Informal and Unserviceable: the State, Informal Settlement Residents, and Sanitation Management in Western Tshwane City, South Africa

Abstract

South Africa’s approach towards informal urban sanitation is demonstrative of a formal-informal binary position, which has seen the development and entrenching of a top-down technocratic state planning system, which has in turn legitimised non-interventionism and systematic exclusion of informal activities and practices, forcing informal settlement communities to manage their sanitation. We use Phomolong as a prototypical case of the deterioration of state-resident relations. We argue that the state approach also has implications on the residents’ responses to sanitation management processes. We conclude that the absence of a coherent sanitation policy for informal settlements has significantly diminished these communities’ sense of citizenship and belonging.