Memorandum on Access to Clean and Safe Sanitation Services in the City of Cape Town

Memorandum on Access to Clean and Safe Sanitation Services in the City of Cape Town

To be delivered to Cape Town Mayor, Dan Plato on 27 April 2011

Issued by The Social Justice Coalition

As activists, health professionals, technicians, researchers, lawyers and other individuals and organisations concerned about the adverse consequences of inadequate and poorly maintained sanitation services, we hereby commit to working with local government to ensure that every person living in the City of Cape Town has their right to Basic Sanitation realised.

On a daily basis, men, women and children face a number of challenges – including but not limited to health and safety – in attempts to use toilets or access clean water. We must work together if we are to successfully address this crisis. Sanitation is a local government function. The Social Justice Coalition (SJC) is a Cape Town based movement with members living in Khayelitsha – Cape Town’s most populous informal settlement carrying the burden of crime and ill health. We, the undersigned, call on the City of Cape Town to meet its obligations, as prescribed in the Water Services Act. Let us work together to set a model example in Khayelitsha, and the municipality at large, which can then be replicated elsewhere.

The right to access water, including basic sanitation, is entrenched in the Constitution as well as national and local government legislation. However, the reality is that these rights are violated on a daily basis in informal settlements across the country. Over the past 17 years, the different spheres of government have invested considerable effort to supply approximately 14 million people with access to basic sanitation. However, significantly more effort is needed to eradicate the backlog. Currently there are at least 10.5 million people living without access in South Africa[1], and 500 000 in Cape Town[2]. Improved access will enable more people in South Africa to live more dignified, healthier and safer lives.

According to the City of Cape Town’s review of the 2007-2012 Integrated Development Plan (IDP), approximately 400 000 people have expressed a need for formal housing by placing their names on the City’s housing database. However, the City has funding for and aims to only provide approximately 8500 houses a year. Many informal settlements in Cape Town have existed for more than twenty years without access to basic services such as sanitation. It is apparent that while housing should be an ultimate objective, many informal settlements will exist for many years to come and access to basic services must be expedited. The City’s water and sanitation policies must therefore recognise this reality in its forward planning.

The Water Services Act (Act 108 of 1997) is the primary legal document relating to the provision of water services, and requires the state to ensure that every person has access to basic sanitation. The Act empowers municipalities to undertake their role as water services authorities, and to provide these services. It is the duty of local government to implement a plan to provide basic sanitation.

'Basic Sanitation' is defined in The Strategic Framework for Water, produced by the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry in 2003 as “[t]he infrastructure necessary to provide a sanitation facility which is safe, reliable, private, protected from the weather and ventilated, keeps smells to the minimum, is easy to keep clean, minimises 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.”

The City of Cape Town continues to provide sanitation technologies in informal settlements that do not meet basic sanitation standards. In many areas of Khayelitsha, the ratio of toilets to dwellings exceeds accepted standards and in other areas, residents are unable to access toilets because they are concentrated in certain sections of the settlement. Pit latrines without ventilation, bucket toilets and container toilets do not qualify as basic sanitation options and must be replaced with alternative systems. While chemical toilets have been a suitable sanitation system, they are expensive and should only be considered temporary and/or emergency options.

The City of Cape Town has not developed a policy that clearly defines the authority and exact roles of various players in the provision and maintenance of sanitation services in informal settlements. As a result of the lack of inter-sectoral collaboration, the flush toilets that are installed in informal settlements are not properly maintained by the City. Breakages which arise as a result of high usage are not repaired timeously. Grey water is often left to gather in wells beneath standpipes for many months before being cleaned, resulting in contamination and unhygienic water sources. Sewerage often flows out of broken manholes and pipes over and around standpipes and through people’s homes. Where monitoring of toilets and water sources does take place, Environmental Health Officers report breakages but do not have the authority to ensure their proper repair. As a result, toilets often remain broken for weeks or months. Collection of solid waste is often irregular, which contributes to poor hygiene conditions, polluted water sources, and blockages in sewerage infrastructure.

A lack of adequate sanitation directly impacts on health. The poor state of toilets and water services in many informal settlements results in a very high prevalence of waterborne diseases, parasites and gastroenteritis of infectious origin – including Hepatitis A and Rotavirus. The latter is one of the leading causes of death for children under five. Although the Metro District Health Services has made a concerted effort to address the high incidence of diarrhoeal disease during the season, through promoting hand washing and other behavioural interventions, vulnerable areas that lack decent water, sanitation and refuse removal continue to experience the greatest burden. Khayelitsha continues to report high levels of diarrhoea in the peak season, despite a strong health promotion, prevention and treatment campaign. Advice on basic food and personal hygiene becomes impossible to follow if the environment is permanently dangerous and unhygienic.

A lack of adequate sanitation directly impacts on personal safety. The SJC’s members have cited a lack of sufficiently clean and safe toilets as being one of the largest risks of being exposed to crime. On an almost daily basis people of all ages and both sexes are robbed, assaulted, raped and murdered whilst walking to the nearest functioning toilet or water source. Households that have been left empty are often burgled whilst residents go the toilet. Khayelitsha has the highest pedestrian fatality rate in the City of Cape Town, partly due to people being hit by cars walking to and from toilets or empty clearings that are located beyond busy roads. Women, children and the elderly are the most vulnerable and easy targets for criminals whilst using a sanitation facility.

We believe that the Constitutional rights to dignity, health, a clean environment and safety are violated by a failure to meet basic sanitation standards. This includes the provision of technologies that do not adhere to norms and standards, but also the failure to include a regular, ongoing and adequate maintenance and monitoring system. Such conditions directly contribute to ill health, threats to safety, exposure to crime, sewerage leaks, spills and/or overflows, and/or the discontinuity of the toilet facility. We believe that it is in everyone’s interest for the City to respond by meeting its human rights obligations for provision of basis services to the community of Khayelitsha.

We therefore call on the City of Cape Town to:

Recognise – as a matter of urgency – the need for the development and implementation of adequate maintenance, monitoring, and coordination of existing sanitation services in Khayelitsha’s informal settlements. The City must develop, within its own structures, effective mechanisms for inter-sectoral coordination so as to ensure that the multiple departments involved in water and sanitation provision and monitoring are able to work together effectively to improve the living conditions of people in Khayelitsha. This will greatly and immediately contribute to improved health and safety.

Initiate a public consultation period during which an implementation plan and budget is developed to ensure that every household in Khayelitsha’s informal settlements has access to a basic sanitation and access to water within an agreed upon timeframe. This would include discussing which technologies currently being utilised do not meet Basic Sanitation standards and how to replace them. We, the undersigned, hereby offer assistance in any consultation process established to address the above challenges.

Issued by The Social Justice Coalition

Endorsed by:

[1] Department of Water Affairs; http://www.dwa.gov.za/dir_ws/wsnis/default.asp?nStn=introduction, 25 August 2010.

[2] Water Dialogues (2010)