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South Africa: The Struggle for Water, The Struggle for Life

by Prishani Naidoo, Research & Education in Development

Orange Farm is a township just 45km south of Johannesburg, home to approximately 500 000 people.  Beginning as an informal settlement in 1987, when people began squatting on vacant farmland due to the housing crisis and political violence in Gauteng, Orange Farm was declared a township in September 1997, with the promise of improved infrastructure development and service delivery for a population recognised to be amongst the ‘poorest of the poor’.  Despite such promises, accompanied by talk of ‘indigent policies’ to exempt the ‘poorest of the poor’ from payment for services delivered, the people of Orange Farm have had to fight for the inadequate services that some of them today enjoy at a cost, and continue to fight for decent and affordable housing, adequate water and sanitation, and electricity.  Women, forming a large part of the Orange Farm community, have played a central role in these struggles.

Water has been an important area in which women have come together to demand their right to a freely and naturally available resource necessary for the meeting of the basic needs of all human beings.   While people originally only had access to communal taps in the streets, most households have now paid for the installation of taps in their individual yards.   A minority has taps in their homes.  There are still some areas in Orange Farm that have no regular water supply.  In these areas, trucks come in with water, which residents collect.  People in these areas complain that the water delivered is not clean and unhealthy.  Poor sanitation is also a major problem in Orange Farm.  The majority of households do not have flush toilets, but use pit latrines, which are not regularly cleaned, and incur a substantial cost as local officials generally require bribes to co-operate.  For those with access to running water, cut-offs are a regular occurrence, with the local council claiming that non-payment of bills leads to cut-offs and that residents should settle their problems with the private company providing water to Orange Farm.  This private company is Johannesburg Water Company (JOWCO), owned by the local council.  In April 2001, JOWCO entered into a water management consortium, in which Suez Lyonnaise is a major partner.  

In 2002, Johannesburg Water came into one extension in Orange Farm, promising residents that it would be providing proper sewerage and sanitation systems in the area and for every household that paid R500 in what they called a ‘pilot’ project.   For their R500s, residents were provided with pre-paid water metres.   The pilot was a start of the installation of pre-paid water metres in Johannesburg.  In Orange Farm, residents, mainly women, came out into the streets in mass meetings and a massive campaign against JOWCO, and the Orange Farm Water Crisis Committee (OWCC) was born.  Residents gave meaning to the graffiti sprayed all over Orange Farm, ‘Break the metre. Enjoy the water!’, and JOWCO retreated only to re-surface in Phiri, Soweto and other parts of Orange Farm in September 2003.  Women have again come together as neighbours, friends and members of organisations in Orange Farm and Soweto to physically prevent the installation of pre-paid metres and to demand an end to the commodification of life.  Mainly unemployed, a large number of single parents, breadwinners responsible for large numbers of dependents, dependent on an ever-diminishing social welfare system, women in these areas have come together in projects, in organisations and in neighbourhood groups to demand that the state live up to its role of providing basic services, health, welfare and education.  While both men and women in Orange Farm have been adversely affected by the government’s embrace of neo-liberalism, women have, through their traditional roles in the home, workplace and society generally, had to bear additional problems as a result of their role as ‘nurturers’ and providers for the needs of the family and home.  It is probably this need to provide for the most basic survival needs of people that has led women to adopt some of the most radical tactics in preventing what is sure to become the regulation of the use of natural resources by the individual’s ability to pay.  Women in these areas speak of fears of cholera outbreaks as happened in Alexandra and KwaZulu Natal in 2000 and 2001, when the introduction of higher user fees for water led to people consuming contaminated water, resulting in over 250 deaths.  They also fear that care of the sick (many HIV positive) and elderly will be compromised and that their households of more than six, will not be able to survive on the free 6kl of water provided by JOWCO.  What will they do when they have no money to re-fill their cards for water?  Children will go dirty and hungry, the sick will deteriorate, employment projects will close, and women will not be able to meet their traditional roles as providers and nurturers of life.

The struggles of women in Phiri and Orange Farm are today coming together and being supported in partnerships and coalitions with organisations like the OWCC, the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC), and the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), which are speaking and acting out against the commodification of water, the commodification of life. 

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