Who governs Johannesburg water?: an actor-network reading of water services governance in the City of Johannesburg (2000-2018)

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2022

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Mushongera, Darlington

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This thesis examines the structure of the City of Johannesburg, its evolution and relationship with its water services provider, Johannesburg Water. The objective is to provide a detailed exposé of the complexity of urban water services management. The delivery of water services in the City of Johannesburg has been highly contested, but not fully understood. This thesis makes an important contribution to the understanding of this topic. It explores the evolution of the City’s structure since 2000, its current configuration, and how various actors exert influence on Johannesburg Water in order to achieve efficiency and equity in the delivery of water services. The thesis applies the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to understand how New Public Management (NPM) as a set of ideas for restructuring public services has materialised in the City of Johannesburg. ANT rejects the dualism between human and non-human entities and ascribes agency to both. Hence, the thesis draws together the influence of both officials and artefacts into a single network giving a comprehensive picture of water services governance in the City of Johannesburg. The City of Johannesburg turns out to be a prime example of how NPM influenced the structure and processes of water services governance in the City. The literature on NPM is vast, but there is a dearth of systematic empirical tests on how NPM-led reforms have configured municipal administrations and processes, particularly in the global south. This thesis has shown how state administrations have, inquest for efficiency, been hallowed out, processes complicated such that objectives of service delivery are not met fully. Document analysis, participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and ethnographic methodologies were utilised in the data collection. The quest for efficiency in the City in terms of politically determined objectives caused a persistent evolution in the City’s structure since 2000 to the hallowed state that exists today. Fragmentation, multiple controls, and duplication of effort are now common features. The system of reporting has faltered and there are ambiguities as to who oversees the performance of Johannesburg Water due to the overly complex structurethat has emerged due to NPM led reforms in the City of Johannesburg. NPM has introduced irreversible distortions in the governance of public services that continue to marginalise the poor. ANT has been a useful tool for revealing these complexities and locate where the fault lines exist the bar municipal government from achieving objectives of service delivery, in particular reaching out to the poor. With the poor always present in society and the impossibility of reversing the effects of NPM, the thesis calls for a rethink of the role of the state in service delivery by positioning the poor for the sake of equity and social justice

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A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Town and Regional Planning), 2022

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