Today, approximately 200 Social Justice Coalition (SJC) members will gather outside the Cape Town Civic Centre – joined by Mayor Patricia de Lille, ward councilors, and partners – to mark the City’s announcement (see here) of a new service for informal settlements which could drastically improve the quality of sanitation services.
Cape Town has been awarded the right to host the World Design Capital 2014 (WDC2014) against stiff competition from cities across the planet, in large part because of the Cape Town Partnership’s bold and candid bid. The bid promised to use the year-long event to “deal with the vast imbalances that exist in our society”,…
The Social Justice Coalition (SJC) has observed that refuse collection in informal settlements is often irregular and of very poor quality. Refuse is often left rotting for days or weeks, contributing to the spread of disease.
All refuse collection for informal settlements in the City of Cape Town is outsourced to private contractors, which in our view limits accountability and recourse. In addition, the provision and maintenance of sanitation services, which are also outsourced, are either non-existent or of a poor quality.
The Social Justice Coalition (SJC) welcomes a commitment from the Office of Cape Town Mayor Patricia de Lille that janitorial services for sanitation facilities in informal settlements “should be considered for inclusion” in the planned Mayoral Special Jobs Creation Project. According to the Mayor, the R138 million project – announced on 29 September 2011[2] – will come in the form of “a community based operation and maintenance programme in historically neglected communities” which will include “cleaning, maintenance of services in informal settlements, maintenance of stormwater systems, and more”. If such a service is designed and implemented effectively, it will serve as a groundbreaking step towards ensuring that all people in Cape Town have their rights to basic sanitation progressively realized.
Unenclosed toilets in Rammulotsi, Free State (photograph by Madelene Cronjé) For more than a year, national attention has been focussed on the ongoing saga of the toilets constructed without enclosures Makhaza, Khayelitsha. We have watched as residents in one of the…
In two weeks time South Africans will celebrate Freedom Day – a day which commemorates seventeen years since we queued patiently to vote in our country’s first democratic elections. Much has changed for the better over this time, but many of our poorest citizens continue to wait for the delivery of basic services to reinforce…