The Mercury, 3 September 2013
Water and sanitation become a living nightmare in Durban’s Inanda township
Gcina Makoba (The Mercury) 3 September 2013
Does eThekwini municipality deserve to win the Stockholm Water Industry Award, which will be granted to the Water and Sanitation Department this week?
In Inanda, we residents expect ‘development’ to at least include adequate access to water, flush sanitation, a well-built decent-sized house, affordable electricity, waste removal and air clean enough to breathe. But especially in wards 44, 55 and 56, we are underdeveloping. At the end of apartheid, even these basic need goods were better supplied and cheaper in Inanda.
Something changed in 1994 – and it was not just our liberation from racism. There was a trade-off, it now appears, leaving poor people facing new miseries.
Our communities are now very concerned with the polluted air we breathe, with raw sewage flowing into our streams and with the small size and fragility of the RDP houses built here in 2011. The stream running through our wards was once clean and clear, but it is now doubtful whether there are any species living there. Fish and riverine animals that had been common have since died.
Besides our sewer crisis, the worst service might be the communal toilets within shipping containers that have recently been installed in Durban’s townships and shack settlements. In ward 56, 150 houses are sharing two containers with just two showers and three toilets each. About 500 houses in ward 44 share four communal toilets, and 320 houses in ward 55 share four communal toilets. There are numerous challenges that accompany these toilets, including cleanliness and queues, and most of us are not happy about them.
Listen to the voices of my neighbours, such as Lindani (age 39): “Our norms do not allow us to share the toilets. Using these toilets is an insult to us, telling us directly that we have no value. I have never used these toilets ever since they came, because I am angry about them. They were imposed on us.”
The container communal toilets are not accessible to the greater part of our community. They have restrictive opening and closing times. They are not secure spaces in any case, and lead to increased crime such as rape. Many containers also have broken taps, which is a health hazard because it is impossible for us to wash hands after use. The toilets themselves are often blocked. Some are closed, which leads to males and females sharing the same toilets.
Most of us, especially those living where these container toilets are placed, feel that our lives are more difficult since these were introduced. Because they do not have sufficient drains, water is directed into the yards of nearby houses, so we are soaked in water day and night and our kiddies cannot play in the yards. In some cases, our houses are falling apart due to water coming from these toilets.
As another Inanda resident living next to a communal container toilet, Bongiwe Mnqaba (age 56), told me, “if we were consulted about these toilets, we would have disputed this type of development. We expected flush toilets per household, not this. If taps are broken it can be that people are sending the message to the Municipality that we do not want these toilets.”
Another neighbour, Mxolisi (age 18) complained, “Now that a dead body was found [hanging in a container toilet] early this year, everybody is scared to go there….I think they can now be removed because they have turned to be useless. Even more, tsotsis are hiding there to mug people who are coming from work [because] they are dark!”
Then we have an unnecessary financial expense because we pay R2 for 25 liters which we must buy, since by the time we reach home at 7pm the communal taps are already closed (it used to be 9pm).
Most of the people who are living in Inanda’s RDP houses, which do have individual water taps, have a problem with the high billing costs.
The new water meters being installed are not for everyone. For most of us, there are no standpipes nearby to provide us with water, so we ended up diverting the pipes to our yards so that we can get access to water. The Municipality must remember that we decided to connect water on our own because we were neglected. Water is a basic need and a human right.
We are waiting for a meeting where these new meters will be discussed, but if they impose these, we will make sure that they are removed from each and every house, as we are tired of water and sanitation being imposed on us.
For example, while others in eThekwini enjoy their flush toilet inside their house, 80 000 households in black communities are denied this right by the municipality, as they were given the ‘Urinary Diversion’ toilets in small rooms outside the house, without water. These are similar to the old-style bucket system, and are now recognised as a failed experiment.
The greatest fear of this type of ‘development’ is that it is permanent. The question in our Inanda wards remains: how long will our community be forced to live under these conditions, if a world water award makes our politicians smug?
(Gcina Makoba is a Dennis Brutus Community Scholar at the University of KwaZulu-Natal Centre for Civil Society.)
FOLLOWING MAKOBA’S ARTICLE, THE FOLLOWING DEBATE TOOK PLACE ON SEVERAL LISTSERVES IN SEPTEMBER 2014
PB: More quick banter, below, but I must say, I sometimes just don’t know what to believe when I read Neil’s replies, e.g. “The eThekwini municipality has not built VIP toilets” (i.e., Ventilated Improved Pitlatrines – the prior fad of neoliberal water management). Evidence below suggests that Bill Gates thinks otherwise.
Re: [Bubbles] [Debate-List] (Fwd) Durban’s big water award on Tuesday (Stockholm Water Industry)7 September 2014
NM: Dear Vanessa
I think that you are confusing issues here. I have never heard the city or our government say that citizens do not have a right to a clean environment or access to a basic supply of water necessary to sustain life.
PB: If you don’t hear that, no surprise, for it would be unconstitutional for a city official to say it. But there’s lots of talk-left walk-right rhetoric and practice in South Africa. So this sentence seems disingenuous, given the record of disconnections and extreme cutbacks enforced on the city’s poorest third who were already provided a metered supply – i.e. a reduction from 22 kl/hh/month to 15 kl/hh/month because of the doubling of the real water price from 1997-2004, during which time, at the peak of rights-denial, 4000 households per week were disconnected from a full water supply due to non-payment. The 200 l/hh/day (now 300) came in the form of yard tanks, again a system for the poor (never seen in my Bluff neighbourhood) which ignores the critical role of water pressure in assuring hygiene and the safety of the water. Rights violations were legion, as the case of the late Christina Manquele proved already 15 years ago (see her on video here).
NM: It seems that many have forgotten that the Durban metro municipality introduced the concept of free basic water rather than basic water that had to be paid for.
PB: Two serious problems here, that I don’t think Neil can rebut:
1) as noted above, if during the FBW’s pilot phase and city-wide roll-out, consumption by the poorest 1/3 simultaneously declined (during pandemics of cholera, AIDS and diarhhoea), because the overall water price doubled from R2/kl to R4/kl (after correction for inflation), the Durban version of FBW was diabolical, not something to brag about. Here are the 1997-2004 data from the municipality’s own staff person, Reg Bailey:
2) what was the rationale for FBW being introduced, based on the Durban pilot? According to the water minister at the time (Ronnie Kasrils), the Durban pilot convinced him that ‘It would save money because local authorities would not be saddled with the problem of administering large numbers of small accounts’ (Business Day, 11 February 2000). Again, nothing to brag about if this was a matter of fiscal savings. (Also, it makes little sense as the basis for public policy, because if one then consumes 6001 liters, this logic is to charge the customer for the whole 6001, not just for 1 liter.)
NM: It was also one of the first to start emptying pit toilets once every 5 years for free and now the UD toilets every two years for free.
PB: But again, Neil, why brag about what is now explicitly acknowledged to be a class-‘discriminatory’ system, in your own words? Those pit toilets and UD are now acknowledged to fail the tests of dignity and fairness; they should never have been introduced as a ‘sanitation solution’, since now they must be replaced.
NM: When our interaction with communities through the Water Dialogues and subsequently our user platforms and focus groups,
PB: If this is true, I was mistaken, then, to think that water activists had anything to do with the pressure put on Durban municipality to change its rights-violating policies. (If this is true. But it would not be in any municipal official’s interest to acknowledge that activists had anything to do with changing policy.)
NM: led us to understand that 200 litres a day was not enough water for basic living in a tropical climate,
PB: Why such a weasel word? “Tropical”? In non-tropical Joburg, the equivalent FBW allocation was from 6 to 10 (not 9) kl/hh/month, just before the court judgement in 2008 found that Soweto citizens’ rights were violated by Suez – which had designed Joburg Water’s FBW in alliance with the national strategy put in place in mid-2001 by the Palmer Development Group. Ian Palmer had earlier been the most vigorous advocate I ever met of denying people a FBW allocation; somehow or other, his consultancy was put in charge of FBW design. Neil was on the board of Joburg Water when it implemented its pre-payment meters (for black not white neighbourhoods), inhumane ‘shallow sewer’ strategy and VIPs.
NM: the Council increased it to 300 litres per family per day. To imply that the city is unresponsive is incorrect.
PB: The critique is not that Durban officials do not change and are unresponsive. Everyone acknowledges that there is a marginal improvement over the years, as activist critiques hit home. The durable concern, though, is that there is a tendency to continue new innovations in water apartheid: not using race as the explicit dividing line, but instead class.
NM: The eThekwini municipal area is covered with water pipes
PB: The critique is that there is a residual (and ongoing) apartheid logic to the verb “cover”. For example, a “sanitation edge” was declared that has very little geographical logic (look at the many white areas that have sanitation services outside the ‘edge’). It is based on a class-centric assessment of communities.
NM: intended to provide water to any customer who applies to be connected. Many of the illegal connections have not been made by poor families but by families living in large houses in the Ingonyama Trust areas, houses that would sell for millions of Rand if they were located in Umhlanga Rocks or Reservoir Hills.
PB: This is the sort of class analysis that is helpful. What’s the logical conclusion? Enforce a stronger water credit control policy on people who can afford to pay but who don’t, and charge them much higher amounts for hedonistic consumption.
NM: Then there are those in shack areas who have connected to the supply lines leading to public standpipes and as a result no water comes out of the taps at the end of the line, depriving the really poor of access to sufficient water.
PB: This is not just a problem in shack areas; Mike Muller can testify that this is the way ordinary people have responded to the inadequacy of off-site water access all over the country. They put pipes and hoses into water systems so as to achieve yard-based access. Many of the projects were set up with a design specification of 25 l/c/d which was what some of the water experts says is what a woman can carry each day for her household for a targeted maximum of 200 meters. The possibility of a community increasing its population or moving up a ‘ladder’ of consumption to yard or in-house supply was not taken into account. The public health, gender equity and micro-economic benefits of moving to the
PB: For that I blame the policy people and municipal designers who provide too few taps, too far away. Worse, they cite “RDP standards” to justify this – when in reality the RDP has much more generous medium-term targets. (The short-term emergency mandate, to be provided by water tankers if necessary, was at least 25 lcd; the medium-term was on-site 50-60 lcd.)
NM: Instead the water runs out of ‘private’ taps at individual shacks – taps that are hardly ever closed.
PB: Where are these taps for private individuals that are ‘hardly ever closed’? What is the water being used for? If these shack settlements typically have no soakaways or drains, why would an individual private tap owner let water run constantly?
NM: We monitor consumption per house in these shack areas and it is far more than 300 litres per family per day, but the excessive consumption is not being paid for by those responsible.
PB: I find it hard to believe that shack settlements have that kind of per household consumption if they are not sharing their supply with immediate neighbours, as I know so many do, who are illegally connected to water or electricity grids.
NM: Our research has shown that there are businesses active in making these illegal connections for a cost that typically is around R600. We have been given the pamphlets that are handed out by these companies and that offer unlimited free water for ever. We have approached the police to take action against them, but nothing seems to have been done.
PB: So why not solve that problem by putting in municipal taps?
NM: Sadly there is also evidence that some of the contractors and employees working for EWS are also involved in making illegal, unmetered connections for a fee.
PB: Why does eThekwini hire so many crooks, especially in Public Private Pilfering partnerships? (See Manase Report for a small sampling, or for a particularly telling example, how about Carver Media trying to loot a WWF award. Or just recall Mike Sutcliffe’s overall looting spree. Or Mayor Obed Mlaba’s R3 bn tender hijack.) Don’t the activists critics have a point, about tenderpreneurship being a primitive mode of class formation? Why can’t the water department at least hire its own staff and not outsource its work – especially wastewater treatment here in South Durban – to a criminal operation (Veolia) that is involved in internationally-recognised illegal Occupation-related services in East Jerusalem, for example? The impression that Durban municipality gives the world is unending corruption; surely the celebrated Water and Sanitation group can work against that trend, not amplify it?
NM: So the eThekwini municipality has a plan to make water available in the form of metered connections to individual homes and communal ablution blocks in dense shack areas. We have connected 1,3 million people to safe drinking water since 2000, another fact that is overlooked by the critics of EWS.
PB: No, it is the exorbitant price rises over that period to all those connected that is most disconcerting (as the Bailey/Buckley data above indicate).
NM: 280 000 families who are legally connected to the network do not pay for water each month.
PB: But they don’t get enough water, do they, nor with sufficient pressure to meet the society’s public health and hygiene objectives.
NM: Our experience over the past 22 years has shown that the water ‘consumption’ for families who use water through unmetered connections is generally three times more than those who are supplied through metered connections.
PB: Are they then also commoning the water, sharing with others? (I would, if in that situation.)
NM: Johannesburg Water saw an even more dramatic drop in consumption in unbilled areas after the installation of meters (from an average of 60 kl per month to less than 15kl per month)
PB: And they also witnessed the world’s second greatest water war (after Cochabamba).
NM: Threatening to vandalise meters and remove them is a clear indication of an attitude that does not relate to poverty or to human rights – in my view it is plain anarchy or criminality.
PB: If the meter charges too much to allow water to be consumed by poor people, and if the authorities refuse to permit a generous FBW allowance, then surely it’s better to have that meter sabotaged than face the public health and personal household burdens of inadequate water access. As a taxpayer and a fellow citizen, that cost-benefit analysis makes sense to me.
NM: Turning to the toilet issue, the cost of providing water borne sanitation to the 370 000 families living in rural and shack areas would cost more than R60 billion.
PB: What, R162 000 per household? For a simple low-flush and on-site septic tank in peri-urban and rural areas, and for a much more generous approach to shack settlement sanitation? That sounds like an exaggeration.
NM: The ongoing additional operational costs that would have to be funded from a revenue source would exceed R1,5 million a day.
PB: That amount – if true (like the R162 000 per hh?) – is barely 1.5% of the municipal budget. Since Durban is one of the most unequal countries in the world, that kind of redistribution is justifiable. We spend so little of the fiscus on water and on social spending as it is.
NM: Please also remember that most residential areas in our municipality did not have piped water borne sanitation for 120 years
PB: Here we need some rudimentary racial analysis, and post-apartheid retribution too.
NM: and it was only in the 1970’s that the sewering of these areas began. Many suburbs in the Highway area and parts of Westville still rely on private septic tanks systems for sewage disposal.
PB: Right, here we have race analysis, but the euphamism is “suburbs in the Highway area and parts of Westville” (i.e. still mainly whites). The point about ‘private septic tanks’ is interesting: what percentage of the historically-white areas (on high ground) have these, and why can’t they be subsidised for peri-urban and rural areas across the country?
NM: It is just too expensive to construct sewers in these areas, never mind the rural areas where it would cost 10 to 20 times more per household to construct sewers, compared to the denser urban areas.
PB: I don’t know anyone who suggests full-flush system through sewage lines in rural areas, do you? But a rudimentary septic tank with enough of a flush to move the excrement out is certainly feasible. How much would that cost? An average of R162 000 per unit? I doubt it.
NM: So even if the Moses Mabhida stadium had not been built and tenders had not been given to the companies you mention, the prohibitive cost of sewering large areas of our municipality would still remain.
PB: Can we please get accurate costing, not the R162 000/unit alleged?
NM: This is not an attempt to deny the poor access to sanitation – even in first world countries in Europe and America there are families without piped sewerage systems who are left to fend for themselves.
PB: The end of the sentence appears a justification for denying the poor access to sanitation. It’s just this kind of double-talk that critics find exasperating.
NM: London generally had no sewers or flushing toilets until the early 1900’s –
PB: Actually, London’s Metropolitan Commission of Sewers started the process of sewage installation after the Great Stink and cholera epidemic in the 1850s.
NM: you used a pit toilet in the garden! Currently national policy as per the Strategic Framework Document for Water and Sanitation Services says that basic sanitation is effectively a VIP toilet.
PB: This is national neoliberal water policy, sure. But Durban is one of the richest municipalities in the country. So in that context, justifying Durban’s class-apartheid policy because of an awful national policy – one that many of us fought on the policy front these last 20 years – is not satisfactory.
NM: The eThekwini municipality has not built VIP toilets.
PB: Well, if not, your department has been fooling local citizenry and internet viewers: and this rich poverty tourist seeking a technological silver bullet:
NM: In my view if families want more expensive options than that envisaged as basic sanitation, they should do what everyone else in the world (rich and poor alike)does and make a plan themselves instead of waiting for government.
PB: And if people are too poor, then tough shit, eh. The name for that, as public policy, is ‘class apartheid’.
NM: My personal view is that the issue is not about flush toilets, but is rather about having access to a toilet that is clean with no bad odours, is easy and safe to use and that is not dark inside. There is also the popular view that the flushing toilet is the only acceptable solution – a facility that uses about 150 litres a day of treated clean water (for a family of 5) to flush away 5 litres of human excreta. This 155 litres of water then has to be transported to a treatment works
PB: Doesn’t have to be: site-based treatment is possible, either through biogas digestion in built-up areas, or through septic tanks in rural areas.
NM: to remove the 5 litres of ‘pollution’. The energy consumption to treat the water to drinking water quality, deliver it to the home and then remove the sewage and treat it, is huge. Dry sanitation has to be the solution of the future for everybody and many organisations around the world are working towards that goal. The flushing toilet was first put into common use in the 1860’s and has hardly changed since then – we have to do better than that in a world where water and energy are becoming scarce. We need a 21st century toilet that is used by all, both rich and poor.
PB: Great, that last sentence is fine. But given the track record of only experimenting – mainly unsuccessfully – on poor people and black people, when will the rich – or even middle-class – try out a new system? Count me in as a guinea pig, please.
Cheers,
Patrick
NM: Regards
Neil Macleod
Re: [PORT] Re: [Bubbles] [Debate-List] (Fwd) Durban’s big water award on Tuesday (Stockholm Water Industry)6 September 2014
NM: “…the writer seems to see the right to a clean environment to be the right to a flushing toilet and the right to basic water to be the right to an illegal connection so unlimited quantities of water can be stolen.”
VB: It is interesting that the eThekwini Municipality always manages to associate poverty with crime, be it the homeless, illegal connections, shack dwellers – the struggle for survival and basic human dignity by the poor is naturally assumed to be of criminal intent.
VB: I would like to ask, however, which is the REAL crime here: that of a poor family, often single-mother households, resorting to an illegal water connection to obtain some measure of access to a basic human right when service delivery fails; or the municipality’s continued diversion of ratepayers’ money into the back pockets of the already obscenely wealthy? I refer to such questionable practices as repetitious tenders awarded to construction companies owned by the likes of the Mpisane’s, Jay Singh, etc, the list is too long to mention all.
VB: Or the municipality’s continued squander of budgetary resources on ‘nice to haves but hardly essential when one considers the existing inequality,’ such as the Moses Mabhida Stadium and all the other white elephants which cost us millions to maintain each month? And for what long term benefit and to whom?
VB: Or the bloated costs of ward councillors’ bodyguards? And, and, and…again the list is too long to detail.
VB: So which is the REAL crime here Mr Mcleod?
VB: How many proper sanitation projects and flush toilets could the city have built if this money, alleged by many (such as has been detailed in the Manase Report for eg and in countless other corruption investigations that are simply ignored) to have been ‘stolen’ or wasted or ‘irregularly spent’ – and continues to be – hadn’t been? Or had to be paid back?
VB: It is not only our president that should “Pay back our money” to enable a “Better life for all.” A better life which SHOULD include ready access to a liveable amount of water and being able to use a toilet without fear of disease or rape.
Vanessa
Subject: [PORT] Re: [Bubbles] [Debate-List] (Fwd) Durban’s big water award on Tuesday (Stockholm Water Industry)6 September 2014
Two quick replies: first to Neil, then Mike. (This is a debate on the ‘Bubbles’ listserve but since Neil and Mike both cc-ed several other listserves, people who are interested are invited to chime in on this dispute.) (And in case the quotation function disappears, my replies are preceded by PB: for clarity’s sake.)
On 2014/09/06 03:46 PM, Neil Macleod wrote:
NM: I intend writing to the paper to set the record straight. My summary of the article is that the writer seems to see the right to a clean environment to be the right to a flushing toilet
PB: Right then, it seems that we’re backtracking to Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” We’ve apparently moved along this trajectory from ignoring to ridiculing, even though water activists like Gcina Makoba – who does indeed see the right to a clean environment in her township as entailing a flush toilet inside her house (as do I) – might have had the impression that she was winning. After all, over the past five years or so, slowly but surely, Durban officials seemed to be listening to the activists’ grievances; they at least changed previously unacceptable policies and projects, such as Ventilated Improved Pitlatrines (now out of fashion) and the Free Basic Water supply of 200 liters/household/day (it’s now up to 300).
NM: and the right to basic water to be the right to an illegal connection so unlimited quantities of water can be stolen.
PB: Neil, is there a single activist who believes that the solution to the household water crisis is “an illegal connection so unlimited quantities of water can be stolen”? I’ve never met one. My impression is that the township activists who have workshopped the various policy options invariably promote the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme promises as their ideal policy. Aside from the SA Municipal Workers Union which advocated 100 liters per day lifeline supply per capita (not 50-60 lcd as the RDP recommends) about 15 years ago, I’ve never encountered an activist who demanded more than the RDP. Am I wrong on this?
PB: As for stealing? Look, as a temporary measure in the event an inhumane municipality (such as Durban back in the day) disconnects 1000 families per day, well then yes, a human right to water strategy should surely include the urgent and if necessary illegal reconnection of poor people, especially women-headed households. Sometimes court injunctions against disconnections are slow, expensive or rejected by conservative judges. As a fellow taxpayer, don’t you agree that encouraging illegal water reconnections under those circumstances (such as Thulisile Chrisina Manquele’s famous case 15 years ago) makes sense, so that our health bills don’t skyrocket as a result of this extremist municipal disconnection rate? The gory details are in an Oxford DPhil thesis about Durban’s awful past, by Alex Loftus: A Political Ecology of Water Struggles in Durban, South Africa
NM: I do not need to defend our service delivery and innovation record –
PB: Ok but if you change your mind, we would love to have a public dialogue, including activists like Gcina, Orlean Naidoo, MamaDudu Khumalo, etc.
NM: those who we respect have done it for us repeatedly.
PB: Maybe, but surely the best analysis of Durban’s unacceptable service delivery and innovation record is actually this quote from someone who admits that the past strategy was unacceptable to low-income black people: “containers with toilets and showers and wash troughs, and the construction of 80 000 urine-diverting toilets speak to our past. But what we’ve realised is that into the future, we need to find new technologies that meet people’s expectations. The reality is that everyone believes that the flushing toilet is the best solution to sanitation…. we’ll bring safe sanitation at an acceptable level to rich and poor alike and we’ll do away with this perceived discrimination where the flushing toilet is seen to be for rich people and dry sanitation is seen to be a solution for poor people. Our challenge is to do away with that differentiation.”
PB: Hear hear! I’m impressed, because that sounds like a sensible official who realises that the service delivery and innovation record of the past – a sanitation apartheid that also had rather obvious racial overtones – is simply not acceptable, and simply didn’t meet people’s expectations. Perhaps a very low-flush technological solution can be found that might, ideally, entail bio-gas digestion and the same quality of indoor, non-odor standards for rich and poor alike. That would be excellent. Meantime, why ridicule activists who also believe that the challenge for EWS in future is to do away with that durable water-apartheid differentiation?
On 2014/09/04 07:32 PM, Mike Muller wrote:
MM: Of course, the difference between Neil and all the many progressive environmental and social activists is that he tried to implement some of their proposals.
PB: In a way this is correct… as you saw above and can listen to here, Neil now concedes that the current system – the ‘sanitation edge’ denying water-borne sanitation in peri-urban areas (and also close-in shack settlements) – is widely perceived to be discriminatory. And yes, as noted, he implemented an increased Free Basic Water supply after consistent critique of his disconnection policy. (Ok, that 300 liters/household/day amount is still not enough for many larger families, especially when there are special events like funerals, and it comes with a new version of neoliberal indigency policy, and hence is not universal as promised in the 2000 ANC election campaign. Nor is the block tariff steep enough to redistribute properly. So the FBW strategy still needs fixing.) Sadly though, these changes came only after the huge social engineering mistakes were made, e.g. installation of what I gather are not 80 000 UDs, as Neil says in the video, but instead (we learned in seminar from an EWS official), 140 000. What an enormous waste.
PB: Warnings against UDs were made early on, e.g. in 2007, 2008, and again in 2012 – and I think that two superb campaigners – MamaDudu Khumalo and Simphiwe Nojiyeza – laid out better than anyone what was wrong, at an early stage in the process. Their concerns were ignored for years. Here are slides with their critique, and see way below. Until the UD experiment failed, Durban municipality seemed committed to not supplying decent sanitation to these residents. Now maybe there is a way forward, if we take time and trouble – and dispense with prejudices, Mike – to listen and learn from activists on the frontline of the sanitation wars.
MM: Those UD toilets are an example; they are designed both to reduce water use
PB: By who? Poor people? Black people? Do you know how many were imposed on the residents of my (mainly white middle-class) neighbourhood (the Bluff)? (Zero.) It’s this race/class (and by implication gender) discrimination that, finally, is acknowledged to be a fatal flaw. Do you not get that?
MM: and to capture the nutrients
PB: In a bucket-system contraption similar to apartheid’s, in a city with the highest number of HIV+ people, and hence a huge diarrhoea problem (which chamber?) and abnormally high levels of pathogens… and so with Durban’s humid weather (hence difficulty in drying the excrement), with erratic bucket-emptying strategies, with urban agriculture inappropriate for human excrement, and with consistent failure to gain community ownership of this strategy, the nutrients are not so easy to capture, are they.
MM: that otherwise go down the drain while still offering safe and convenient sanitation.
PB: No, the UDs have proven unsafe (hygienically) and inconvenient (located outside the house). And terribly smelly as well. Mike, in all these respects, do watch the interview and learn from Neil. He says he is trying to get beyond them, in part for safety reasons. Let’s learn why.
MM: The Greens love them.
PB: Which ‘Greens’ do you mean? Have you not met ‘red-greens’ committed to Environmental Justice, who put dignity, equity and reparations into the mix?
MM: Until someone tries to implement them and discovers that all these easy solutions are not quite as easy as they appear. Then they are suddenly very absent or very ready to point fingers.
PB: Ah, but we also point fingers inward, by the way, not just at the ‘water fraternity’. Sad and convoluted experiences on the biogas digester in Cato Manor convinces me that the efforts made there were inadequate. I was associated (as a voluntary board member) of an NGO that was involved. That exercise was a huge mistake, mainly because of lack of community ownership.
MM: Shame!
PB: Mike, shame is an emotion usefully invoked by Herman Daly, pioneer of ecological economics, when thinking about something similar to UD advocacy: degrowth advocacy applied to the poor. Daly advocated degrowth (or ‘steady-state economics’) for the Global North but is aware that you cannot make this transfer to the Global South, and his argument applies equally well to the UD debate: “It is absolutely a waste of time as well as morally backward to preach steady-state doctrines to underdeveloped countries before the overdeveloped countries have taken any measure to reduce either their own population growth or the growth of their per-capita resource consumption. Therefore, the steady-state paradigm must first be applied in the overdeveloped countries…. One of the major forces necessary to push the overdeveloped countries toward a…steady-state paradigm must be Third World outrage at their overconsumption.” – Herman E. Daly, Steady-State Economics (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1991), p.19
PB: Here’s an interesting essay that, not entirely taking my point of view, nevertheless puts the UD into this vital context. Living as we do, Mike, in the world’s most unequal major country, it’s a shame to have to remind of this context.
UD social/ equity issues: Are UDs a dignified form of sanitation?
Dudu Khumalo and Simphiwe Nojiyeza, UKZN Centre for Civil Society
Positive Effects of UD Toilets
It improves dry sanitation facilities by:
(1) Reducing odours if properly constructed and operated
(2) Facilitating maintenance of the system
It contributes to improved health through:
(1) Easier and more hygienic handling of the faeces
(2) Reduces risk of pathogen transport to groundwater
It can provide more permanent interventions compared to VIPs,chemical toilets, buckets and other inadequate sanitation facilities through:
(1) Simplified emptying that increases the toilet lifetime
(2) It facilitates nutrient cycling and creates possibilities to increase food security Positive
Effects of UD Toilets
(1) Urine contains the majority of nutrients found in excreta
(2) Urine is an excellent fertilizer, suitable for all crops needing quick- acting nitrogen
(3) Urine has an extremely low content of micropollutants such as heavy metals
Urine diversion systems are not expensive than similar conventional technologies
Positive Cost effects
Dry urine diversion is cheaper to install than VIPs, VIP emptying is expensive and facilities are sometimes non- existent
It is the cheapest alternative for on-site sanitation, when it is full, households can build new ones
It is estimated that over a ten year period, the full toilet investment can be paid for solely by the value of nitrogen and phosphorus in the urine
Environmental and Sustainable Development
Urine diversion systems contribute less to environmental contamination than conventional sanitation systems:
(1) There is reduced risk of groundwater pollution for dry urine diversion systems
(2) There is reduced risk of surface water pollution for water- flushed urine diversion systems
Motives for eThekwini to introduce UDs
There were 140 193 households without adequate sanitation especially in rural areas
The use of VIPs requires mechanical desludging which is expensive, vulnerable to failure, inaccessible (site), unable to cope with heavy sludge and solid waste in pits.
It is unsafe and unpleasant to do manual emptying of VIPs using shovels and buckets
The cost of using tanker emptying of VIPs is around R1536 per pit if the service is subsidized and each household pay R120, possibility of saving from construction additional Waste Water Treatment Plants
VIP latrines are financially unsustainable, especially subsidizing the empting of such using tankers
UDs are maintained by users themselves, therefore it is cost saving
Motives for eThekwini
Replacement of about 100 000 old pit latrines without ventilation toilets with UDs that are allowing faeces and urine to dry and decompose faster
In 2006 eThekwini commissioned Pollution Research Group of UKZN to investigate whether UD solid waste can be used as fertilizer, and the results according to UKZN biologist Mike Smith were promising
Motives for eThekwini
Another study funded by eThekwini Municipality and WHO suggested a 30% reduction in diarrheal diseases among households with UD toilets compared with similar households using pit toilets
According to Stephen Knight of Nelson Mandela School of Medicine access to UD toilets helped avert an average of one diarrhea episode per person every 2 years, with the benefits of good sanitation three times greater for children under the age of 5 than for other age ranges.
Challenges of UD roll out
Risks associated with UDs is the lack of quality and construction of the toilets and piping systems which result in people reverting back to open defecation and use of traditional latrines.
The focus is on the number of toilets constructed and how closer we are to meeting MDGs
Zero regular health and hygiene education, no operating manuals and instructions, no maintenance guidelines are provided, no spare parts and support is given
Users are not accepting the system because of the top down nature of delivery systems, because in some areas there are different sanitation technologies, some use UD and others ( elite and aristocratic class) have flush toilets
Handling of urine and faeces not explained and also not acceptable to communities
Other Challenges
No programme to re-circulate urine and faces to agriculture, operation and maintenance of urine and faeces is more demanding than conventional piping which results in blockages
In most instances , there are no piping, storage and collection (transportation) tanks systems that are put in place
As a user you are on your own, eThekwini is reducing costs and creating health impacts!
Other challenges
Lack of compliance with building codes which results in improper running of the system
The sizing and inclination of pipes, documentation and accessibility are mistakes that lead to failure of the system
No municipal collection of urine is provided for, and therefore urine harvested is not used for agricultural purposes
The construction of UDs did not cater for appropriate collection and storage capacity for the urine.
Social costs of UDs
Although there is minimal risk of disease transmission when urine is used without prior storage in the home garden, the risk could be great due to lack of urine storage guidelines.
The waiting period of one month between last application of urine and harvest is not adhered to as education is often not provided
There is a serious lack of stakeholder participation, which result in UDs not being accepted by households
The agricultural benefits ( fertilizing effects of urine and faeces) of UDs are not properly explained to farmers
Most of the UD toilets are becoming storage facilities
UDs designed so far are not taking into cognizance that men and women excrete urine in different ways
Social Impacts of UD Toilets
The bowls are not designed so that urine is collected in an appropriate way from both women and men using the toilet
Therefore there is a need for designing different urinals for men and women
The current UD is gender insensitive, inadequate and unsafe
Faeces and urine contain low pesticide residues that could harm people if no safe removal devices and storage facilities are provided
Informed choice
In most instances communities did not play any role in technology choice
Double vaults or single vaults were prescribed and communities had no say
UD toilets are situated far away from existing houses and may make users vulnerable to criminal activities when using them at night, the other motivation is that UD toilets smell very bad despite ash and sew dust being used
Most households that have UD toilets complain about responsibilities of emptying vaults, difficulty to operate and maintain, construction mistakes, handling of faeces and their preference of a flush toilet
The vaults are also too deep and difficult to clean, urine pipes often blocks, Urine is disposed to soaked pits and in few instances it is piped to velds for fertilizer making
Economic Issues
The implementation of UD in Durban did not result in improved environment, food security for households and
safer handling of waste flow from the households
The externalities are borne by households that operate and maintain their latrines without any form of subsidy
Ashe and sew dust is not provided, whereas in most rural areas there is electricity and people are no longer using fire for cooking and other domestic services
The double piping system is expensive in terms of installation costs
The costs of removing and resealing the slab of the vault that are borne by households
Training and Children usage
Training on usage, health and hygiene provided in some instances was not adequate to enhance behavioural change.
Children under the age of 10 are not using UD toilets because
(1) They are too small and too young to use the seat properly, they might fall in the vault, they may defecate in the urine receptacle
(2) They don’t know how to use the toilet
Failure to use UDs by children resulted in exposing them to health risks as they openly defecate in bushes
Some households are neither using ash no soil to cover faeces after defecation
Excreta Removal
Most users are objecting to emptying the vault and disposing of the excreta because:
(1) They do not want to work with excreta.
(2) The municipality must take the excreta away as nobody is willing to empty the vault and handle faeces
(3) It is not easy to dispose of the contents of the vault and emptying of the vault is not easy
(4) Use of Faeces and Urine as Fertilizer
Most users are not willing to use neither faeces nor urine as fertilizer because:
(1) They don’t like to handle faeces.
(2) It is unhealthy to use excreta in the garden
(3) Faeces smell, no matter how dry they are
(4) Urine kills plants
Way forward
Sanitation committees need to elected in a transparent and participatory manner, sanitation technology choices made need to meet the needs of the users and not imposed by eThekwini
Currently households regard UDs as punishment for being poor, black and Zulu and some form of degradation and humiliation
Training, operation and maintenance, emptying of the vaults and safe disposal methods to be re visited , health and hygiene education to be given a priority, improvement in construction of UDs need to take place, use of excreta and urine for fertilizer to be re looked
Emptying of vaults need to be subsidised together with transportation for agricultural use of both faeces and urine, gender sensitivity of construction of UDs