Water governance in urban informal settlements: an infrastructure lens perspective on Mukuru, Nairobi and Kya Sands, Johannesburg

Abstract

Through an extended notion of infrastructure as constituted of materials, people (human bodies and social relations) and knowledge, the study explored the diverse elements of infrastructure that residents of informal settlements have to navigate for continued access to water services as well as how the navigation transforms the normative mode of governance of access towards non-normative modes. The study employed a qualitative and comparative case-study approach based on everyday practices in access to water services in the informal settlements of Mukuru (in Nairobi, Kenya) and Kya Sands (in Johannesburg, South Africa). Primary data (from interviews, focus group dialogues–FGDs and transect-walks for direct observations) were combined with secondary data for thematic analyses guided by Atlas ti coupled with matrix-based data coding approach. Emerging from the extended infrastructure lens coupled with point-of-access manoeuvres, the study contributes towards urban governance discourse through a deepened understanding of how access to water services in informal settlements is mediated through an assemblageof human and non-human elements of infrastructure. Overall, the study demonstrates how unwarranted privileging of the “expert” through biasing of formal policies and practices towards normative modes of water governance fails to gain traction on the ground, especially when contested through diverse manoeuvres of everyday practices which transform the normative to non-normative modes of governance. One of the most salient insights of the study is the elevation of the critical role of people-as-infrastructure(in terms of the human body and social relations) in access to water services. Specifically, the study reveals diverse embodied intersectionalities (such as by race, gender and class) of people-as-infrastructure with regard to access to water servicesespecially in the last-mile delivery to residents’ houses. The study further extends the understanding of Simone’s notion of people-as-infrastructure where it primarily translates into women-as-infrastructure. Given the ongoing racial inequality in post-apartheid South Africa, the understanding of women-as-infrastructureis further intersected by race to form the ‘black-female-body’ as infrastructure in the case of Kya Sands. The people-as-infrastructure element thus opened up avenues for non-normative manoeuvres such as contestation/subversion of rules and tampering with material infrastructure by actors in order to ensure access. The study thus foregrounds the perpetual “visibility” of material hydraulic infrastructure in informal settlements contrary to Heidegger’s argumentthat infrastructure is only visible when it breaks down. Through the knowledge component, the study demonstrates how the normative mode of governance gets inverted/subverted when state officials resort to the situated knowledge of residents to accomplish diverse management roles such as repairs of the material infrastructure where infrastructural knowledge by me nbecomes more visible as the critical infrastructure element.