure 1: BBC news article. Source: BBC News

Some 500,000 residents of Cape Town experience inadequate services, and members of the community took to using actual excrement to articulate their discontent. They hurled faeces at opposition leader Helen Zille, on the N2 highway (figure 2), and the Cape Town International Airport departures terminal. 

Figure 2: Cape Town residents throwing excrement onto cars on the N2 highway. Source: Humanosphere

Important to question though: should the BBC be naming the protests "The poo wars?" Though it does draw attention to the protests, does the title poke fun at people simply demanding basic living conditions?

It is not difficult to make the connection between British colonialism and its lasting effects to South African apartheid and poverty (as we will discuss). Is there some need to hold the BBC (of all news outlets) to a higher standard of sensitivity when discussing a direct consequence of their own country's failures? 

There might not be a simply answer. However, it's definitely something that I thought clearly highlights the perceived superiority of the West, broadcasted even through common media. 

The history and meaning behind the protests

Apartheid South Africa used sanitary and hygiene laws as an excuse to displace non-white citizens from middle-class city centres and suburbs to the peripheries. Racially motivated but masked in scientific language, "sanitising allowed administrators to fully segregate entire cities".

This was followed by the implementation of piped infrastructure in the white city centres alone, leaving the black population on the outskirts of sanitation infrastructure and political involvement. Thus, protestors moving poo from the urban periphery to the centres of power not only represents discontent with service delivery in post-apartheid South Africa, but also them moving their agency from the outskirts to the public domain.  

In my next blog post, I will be discussing some potential methods of sanitation that have been specifically engineered for urban dwellers.