The Water Dialogues: Cape Town Case Study

Prepared by Karen Goldberg with research input from Water Dialogues research team members (Senza Kula, Mpumelelo Mhlalisi, Nombuyiselo Ngali, and Zikhona Ngesi)

23 June 2009

Executive Summary

The Water Dialogues is an international initiative that aims to bring the range of views and constituencies round the table to constructively review whether and how the private sector has a role in water supply and sanitation. This review has taken place via national processes that feed into an international process. South Africa is one of five participating countries that initiated such a review process, and is guided by a national multi-stakeholder group. Selected case studies are an essential component of this process.

The Cape Town Case Study, which emerged from research commissioned by the Municipal Services Project (MSP) coordinated by Queens University in Canada primarily aimed to understand whether and how the choice to outsource sanitation service delivery in its informal settlements affected the quality of service delivery (including user satisfaction, and the financial and resource management) within the City of Cape Town.

South Africa upholds the access to water and sanitation as basic human rights and sets certain standards for what constitutes basic sanitation1. In most parts of the country, Ventilated Pit Latrines (VIPs) meet the standard of a basic sanitation facility. However, due to the high water tables in Cape Town, VIPs are not used in the City. Instead, a host of different sanitation technologies and services are employed, including the unsuitable "bucket system", (traditionally a 20 - 25litre black bucket distributed to households and historically serviced by municipal workers). The case study thus investigated four types of sanitation technologies that have been outsourced to small private contractors. They are all variations on the "bucket toilet". They are the black bucket, container toilets, chemical toilets and Porta-Potti's.

This case study consists of a desktop study (using both published and grey literature), and key stakeholder interviews and community research conducted between August 2008 and May 2009. Community research was conducted at five sites in the form of door-to-door household interviews. Four sites were selected because of the prevalence of one of the types of bucket sanitation technologies that were being serviced by private contractors. A fifth site was selected to investigate the quality of services currently provided internally by the council workers themselves, in order to provide a basis for comparison between internal and outsourced service provision. At each site sixteen households were randomly selected and interviewed.

According to the research, approximately 128,000 households out of the City's 884,000 households (i.e. 14.5%) live in informal settlements. Of these, approximately 37% do not have access to any sanitation system at all. Of those households that do have access, 68% are supplied with one of the four types of bucket sanitation technology, with container toilets supplying two-thirds of these households. The quality of service delivery differs significantly, with high user satisfaction for Porta-Potti's, and very poor service quality for container and bucket toilets. In the latter cases, raw sewage spillage occurs frequently, and smells, flies and maggots were cited as common issues. Contractors are also clearly not servicing the toilets as specified in the contracts. There was no noticeable difference in the quality of service delivery between the private contractors and municipal workers. Overall, the servicing of container and bucket toilets falls far short of the standards required. Thus more than 100,000 households in informal settlements do not yet have access to basic sanitation. This figure is not reported in any of the official reports; only absolute sanitation backlogs are generally reported. It is clear from the research, that the data available is not being properly interrogated. This is leading to misreporting which has significant implications for planning.

In terms of monitoring and regulation, the City of Cape Town seems to have fallen far short of its responsibilities. While in recent years, more detailed contracts have been put in place, the officials in charge of contract management are not ensuring that service providers are adhering to their contracts, even going so far as to say that the contracts are just guidelines that cannot be enforced. Thus, particularly in the case of the container toilet company, significant contraventions are occurring, of which municipal officials are aware, which the City appears to be doing nothing about. The only "regulation" that currently appears to be occurring is through reporting mechanisms, which is grossly insufficient and open to abuse.

This case study indicates that the current approaches to community consultation or engagement are simply not adequate. It seems like consulting with community leaders is deemed sufficient in terms of community consultation by the City and private contractors.

Little, if any in-depth community engagement has occurred relating to the decisions regarding sanitation service delivery.

One of the most striking findings of this research is the apparent lack of strategic planning or vision regarding emergency and basic sanitation service delivery to informal settlements.

Where planning does occur, it is done in an uncoordinated, non-consultative manner, resulting in plans that are often unrealistic or are simply not adopted. Further, there is no evidence of a strategic plan to move from inadequate to basic sanitation services in informal settlements. Second generation backlogs are thus being created. This has major cost implications in the longer term.

The lack of strategic planning and regulation of private contractors by the City of Cape Town has resulted in a haphazard, ad hoc approach to sanitation service delivery, human rights violations and legislative contraventions. The lack of planning and regulation can at least be partly attributed to the following factors. The first is the general perception by the City that informal settlements are temporary, and therefore not worthy of long-term investment or high priority either in terms of planning or resources. The very fact that the Informal Settlements Section has been set up to provide "essential" or emergency" services (as opposed to basic services) highlights this mind-set and indicates a short-sightedness in delivering services of acceptable quality in the long-term. A second contributing factor seems to have been the political instability within communities, especially within informal settlements since 1994.

With the City struggling to gain safe access to the informal settlements in the mid-90s, they decided to outsource these services, without apparent consideration to how they would be able to regulate the work of the service providers. Linked to this has been the internal political instability that has racked the City for more than a decade resulting in constant institutional flux and restructuring, which has severely impeded the City's ability to plan strategically and provide services. It has also almost certainly contributed to tensions between different departments within the City, which in turn affects strategic planning and service provision. And finally, the City effectively seems to be a law unto itself: it does not appear to be taking its role as regulator seriously. As a result, a number of legal and human rights contraventions are occurring that are either going undetected by higher levels of government, or the consequences thereof are not enforced. There is thus no real accountability by the City to the broader public nor any incentive for them to ensure that service provision to informal settlements (including planning and regulation) is occurring as it should.

It seems that outsourcing per se does not necessarily impact on quality of service. It does, however, impact on the workers of private companies, through casualization of labour and thus limited or no benefits or protection through unions, as well as poorer labour conditions.

In addition, outsourcing of informal sanitation services is more likely to result in reduced accountability on the part of the municipality, as has occurred within the City of Cape Town.

Furthermore, outsourcing clearly diminishes internal capacity to provide the services. Thus, the issue is more about how outsourcing is managed and the degree to which the service providers are regulated. Outsourcing necessitates the investment in effective regulatory powers. It is also important to bear in mind that, apart from the potential costs and benefits of outsourcing, in some communities outsourcing is not an acceptable option.

Footnote:

1. According to the Strategic Framework for Water Services (2003), two definitions relate to basic sanitation, as follows: Basic sanitation facility: "The infrastructure necessary to provide a sanitation service which is safe, reliable, private, protected from the weather, ventilated, keeps smells to the minimum, is easy to keep clean, minimizes the risk of the spread of sanitation-related diseases by facilitating the appropriate control of disease carrying flies and pests, and enables safe and appropriate treatment and/or removal of human waste and wastewater in an environmentally sound manner;

Basic sanitation service: "The provision of a basic sanitation facility which is easily accessible to a household, the sustainable operation of the facility, including the safe removal of human waste and wastewater from the premises where this is appropriate and necessary, and the communication of good sanitation, hygiene and related practices

The full text of the Water Dialogues report can be accessed here.

Source: http://www.waterdialogues.org/

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