Abstract
In an urbanizing world, the inequalities of infrastructure are increasingly politicized in ways that reconstitute the urban political. A key site here is the politicization of human waste. The centrality of sanitation to urban life means that its politicization is always more than just service delivery. It is vital to the production of the urban political itself. The ways in which sanitation is seen by different actors is a basis for understanding its relation to the political in an era of late neoliberalism. We chart Cape Town’s contemporary sanitation syndrome, its condition of crisis, and the remarkable politicization of toilets and human waste in the city’s townships and informal settlements in recent years. We identify three tactics—poolitical tactics—that politicize not just sanitation but Cape Town itself: poo protests, auditing and sabotage. We evaluate these tactics, consider what is at stake, and chart possibilities for a more just urban future.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Anderson, W. (1995). Excremental colonialism: Public health and the poetics of pollution. Critical Inquiry, 21(3), 640–669.
Chenwi, L. (2013). Unpacking “progressive realization,” its relation to resources, minimum core and reasonableness, and some methodological considerations for assessing compliance. De Jure, 46(3), 742–769.
Cole, J. (1987). Crossroads: The politics of reform and repression, 1976–1986. Johannesburg: Ravan Press.
Corbridge, S., Williams, G., Srivastava, M., & Véron, R. (2005). Seeing the state: Governance and governmentality in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Davis, R. (2015). Cape Town vs civil society: How much is enough spending on water and toilets? Daily Maverick. Retrieved August 20, 2015, from http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-05-20-cape-town-vs-civil-society-how-much-is-enough-spending-on-water-and-toilets/#.VdZFOni4mnd
Desai, A. (2002). We are the poor: Community struggles in post-apartheid South Africa. New York: NYU Press.
Desai, A., & Pithouse, R. (2004). But we were thousands: Dispossession, resistance, repossession and repression in Mandela Park. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 39(4), 239–269.
Douglas, M. (2003). Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Routledge.
Fanon, F. (1967). The wretched of the earth. London: Penguin.
Featherstone, D. (2013). Black internationalism, subaltern cosmopolitanism, and the spatial politics of antifascism. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(6), 1406–1420.
Fewtrell, L., Kaufmann, R. B., Kay, D., Enanoria, W., Haller, L., & Colford, J. M. (2005). Water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions to reduce diarrhoea in less developed countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 5(1), 42–52.
Hart, G. (2014). Rethinking the South African crisis: Nationalism, populism, hegemony. Georgia: University of Georgia Press.
Huchzermeyer, M. (2011). Cities with slums: From informal settlement eradication to a right to the city in Africa. Cape Town: UCT Press.
Iveson, K. (2014). Building a city for “The People”: The politics of alliance-building in the Sydney Green Ban Movement. Antipode, 46(4), 992–1013.
Jewitt, S. (2011). Geographies of shit: Spatial and temporal variations in attitudes towards human waste. Progress in Human Geography, 35(5), 608–626.
Lester, N., Menguele, R., Karurui-Sebina, G., & Kruger, M. (2009). Township transformation timeline. Johannesburg: Department of Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs.
MacLeod, G., & McFarlane, C. (2014). Introduction: Grammars of urban injustice. Antipode, 46(4), 857–873.
Magnusson, W. (2011). Politics of urbanism. Seeing like a city. New York: Routledge.
Mara, D. (2012). Sanitation: What’s the real problem? IDS Bulletin, 43(2), 86–92.
Mbembe, A. (2015). Decolonizing knowledge and the question of the archive. Retrieved February 12, 2015, from http://wiser.wits.ac.za/system/files/Achille%20Mbembe%20-%20Decolonizing%20Knowledge%20and%20the%20Question%20of%20the%20Archive.pdf
McDonald, D. (2012). World city syndrome: Neoliberalism and inequality in Cape Town. London: Routledge.
Mels, A., Castellano, D., Braadbaart, O., Veenstra, S., Dijkstra, I., Meulman, B., et al. (2009). Sanitation services for the informal settlements of Cape Town, South Africa. Desalination, 248(1), 330–337.
Merrifield, A. (2013). The politics of the encounter: Urban theory and protest under planetary urbanization. Georgia: University of Georgia Press.
Merrifield, A. (2014). The new urban question. London: Pluto Press.
Molotch, H., & Norén, L. (Eds.). (2010). Toilet: Public restrooms and the politics of sharing. New York: NYU Press.
Nicholls, W. (2011). Cities and the unevenness of social movement space: The case of France’s immigrant rights movement. Environment and Planning A, 43(7), 1655.
Ngwane, T. (2003). Sparks in the township. New Left Review, 22, 37–56.
Parnell, S., Beall, J., & Crankshaw, O. (2005). A matter of timing: African urbanisation and access to housing in Johannesburg. In D. Brycson & D. Potts (Eds.), African urban economies: Viability, vitality or vitiation? (pp. 229–251). London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Pieterse, E., & Parnell, S. M. (2014). Africa’s Urban Revolution. Zed Books, London.
Pithouse, R. (2008). A politics of the poor shack dwellers’ struggles in Durban. Journal of Asian and African Studies, 43(1), 63–94.
Robins, S. (2014a). The 2011 toilet wars in South Africa: Justice and transition between the exceptional and the everyday after Apartheid. Development and Change, 45(3), 479–501.
Robins, S. (2014b). Poo wars as matter out of place: ‘Toilets for Africa’ in Cape Town. Anthropology Today, 30(1), 1–3.
Robins, S. (2014c). Slow activism in fast times: Reflections on the politics of media spectacles after Apartheid. Journal of Southern African Studies, 40(1), 91–110.
Schnitzler, A. (2013). Traveling technologies: Infrastructure, ethical regimes, and the materiality of politics in South Africa. Cultural Anthropology, 28(4), 670–693.
Satterthwaite, D., MacGranahan, G., & Mitlin, D. (2005). Community-driven development for water and sanitation in urban areas: Its contribution to meeting the millennium development goal targets. London: IIED.
Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. Yale: Yale University Press.
Social Justice Coalition. (2014). Our toilets are dirty: Report of the social audit into the janitorial service for communal flush toilets in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. Retrieved August 12, 2015, from www.nu.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Social-Audit-report-final.pdf
South African Human Rights Commission. (1996). Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 108. Section 184 (3). Johannesburg: SAHRC.
Swanson, M. (1977). The sanitation syndrome: Bubonic plague and urban native policy in the Cape Colony, 1900–1909. Journal of African History, 18, 387–410.
Acknowledgements
The chapter is based on a revised paper: McFarlane, C. and Silver, J., 2017. The Poolitical City: “Seeing Sanitation” and Making the Urban Political in Cape Town. Antipode, 49(1), pp. 125–148. The authors would like to acknowledge Antipode in allowing the material to be used in this volume.
ᅟ
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McFarlane, C., Silver, J. (2018). Infrastructure, ‘Seeing Sanitation’ and the Urban Political in an Era of Late Neoliberalism. In: Enright, T., Rossi, U. (eds) The Urban Political. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64534-6_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64534-6_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64533-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64534-6
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)