Investigating residents' perceptions of environmental health in informal settlements of South Africa: the case of Makause, Ekurhuleni Municipality
Date
2015-04-30
Authors
James, Ntandokabawo
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Abstract
The relationship between humanity and environment influences the health and quality of the environment. In turn, the state of the environment determines the quality of life that inhabitants are bound to live. Urbanization and shortage of housing among the economically deprived groups coupled with lack of affordable housing has encouraged formation of informal settlements in cities throughout South Africa. Poor environmental health conditions are characteristic of such settlements, and these conditions can be attested to numerous factors such as politics, policies as well as failure by local municipalities to strategically improve living conditions of the economically disadvantaged.
Twenty years into the new democratic South Africa, communities in these informal settlements are still faced with environmental uncertainties, poor service delivery and forced removals. Authorities are failing to come up with strategies that counter the ever growing urban poor populations that often result from migration of poverty. Communities of these settlements are not homogenous, and thus they perceive their prevailing environmental health conditions differently depending on their world view.
Makause informal settlement in Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) lack basic services such as sanitation, water and electricity, which compromise the environmental health of the area. Residents of this settlement have a history of staging marches in a quest to obtain basic services. Their protests have been intercepted by the heavy arm of the law in the form of South African Police Services. This has been tailored into many other factors that can inform perceptions of their prevailing environmental health. The focus of this dissertation is to investigate local environmental health perceptions in Makause informal settlement with attention to factors that inform these perceptions.
Semi-structured interviews formed the major research method employed for this research with a random selection of interviewees from the settlement. The sample generally expressed dissatisfaction with their prevailing environmental health and living conditions. This points to the fact that the government is faced with a task to improve living conditions in informal settlements around the country.