The Moral Economy of Sanitation Provision in Informal Settlements in Cape Town and Nairobi

Abstract

Cape Town and Nairobi’s informal settlement residents have widely differing access to safely managed sanitation. The City of Cape Town (CCT) provides free sewered and container based sanitation to informal settlement residents. Nairobi City Council (NCC), on the other hand, provides almost no sanitation services to urban slums. Residents largely depend on private service providers - a form of a hybrid governance regime - for which there is a cost. Using a moral economy framework, which surfaces the role of activist civil society, the paper discusses the political drivers behind the different governance regimes in sanitation provision. In particular we demonstrate the differing expectations between citizens and the state regarding sanitation provision. Qualitative data for the paper was collected over a three year period, through interviews with residents and city government officials, and a PAR photovoice project with residents from case study sites in Khayelitsha and Mukuru KwaRueben. We argue that South Africa’s social justice and rights-based oriented post-apartheid social contract, codified in legislation, and a robust culture of rights-based activism have forced the CCT to provide free sanitation. In Nairobi, however, the lack of cohesion in institutional, legal and policy frameworks, coupled with limited claims for sanitation by slum dwellers and civil society have produced a governance context where the NCC is not under pressure to provide sanitation. This paper broadens the understanding of the socio-political factors that motivate citizens to claim sanitation and the state to provide it. In doing so we contribution to nuanced understandings of the factors driving different forms of urban governance in the African city.