Hydro-Social Permutations of Water Commodification in Blantyre City, Malawi

A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities

2014

Isaac M.K. Tchuwa School of Environment Education and Development

Table of Contents

Table of Contents ...... 2

List of Figures ...... 6

List of Tables ...... 7

List of Graphs ...... 7

List of Photos ...... 8

List of Maps ...... 9

Abstract ...... 10

Declaration ...... 11

Acknowledgements ...... 14

Chapter1: Introduction ...... 17

1.1 Charting thesis rationale ...... 17

1.2 Research context ...... 28

1.3 Structure of the thesis ...... 43

Chapter2: Theoretical and Methodological Framework: Inquiring into

Capitalist Remaking of Hydro-social Relations through a Historical

Geographical Materialist Perspective ...... 45

2.1 Introduction ...... 45

2.2 Historical geographical materialism and the critical theorisation of

waterscapes ...... 46

2.2.1.1 Capitalist urbanisation of nature/space and the process of

commodification ...... 50

2.2.2 The ideological nature of the state, capital and the commodification of socionature ...... 53

2.3 Research Methodology ...... 57

2.3.1 Research Approach ...... 58

2.3.1.1 Primary research and selection of field sites ...... 59

2.3.1.2 Negotiating access to the field, primary data collection and my awkward multiple positionalities in the research process ...... 63

2.3.1.2.1 The challenge of making sense of collected primary material ...... 69

2.3.1.3 Secondary research and its conundrums ...... 71

2.3.2 Inclusions and omissions in the research process ...... 75

Chapter3: A Political Ecology of Early Colonial Remaking of Blantyre’s

Waterscape (1850s to the late 1890s) ...... 78

3.1 Introduction ...... 78

3.2 Early moments of colonial urbanisation of water in Blantyre (late 1850s onwards) ...... 81

3.2.1 The logic of capital and producing a fractured watering of the colonial

Town ...... 93

3.2.1.1 Race, class and the privatisation of access to colonial water and sanitation services in Blantyre ...... 102

3.2.2 Money, modern technology and early colonial remaking of hydro-social relations in Blantyre ...... 109

3.3 Chapter Conclusion ...... 116

Chapter4: Colonial Modernisation, its Contradictions and Shifting Frontiers towards Institutional Centralisation of Water Governance in Blantyre (late

1890s- 1950s) ...... 120 3

4.1 Introduction ...... 120

4.2 Towards Institutional centralisation of the water urbanisation process in

Blantyre (late 1890s to 1920s) ...... 122

4.3 The colonial administration seeks to intervene…and the further commodification of Blantyre’s waterscape (1920s to 1950s) ...... 142

4.3.1 Blantyre Town Council vs. state contestations around the water boring project and its hydro-social implications ...... 153

4.4 Chapter Conclusion ...... 163

Chapter5: ‘Decolonised’ Blantyre and the Enduring Legacies of the Logics and

Contradictions of Colonial Remaking of Blantyre’s Waterscape (1964 onwards) 166

5.1 Introduction ...... 166

5.2 Shifting political frontiers and the enduring legacy of the colonial logics of modernising Blantyre ...... 168

5.2.1 The Walkers Ferry Scheme and enduring ties of colonial dependency ...... 175

5.3 Blantyre Water Board (BWB), dependency on borrowed technologies and its discontents ...... 183

5.3.1 The hydro-social consequences of technological dependency ...... 190

5.3.1.1 Inability to respond to market forces and its long-term hydro-social consequences ...... 195

5.3.2 Rising production costs at BWB and unaffordable water that hardly flows 211

5.4 Chapter Conclusion ...... 219

Chapter6: Complex Social-Geographies of Water Access in Contemporary

Blantyre ...... 223

6.1 Introduction ...... 223

6.2 Reaffirming the “everyday” in urban water political ecology ...... 224

6.2.1 Daily struggles for water in Contemporary Blantyre: a case of Bangwe and Manase Townships ...... 227

6.2.1.1 Complex permutations of water access in Manase and Bangwe ...... 232

6.2.1.1.1 The irony of having a private water connection without water in

Bangwe ...... 235

6.2.1.1.2 Water that is never free in Manase Township ...... 243

6.3 Chapter Conclusion ...... 254

Chapter7: ‘Non-privatised’ Water as a Commodity in Contemporary Blantyre .. 256

7.1 Introduction ...... 256

7.2 Urbanised Water as a Commodity ...... 257

7.2.1 On the power of money and the commodification of free water sources in

Bangwe ...... 259

7.2.2 Of Broken dreams of a modern home and extracting rent from water in

Bangwe ...... 263

7.3 Water charity or water commodity: the commodification of kiosks and communal water pumps in Manase and Bangwe ...... 270

7.3.1 Kiosks and commodification of water in Manase ...... 271

7.3.2 Water pumps and the commodification of water in Bangwe ...... 277

7.4 Chapter Conclusion ...... 281

Chapter8: Conclusion ...... 284

8.1 Colonial/capitalist urbanisation as a critical moment in the production of alienated and commodified waterscapes ...... 286

8.2 On commodification of water being a historical geographical phenomenon 290

8.3 On complex socio-geographies of water access and there being no such a

thing as non-commodified water in contemporary Blantyre ...... 293

8.4 Implications of the findings and key contributions ...... 295

8.5 Final Word ...... 302

References ...... 305

List of Figures

Figure 1:1: Extract highlighting the commercial-oriented nature of Blantyre Water

Board ...... 39

Figure 1:2: Captures violent backlash against water disconnections in Blantyre ...... 40

Figure 3:1: Pasteur water filters advert from the African lakes Corporation ...... 114

Figure 3:2: Pasteur-Chamberland water filters ...... 115

Figure 4:1: Table and graph showing Colonial Administration’s budget deficit for the period 1903-1912 ...... 130

Figure 4:2 A copy of original plan of proposed colonial urban land redevelopment plan for Blantyre ...... 136

Figure 4:3: Colonial property listing and valuation roll for Blantyre ...... 140

Figure 4:4: A sketch of water boring mapping in colonial Blantyre ...... 150

Figure 4:5: A copy of log sheet for the Sunnyside/Naperi water boring tests ...... 152

Figure 4:6: A scanned copy of original sketch of Hynde Waterworks (Callouts added) ...... 157

Figure 5:1: A systematic layout of Walkers Ferry Scheme...... 178

Figure 5:2: Scatterplot and table showing cost of fixed capital at BWB (1980-2000) 191

List of Tables

Table 1:1: Annual flow contributions from major rivers in the Zambezi Catchment 29

Table 4:1: Colonial state expenditure for the period 1903/4-1911/12 ...... 131

Table 4:2: Sources of revenue and collection figures for the colonial state for the period 1903-1912 ...... 132

Table 4:3: Summary of financial status at Mudi River Water Board 1956-62 ...... 162

Table 5:1: tax sharing and net benefits to Nyasaland (British Sterling million) ...... 172

Table 5:2: External consultancy firms contracted at BWB ...... 189

Table 5:3: Cost of production at BWB for the period 1980-2000 ...... 192

Table 5:4: Captures project financiers, loan amounts and interest paid at BWB (1962-

2005) ...... 201

Table 5:5: Comparing annual water production and peak demand at Blantyre Water

Board ...... 216

List of Graphs

Graph 5.1: Comparing different production costs at Blantyre Water Board (1980-

2000)...... 194

Graph 5.2: Comparing income, tariff increase and net profit at BWB (1977-2000) .. 198

Graph 5.3: Approximate proportion of loan contribution of different lenders ...... 202

Graph 5.4: Showing long-term debt and interest on loans at BWB ...... 204

Graph 5.5: Showing foreign exchange losses for the period 1980-2000 ...... 206

Graph 5.6: Comparing income, expenditure (minus interest) and profit at BWB

(1980-2005) ...... 207

Graph 5.7: Comparing income and expenditure plus interest at BWB (1980-2005) 209

Graph 5.8: Sketch Plot capturing negative correlation between loan interest and profit ...... 209

Graph 5.9: Comparing income and expenditure (plus interest on loans) at BWB

(1980-2005) ...... 210

Graph 5.10: Number of faults in Blantyreʹs water supply network ...... 214

Graph 5.11: Annual average water production and peak demand at BWB ...... 215

Graph 5.12: Comparing tariffs among different consumers (1983-2001) ...... 218

Graph 5.13: Showing tariff difference between consumers in high density and low density areas ...... 218

List of Photos

Photo 3.1: A Portrait of an African village life in Blantyre in the 1900s ...... 83

Photo 3.2: Africans taking refuge at Mandala, the Headquarters of African Lakes

Corporation...... 88

Photo 3.3: Early Mandala House, the Headquarters of African Lakes Corporation . 92

Photo 3.4: Black African Police Force at Mandala ...... 99

Photo 4.1: Early steam locomotive in the Shire Highlands ...... 144

Photo 4.2; Early train station at Limbe, Blantyre ...... 145

Photo 5.1: Water pump at Blantyre Water Board ...... 187

Photo 5.2: A pipe burst in Blantyreʹs water supply network ...... 213

Photo 6.1: Shows a small section of Bangwe Township ...... 231

Photo 6.2: A private standpipe in Manase ...... 246

Photo 6.3: A section of Chiwandila Stream in Manase turned into a rubbish dump

...... 248

Photo 6.4: A polluted hand dug puddle on Chiwandila Stream ...... 249 8

Photo 6.5: A resident of Manase capturing water from a rock fissure in Chiwandila

Stream ...... 249

Photo 7.1: The unsanitary state of a spring in Bangwe ...... 260

Photo 7.2: Depicting a mismanaged and dysfunctional water kiosk in Blantyre .... 273

Photo 7.3: Shows a water kiosk run by Water Users Association in Blantyre ...... 273

Photo 7.4: A Billboard showing Mudi Water Users Association financial summary report ...... 275

Photo 7.5: Shows one of vandalised and dysfunctional water pumps in Bangwe .. 278

List of Maps

Map 1:1: Map of Southern Malawi showing Blantyre and sorrounding districts ..... 30

Map 1:2: Map of Shire-Zambezi River Basin showing average annual runoff contribution of its sub-basins ...... 31

Map 2:1: Location of Manase and Bangwe Townships ...... 62

Map 3:1: Map showing low altitude location of Blantyre Town in relation to the mountainous terrain of the general area ...... 95

Map 3:2: Map showing possible general location of water wells within European dominated areas of Colonial Blantyre ...... 104

Map 5:1: Sketch map of Walkers Ferry Water Scheme ...... 177

Map 6:1: Map showing location of Manase in relation to Sunnyside and Chiwandila

Stream in proximity to Mudi River ...... 244

Word Count: total 89,706; main text only including captions to figures and tables

80,029

Abstract

Despite years of investment in urban water infrastructure, and the state–a supposedly benign public entity–being the major actor in governing water, many poor residents in global south cities such as Blantyre experience unprecedented water-related problems. The neoliberal narrative unequivocally advocates privatising water; it frames the water problem as symptomatic of the unravelling of non-economic means of distributing this basic necessity of life while revering the free market as a panacea to this long-standing challenge. This thesis draws from the production/urbanisation of nature/space literature to contribute towards framing an alternative and more just political ecological water narrative. Through a radical critique of capitalist urbanisation, it argues that the contemporary urban water condition is the outcome and symptomatic of the unjust historical geographical legacies of modernist/capitalist means of producing water. It problematises the neo-liberal “tragedy of the commons” discourse that attributes these problems to the non-commodity nature of water. Through a case study of Blantyre City, the thesis frames this critique through two claims (1) that there is no such a thing as non-commodified produced water in contemporary Blantyre; (2) that the commodification of water is nothing new, it is a histo- geographical process deeply rooted in logics and contradictions of capitalist production of nature and space. It traces a critical moment in the capitalist remaking of hydro-social relations to colonial modernisation. British colonisation (late 1850s-early 1960s) inserted money and modern techniques at the heart of human-water interactions thereby significantly transforming traditional modes of accessing water. During this period, water began to change from being a common good to an economic resource that could privately be enclosed and harnessed as a means to economic/private ends through modern techniques. Institutions created to mediate this emergent modernist water architecture were dominated by vested private settler interests, depended heavily on external financing and revenue generated from exchanging water through money. British colonisations then sow first seeds in inserting monetary exchange, class and social power as mediators of the human-water interchange thereby entrenching social inequalities in Blantyre’s waterscape. The post-colonial political transition in 1964 did little to radically reconfigure these colonial logics and their contradictions; in fact, albeit in qualitatively different ways, these dynamics intensified. The thesis establishes that these historical geographical dynamics continue to reproduce conditions through which underprivileged residents are alienated from water, and this basic need is commodified in contemporary Blantyre. In locating alienation and commodification within the wider historical geographical context of capitalist urbanisation, this thesis aims to critically engage with debates on neo-liberalisation of water. It takes issue with a particular ahistorical manner commodification of water is read and the failure of these debates to engage critically with the historical/colonial genesis of the present urban water condition in global south cities. The thesis hopes to contribute to academic and practical projects concerned with generating alternative understandings and finding just solutions to persistent water problems in the global south.

Declaration

No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institution of learning

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To my departed sister Miriam and beloved little niece you left behind

Acknowledgements

It is unimaginable that I alone could have endured as monumental a task as this. If I have come thus far it is because I relied on the generous support and encouragement of many individuals too numerous to individually acknowledge. I therefore extend my heartfelt gratitude to all that have in any way been helpful in this process. I am fully cognisant that without such collective support this project could have no doubt been difficult to do. I nevertheless feel obliged to make specific mention of some of the remarkable contributions that have sustained me over the years of PhD toil.

I am highly indebted to the generous support I received over the years from my supervisory team. Coming into a PhD life, late alone for the first time flirting with radical Marxist theory, was to me an unnerving moment. I had profound doubts and fears venturing into this unfamiliar territory. It was the inspirational and warm-hearted chats I had with Professor Maria Kaika and Professor Gavin

Bridge in early moments of my PhD that arrayed many of my fears and gave me the much needed confidence to carry on in profound ways I can only begin to describe.

I found in the formidable supervisory combination of Maria and Gavin bountiful and supportive intellectual space in which I limitlessly and wildly toyed with my juvenile and very often crude and inconsequential research ideas. Very remarkable is the serenity, abundant kindness and patience with which Maria and Gavin let me experiment with those initial and hazy ideas. Maria deserves specific tribute though. When Gavin left for Durham, she has been a constant source of inspiration and unfading ray of hope. It is her determination, constant assurances and clever suggestions that have urged me on when the project wobbled on and I seemed to lose the will to fight on. Dr Tomas Frederiksen cannot pass without mention either.

When Gavin left, it was Tomas that stepped in to fill the supervisory gap. Tomas’s fresh pair of eyes and the due diligence with which he scrutinised my work has been of tremendous value in drafting this thesis. His feedback has been immensely

14 useful in carrying this project forward. Looking back, the ever-evolving supervisory arrangements I have had over the years have been beneficial in ways I can only retrospectively appreciate. I have benefitted from an array of knowledge and experience. Any grey areas in this thesis remain my own, and I take full responsibility for that.

James Evans had been very helpful with the PhD application process and subsequently vouching for my research funding. Without Jame’s initial enthusiasm in my embryonic research ideas and convivial attitude transmitted through our initial email correspondence, I could possibly not have come to read for a PhD at

Manchester. Although my supervisory ties with James were short-lived due to him being away on sabbatical leave, the initial role James played in shaping the direction of my research was remarkable. More so importantly, our fruitful exchanges during my first year continuation review have gone a long way to bring focus into the research.

Without funding from Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, my dream of undertaking doctoral research could have remained as such—just a dream. I am therefore highly indebted to the Commission for financing my research. Here also I cannot pass without acknowledging the role Cannon Collins Trust played in helping me secure funding from Commonwealth Commission. At the critical time I nearly resigned to my fate and lost hope in finding any funding opportunities,

Cannon Collins Trust nominated me for this scholarship. It is to Cannon Collins and the good work they do for Southern Africa I therefore owe my immense debt and gratitude.

If it were not for the bountiful support and generosity of people in Malawi during my field work, this research could have been much more challenging than it has been. I thank residents of Bangwe and Manase for welcoming me into their communities/homes and taking time to participate. Without your enthusiasm, generosity and willingness to share personal stories, this project could have been

15 doomed. Kondwani Chinyama also deserves my vey many special thanks for the guidance and support he offered during my field work in Blantyre. I immensely relied on his wealth of local knowledge and friendship to navigate various field research hurdles in a City I had little familiarity with. If it were not for my former college buddies and best friends, Jeff Chisale and Lionel Chipeta to open up their abodes in Zomba and Blantyre respectively, my stay in Malawi could not have gone as smoothly. The homely and comradely atmosphere Jeff and Lionel provided freely no doubt made a huge difference to my field research. Staff at National Archives in

Zomba went extra miles to dig out records on which a significant part of this project has rested. My time in the archive could have been fruitless without such generous help.

Chapter1: Introduction

There is a real danger here. No doubt, some invocations of “neo-liberalism” act as little more than shallow, ahistorical and ageographical invocations of a poorly defined abstraction, perhaps ironically reinforcing the taken-for- granted character of free-market discourses and the typically idealist ways in which they are championed (Heynen 2007:4)

1.1 Charting thesis rationale

This thesis advances two inter-related claims (1) that there is no such a thing as non-

commodified produced water in contemporary Blantyre; (2) that the

commodification of water is nothing new, it is a histo-geographical process deeply

rooted in the logics and contradictions of capitalist production of nature and

space—a process traceable to colonial remaking of socio-natural relations. In

exploring these claims, the thesis draws from neo-Marxian historical geographical

materialist readings of production/urbanisation of nature and space (Heynen et al.

2006; Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000; Smith 1990; Swyngedouw 1999). The thesis

purposely looks to critically engage with conceptions of commodification within

debates on neo-liberalisation of nature/water/urban space (Bakker 2009; Brenner

and Theodore 2002; Castree 2010; Castro (2013; Heynen 2007; Harrison 2008;Harvey

2005; Glassman 2007; Larner 2000; Mansfield 2008; McAfee 2003; McCarthy 2004;

McDonald 2005; Prudman2004; Robison 2006;Vaughan et al 2010). It takes issue

with the overly abstract and narrowly defined neo-liberal perspective of

commodification commonly implicit in some of this scholarship. Critical

geographers have studied the neo-liberalisation of nature from multiple

perspectives. Understanding the logics, processes and outcomes of current efforts to

bring nature under the aegis of free markets (Castree 2008a) has been of common

interest in this scholarship. This thesis argues that some of this critical literature has

overly been fixated on looking at current efforts to commodify nature within the

17 contemporary neo-liberal environmental policies and practices; it does so while ignoring the wider historical context of capitalist urbanisation of nature and space.

Most, and I must qualify, not all, of this literature, gives the impression, often unwittingly, that processes considered under the banner of neo-liberalisation such as privatisation, enclosure, commodification and others are coterminous with neo- liberal capitalism (See Kotz 2009; Peck & Tickell 2007 on the import with which the phrase neo-liberal capitalism is used). Such an impression partly arises, I argue, out of lack of engagement with the historical geographical context and processes that have created failings within current modes of resource governance, and provided the impetus towards contemporary neo-liberal reforms. Although only in passing, but along somewhat similar lines, Castree (2008a), for example, laments this lacuna in his critique of research on neo-liberalisation of nature. Thus, while acknowledging the remarkable contribution this body of work has made, Castree questions the tendency to treat processes such as commodification as exclusive to neo-liberalisation of nature. He notes that:

While it is true in the sense that literature on the natural environment and a thing called `neoliberalismʹ is very new, it is false in another sense. For well over a decade, published literature on the nonhuman world and `privatisationʹ, marketsʹ, `commodificationʹ, structural adjustment, free trade, and other cognate phenomena has been widely available. This raises the question of whether `neoliberalismʹ is merely a synonym for these now well- known phenomena or something different quantitatively or qualitatively. None of the authors whose work I review here answer this question systematically and nor, therefore, will I (2008a:132).

Specifically surveying literature on neo-liberalisation of water confirms the caveat

Castree brings to our attention. There is, for example, a tendency in this literature to constrict discussions on privatisation and commodification of water to recent global attempts to open up state controlled water infrastructure to private capital; also, some of this literature seems ambivalent to the possibility that water can be a commodity without the total encroachment of free market rationality. The first of

18 the general tendencies alluded to, can be seen in the work that has taken interest in structural water reforms in the global south, after the 1992 Dublin consensus (See

McDonald 2005; Naidoo 2007; Pitcher 2012; Narsiah 2008). This literature generally gives the impression that, water commodification is new and exclusive to such contemporary processes loosely classified under the contentious and murky rubric—neo-liberalisation (for contestations around what this ‘thing’ called neo- liberalisation actually means, see for example, Bakker 2010; Barnett 2005; Brenner et al. 2010; Brenner and Theodore 2002; Larner 2000; Larner 2003; McCarthy and

Prudham 2004; Peck 2001; Peck and Tickell 2002; Springer 2010). In MacDonald

(2005), for instance, the proliferation of recent attempts to deregulate/privatise/commercialise/marketise water (in the opening chapter to the

“Age of Commodity” MacDonald articulately elaborates on these terms), is seen to connote an age when water is becoming a commodity. In bringing together various case studies from Africa, MacDonald surmises that the water commodity age is simply epitomised by private capital’s takeover of hitherto public water institutions.

Like many discussions that confine water commodification to the recent phase of the global capitalist economy, McDonald here clearly states that this process is new in Southern Africa. One learns that water has only become a commodity. McDonald, for instance, concludes in the opening chapter to the book referred to heretofore that:

Underlying all this activity, we argue, are the broad forces of commodification: the transformation of all social relations to economic relations, subsumed by the logic of the market and reduced to the crude calculus of profit. Water while not the easiest thing to commodify-has come under increasing commodity pressure in Southern Africa to conform to economic models of cost analysis and cost recovery…Hence the title of this book: The age of commodity (McDonald 2005:3) .

Furthermore, the second tendency along this line of thought is evident in Castro

(2013) treatise on “water is not (yet) a commodity”. For Castro, insofar as water is not fully under the control of free markets, he rejects the idea that it can be a commodity. He argues that most water in the planet remains un-commodified because it has not been fully brought into the capitalist rationalisation processes.

Situating his arguments within literature on the historical interrelationships between the human and non-human worlds (Elias and Mennell 2000; Vries and

Goudsblom 2002; Sutton 2004), Castro identifies the non-commodity character of water in irrational and wayward outcomes of humans’ interrelations with water. He argues that water cannot be said to have been already commodified. This is because despite sustained efforts to bring water into the nostrums and doctrines of capitalist valuation and commodification, this process has not yet fully materialised; it remains fragmented and incomplete, he argues. The persistence of ancient forms of what Castro calls irrational forms of valuation in contemporary rationalised societies, passes for evidence of the non-commodity nature of water in many parts of the world.

Nonetheless, this thesis contends that overly conflating commodification within these so called neo-liberal processes, and or rejecting the commodity character of water not fully dictated by such contemporary free-market rationalities, works to strengthen the pro water neo-liberalisation ideologies which many of these scholars seek to discredit. Of course, what animates critical research into these issues is generally the need to expose injustices associated with neo-liberalisation and make a contribution towards envisioning more just socio-natures. Nevertheless, failure to engage with the totality of the exploitative capitalist socio-natural relations, beyond this contemporary capitalist juggernaut, only works to stifle this anti-capitalist argument. For example, one of the potent ways neo-liberal ideologues justify marketization of water, is by attributing the failing of water systems in cities of the global south, to the non-commodity or public nature of water. The discursive

20 framing of water as presently a non-commodity has provided a legitimating narrative for those more inclined towards privatising state controlled water infrastructure. Thus, labelling water untouched by the free-market–in its idealistically constructed purest form –as non-commodity, has enabled ideologues of this approach to attribute global water problems to the failing of public modes of water governance (See Bakker 2002; Swyngedouw 2005). To this school of thought, such systemic failures are symptomatic of the dangers of welfarist or socialist state policies in water governance. In doing so, a potent argument, that frames privatisation of water as the magic-bullet to the global water challenges, has been put forward. For instance, the 1992 International Conference on Water and the

Environment in Dublin, is considered to be the watershed moment in shifting global water discourses towards neo-liberalisation (Budds 2003). The Dublin conference reaffirmed the need for greater economisation of world water resources. Thus, one of the four key declarations on water proclaimed that “water has the economic value in all its competing uses and should be recognised as an economic good…past failure to recognise the economic value of water has led to wasteful and environmentally damaging uses of the resource” (World Meteorological

Organisation 1992). For the Dublin principles, therefore, the need to economise water is couched in a critique of the past failings of state institutions to end global water scarcities. Public institutions are discursively framed as too inept to deal with global water problems; as such, the invisible hand of free markets has mostly been seen as a panacea to the world water access problems (Solanes and Gonzalez-

Villarreal 1999).

I argue that much of the critical scholarship I take issue with here has not responded potently to this specific master narrative. While emphasis has been on discrediting these processes conveniently labelled as neo-liberalisation, this scholarship has not equally addressed the problematic situation within public/state controlled modes of governing water infrastructure, which has been the focus of

21 neo-liberal-minded critics. Parsing geographic literature on neo-liberalisation of water reveals an intense critical engagement with recent effort to commercialise or privatise water, while very little or nothing is said about the genesis of chronic problems facing existing public urban water infrastructure, especially in the global south. There are of course few exceptions to this criticism. For example, few studies on water political ecology (See, Page 2005; Swyngedouw 1997) have attempted to understand the existing urban water condition within the historical geographies of capitalist urbanisation of socio-nature in the global south. These studies nevertheless are few and far between, and powerful insights they produce appear not to be taken seriously in discussions on neo-liberalisation of water in the global south. I argue that failure to engage with the wider historical geographical context, in which the present water condition is reproduced in time and space, puts critical scholarship in a difficult position. It thwarts its ability to provide convincing answers to the troubling question of why existing public modes of governing waterscapes in the global south are highly unjust. Being overly critical of neo- liberalisation, without critically engaging with systemic problems in current public water systems, creates the impression that critical scholarship is defending these as just and more benign. Nevertheless, neo-liberal concerns about failings in existing public modes of water governance are real, and any critical argument that does not robustly engage with these is difficult to sustain. For example, how might we dispute the fact that despite years of global efforts, water systems in many cities of the global south continue to be plagued by widening access inequalities, water shortages and such other chronic problems, with serious consequences on socio- ecological wellbeing (Cairncross 1990; Gadgil 1998; Pagiola et al 2005; Rosegrant

&Binswanger 1994)? This is difficult to explain within the current anti-neoliberal critique. While neo-liberals have been quick to square the blame on the state and non-capitalist socio-natural relations, those on the opposing leftist end of the political spectrum have not responded potently to this narrative.

This thesis therefore suggests that one way this neo-liberal “tragedy of the water commons” argument can be robustly challenged, is by empirically illustrating through historical geographical analysis that, the systemic problems confronting many public water institutions in the global south are not necessarily the result of water being a free resource as neo-liberals would want us to believe; but rather, this reflects socio-ecological crises and contradictions within capitalist remaking of socio-natural relations. Making this argument requires stepping out of the neo- liberal straightjacket, and focusing analyses of commodification of water, within the wider context of capitalist alienation of socio-nature relations. Doing so nevertheless demands one to be fully cognisant and acknowledge the conceptual plurality and complexity of the term alienation; it thus requires making explicit the conceptual import within which such a nebulous term is deployed (See for example

Dickens 1996; Meszaros 1970; Wendling 2009).

In this thesis, alienation is to be broadly understood from a Marxian perspective. This generally aims to reveal the effects of capitalist production on social-nature relations (Ollman 1976). In mobilising the concept of alienation, scholars of Marxian persuasion have partly demonstrated how capitalist relations of production estrange a human being from nature, from himself, and from other human beings ( Meszaros 1970). Central in understanding these devastating effects, is the manner and extent to which the capitalist mode transforms the labour process

(for purposes of this thesis for example, the act of drawing water), from being a self- actualising and direct relation/process (Wendling 2009), to being an indirect relation mediated through monetary exchange, machines and those who control the means of production; and in the process, human beings get distanced from nature and each other. In making sense of capitalist commodification of socio-nature, critical scholars have shown that the historically specific and totalising nature of alienation within this mode, makes attaching a price tag to every aspect of life, a deeply pervasive phenomenon (Castree 2003; Loftus 2005; Mansfield 2008). I mobilise this

23 neo-Marxist critique of capitalist (re)production to unearth an important historical moment when private capital, machines and elite few, began to dominate and estrange hydro-social (see Swyngedouw (2009) for the conceptual undertones behind the term hydro-social) relations in Blantyre. I demonstrate that it is precisely at this juncture that water began to be produced and distributed as a commodity. I develop this argument through Geographical literature that seeks to unveil the nature of capitalist urbanisation of socio-nature (Heynen et al. 2006; Kaika and

Swyngedouw 2000; Smith 1990; Swyngedouw 1999)—whereby capitalist urbanisation is simply understood as a metabolic process of transforming human- nature/space relations dominated by the commodity relation.

This critical scholarship has firmly demonstrated that commodities are central to the process of capitalist urbanisation of nature and space (See for example

Castree 2003; Heynen et al. 2006). In this process, the metabolic transformation of nature and space is deeply embedded in relations of commodity production and money-based exchange. The exchange of things for their monetary value is so pervasive that virtually anything, in one way or the other, is entangled in these relations of producing and exchanging commodities for money’s sake. For example,

Neil Smith’s counter-intuitive notion of production of nature, points towards this direction. He distinguishes production of nature in pre-capitalist from capitalist societies. Humans and nature have always been welded in a dialectic and differentiated relational unity to the extent that they are not separate entities (Smith

1990). Nonetheless through the process of work humans manipulate and change nature and in the process change their own nature. Through a Marxian materialist understanding of political economy, Smith here shows that by virtue of this relational unity, humans and nature have always been produced socio-natures. It is therefore illusory to envisage pristine nature untouched by humans. He argues that, what is remarkable in capitalist societies, is the expansiveness of the process of production of second nature for monetary exchange. This process is so endemic that

24 as “capital stalks the whole earth…it attaches a price tag to everything it sees”

(Smith 1990:78). It then becomes impossible to envisage first nature untouched by capitalist commodity exchange relations.

In highlighting the pervasiveness of the capitalist commodity relation, critical scholars such as Neil Smith partly call our attention to the difficulty that anything in the modern capitalist world today can ever be untainted by a commodity exchange relation. By reaffirming the centrality of commodity exchange for money’s sake, as a unique and pervasive character of capitalist urbanisation process, this thesis therefore makes a suggestion that it is theoretically impossible for anything to exist outside the commodity realm, in a predominantly capitalist world we live in. Here though, I wish to qualify my words carefully; the forgoing is not to argue that there are no things that are not directly exchanged for money. Of course, it would be plain wrong to argue that everything these days, including all water, is directly sold for money. It is a well-known fact, for example, that there are non-commodity based indigenous economies where monetary exchange does not mediate the human - nature interaction (Wellman and Cheal 1990; Parry 1989). Also, through a biographical approach to the process of commodification, Kopytoff (2009) has highlighted how things might enter and leave the realm of commodities during their social life. Ben Page equally deploys a similar approach to understand the commodification of water. He shows how water at different moments in its life history, enters, exits or re-enters the realm of commodities (Page 2005).

Furthermore, in their analysis of exchanging water as a gift in Khartoum, Zug and

Graefe (2014) convincingly analyse the existence of non-commodified, gift-based forms of water exchanges among neighbours. In such exchanges, money does not change hands, but rather a different moral framework determines these hydro- social relations.

Nevertheless, in contending that in capitalist urbanisation of socionature, things such as water can hardly escape the commodity realm, this thesis aims to begin shifting our understanding of water commodification towards a more relational perspective. This draws attention to indirect ways in which things in general, or water in particular, is commodified owing to its embeddeness in wider relations of capitalist production and monetary exchange. This approach takes issue with conceptions of commodification, which privileges the narrowly-defined realm in which things are exchanged, as the sole loci for analysing commodification. This, I argue, ignores the wider relational context in which things are embedded.

Moreover, I contend that, in arguing that things can enter and exit the realm of commodities during their social life, Kopytoff and Page unassumingly privilege a spatially fixed geographic context at which things are directly sold for money—the market as geographically delineated and fixed in space. Things are therefore, according to this argument, capitalist commodities or not, depending on whether they are being directly exchanged for money or not, at this very specific moment in their social life. In contrast, the approach espoused in this thesis posits that under capitalist urbanisation, the commodity realm extends far and beyond the immediate point at which things are exchanged. This process is deeply infused with multiple flows and relations that stretch from the immediate to the far-flung of the globe

(Swyngedouw and Kaika 1999). The commodity realm therefore, it is hereby argued, encompasses the entirety of these complex relations of capitalist exchange, and not necessarily only the specific point at which things are sold.

One may wonder of what necessity is the task I set out in this thesis then? To this, I am inclined to respond, while academically it offers a counter-argument to the “tragedy of the commons” neo-liberal critique overlooked to some extent in neo- liberalisation literature, insights from this thesis should also practically matter. One of critical geographers’ growing concerns has been to engage in what Loftus describes as scholar-activist role. Simply put, this refers to meaningfully getting

26 involved in contemplative scholarly and practical activity aimed at bringing about socio-ecological change beyond the ivory towers of the academy. This thesis aims to make a little contribution to this overall project. It is intended to help explain why structural water problems persist in African cities such as Blantyre despite years of state and non-state efforts and large investments in urban water infrastructure. In

Sub-Saharan Africa, data generally shows that there has not been a major shortfall in historic public spending in water infrastructure (Banerjee et al. 2008), and yet the region remains one of the poorest in terms of access to water—an estimated 40% of this region’s population have no access to improved water sources (United Nations

2014). Research in urban water political ecology, has sought to offer alternative explanations to these structural disparities, beyond the conventional overly economistic and technocentric explanations and solutions. With a focus on socio- political power relationships, and exposing the alienated nature of waterscapes under capitalist urbanisation, this emerging body of work (See for example Loftus

2007; Swyngedouw 2006) has long called for a rethink in existing modes of water governance in the global south.

By exposing the various structural forces, and conditions that have historically shaped and reproduced Blantyre as a commodified waterscape, this thesis equally takes a critical stance, and questions the ability of existing systems to deliver water equity and justice within the context of this capitalist hydro-social configuration. It rallies behind this political ecological clarion call for emancipatory and non-exclusionary strategies in water production and distribution. While a great deal has been learned from South American cities following for example the recent drive by big multilateral corporations to dispossess urban water infrastructure, and the subsequent grassroots protests of global significance such as the Cochambacha revolt (Marvin 1999), there is more that can still be learnt from a political ecological study of Africa’s urban water infrastructure. This continent remains underrepresented in this scholarship. Aside from work done by Alex Loftus, Laila

Smith, Patrick Bond, David Blanchon and few others in South Africa, Sebastian Zug and Olivier Graefe in Sudan,and Ben Page in Cameroon, there is not much else in terms of serious academic work that has sought to engage with Africa’s urban water challenge in this emerging field. It is perhaps not surprising that, given the global attention on its politics and economy, many of these existing studies on Africa have focused on South Africa. Africa nevertheless is a large continent whose vastly complex political ecologies and enduring urban water problems can provide useful insights to this emerging academic project. It is hoped that by using Blantyre—a largely unknown case study on the margins of Africa’s political economy—this study will make a modest contribution in filling this gap.

1.2 Research context

In this section, I wish to describe the contextual issues underpinning this research.

While beginning to highlight how ecology, politics and economics have historically shaped Blantyre’s present water condition, I specifically intend to problematise the manner this problem has traditionally been understood in the city’s water discourses. In so doing, gaps in the current understandings of Blantyre’s water problem are identified, and a basis for seeking an alternative explanation is laid out.

Blantyre City provides a rich context for undertaking research of this nature.

Located in Southern Malawi (see map 1.1), it is one the oldest urban centres in

Southern, Eastern and Central Africa. This city’s water situation makes for a curious political ecological reading. While geographically located in a region relatively rich with fresh water resources, Blantyre is in a water crisis. The city’s water crisis is generally characterised by water access inequalities among its residents and persistent water shortages from the supply network. Situated within the Shire-

Zambezi river basin (map 1.2) this city is generally not–hydrologically speaking–the most disadvantaged of places in Southern Africa. Zambezi is the largest river basin in Southern Africa covering 1.37million square kilometres (Kirchhoff and Bulkley

2008), and has a relatively good water availability compared to the three other large

28 river catchments in the region—Okavango, Limpompo and Orange. While water availability assessments show that the other three basins are located in areas of high aridity, the former is situated in the region considered to be of low aridity in

Southern Africa (Beekman et al. 2003). At a more local scale, Malawi, where Blantyre is an important commercial hub, is generally not physically considered a water scarce country. With a water stress level—that is, water withdrawal as a ratio of hydrological availability—of 0.012 (Pfister et al. 2009), Malawi is among few countries with a relatively good fresh water availability in the region. South Africa for example, with a water stress level of 0.675, is more stressed than Malawi, and yet has a far much higher per capital water access coverage.

Name of River Average Wet Season Dry Season Catchment Annual (m3/s flow (m3/s) flow (m3/s) Area Zambezi at Sea 3600 5000 1500 1,300,00 Shire River 500 550 360 150,000 Basin Luangwa River 620 1500 90 144,000 Basin Kafue River 260 400 120 67,000 Basin Kambopo River 260 400 120 67,000 Basin Table 1:1: Annual flow contributions from major rivers in the Zambezi Catchment Source: Shela (2000)

That is to suggest that Malawi’s water access problems are not inevitably a result of her natural conditions. With a total average rainfall of over 900mm/year and large fresh water bodies such as Shire River and Lake Malawi, this country is geographically in a far better position than countries in semi-arid regions such as

South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and others. While Blantyre’s local physical geography is challenging for harnessing water resources ( see chapter 3, section

3.2.1), the city’s proximity to important rivers such as Shire—one of the most

29 reliable water sources within the Zambezi Basin—gives the city a natural advantage in terms of physical water availability. Shire River, an outlet to lake Malawi— world’s 9 th largest fresh water lake, holding an estimated 7% of the world’s fresh water resources— is the third and second largest contributor of wet and dry season flows respectively in the Zambezi drainage basin (see table 1.1.). As Map 1.2 further illustrates, Malawi’s catchment area is also generally rated as one of the large contributors of annual average runoff to the Zambezi basin.

Map 1:1: Map of Southern Malawi showing Blantyre and sorrounding districts Source: produced by Nicholas Scarle (University of Manchester Cartographic

Unit)

Blantyre City

Map 1:2: Map of Shire-Zambezi River Basin showing average annual runoff contribution of its sub-basins Source: Adapted by Author from SADC-WD/ Zambezi River Authority (2008)

Despite this geographical advantage, Blantyre faces a critical water situation far more challenging than the physically water stressed cities such as Johannesburg in

South Africa (See Jacobsen et al. 2012:xviii for a more elaborate inter-city comparison). With an estimated population of nearly one Million people, only half have access to piped water in Blantyre while only 3% of those with access to the city’s water mains have private connections to their homes (Chipeta 2013; Manda

2009). The 97% of those with access to the city’s mains rely on communal connections while the other 50% not connected rely on alternative sources such as water pumps and unprotected water sources. Conceived and constructed between late 1890s and1964, the city’s modern water network is at present struggling to cope.

Mudi and Walkers Ferry waterworks have persistently failed to meet the rising water needs of the city, resulting in frequent water shortages. Depending on where you live, if you are a resident of Blantyre, chances are very high that your water tap will fail to consistently cater for your daily water needs. The unequal manner different residents of the city suffer from these shortages further makes for a curious reading. I briefly lived in Sunnyside and Ndirande neighbourhoods of this city long before embarking on this project. It is in fact my contrasting water experiences here that have in some ways shaped my interest in this research problem. Sunnyside is one of the well-off parts of Blantyre city—an enclave for the well-heeled. Ndirande, on the other hand, is an informal settlement dominated by the poor working class of the city. My weeklong stay in these neighbourhoods, at the height of widespread and prolonged water shortages of March 2009, revealed huge disparities in the manner Blantyre’s residents experience the city’s water problems. I hardly recall any water shortages during my brief stay in Sunnyside. In fact, the careless manner wealthiest residents of this neighbourhood used water to fill up their swimming pools, water their manicured gardens, wash their cars, and such excessive uses, was a far cry from the desperate water situation I encountered in Ndirande. Ndirande at the time had been experiencing persistent shortages; these, in some parts of the

32 settlement, lasted for days. It was guaranteed that most times I woke up, there would be no water coming from the tap. Supply would often be restored at night but sometimes the outage went on for days. If you are a resident of Ndirande, you constantly need to keep an eye on when supply might be unexpectedly restored.

You need to stock up water in as many storage containers as you possibly can, for it is always uncertain how long the next water shortage will last. These personal water experiences are not unique to these two settlements. They only offer a snapshot into the extent of water access inequalities in Blantyre. Not all areas of Blantyre suffer from water shortages in the same way. It is often the poorest underserved areas of the city, whose water is often cut off for longer periods, to make up for supply shortages in the city’s network. Richer parts of the city are generally not affected in the same manner. Spending time in Blantyre, one is also struck by the increasing importance of monetary exchange in hydro-social relations, and the extent to which a household’s access to water is controlled by those working at the city’s water network, and/or those privileged enough to have private connections and seeking to make money from selling their water. In this city, it is virtually impossible to provide for one’s water needs without money and relying on others who own and control water. You have to have money and rely on those that command power and control over modern water infrastructure, to meet one’s daily water needs.

Growing up in a semi-urban social setting, where for the best part of my life my family did not have to pay for water, and we were largely in control of how much water to use, when to use it, on what and how to use it, spending time in

Blantyre and other major cities of Malawi, I have personally been mesmerised by the extent one here has little control over water, and how humans and machines such as bailiffs and water meters, dictate daily, weekly and monthly water usage, and how much one has to spend to access water. In Blantyre, for instance, it is the city’s water supplier, and few individuals involved in water vending, one has to depend on for daily water needs. Moreover, faced with chronic infrastructural and

33 financial problems, water from the city’s water supplier is increasingly becoming expensive. Blantyre Water Board is not only seen to take a more aggressive approach in its attempt to recover payments for water, but also in recent times, it has sought to hike water prices without much consideration of social implications.

With water supplies from the city’s network very intermittent, a good number of residents in this city have come to rely on services of others that seek to make ends meet by transporting water from one part of the city, and selling it to desperate residents in areas where it is scarce. The socio-spatial variations in water scarcities in this city have greatly affected the fundamentals of demand and supply thereby creating a market for water. With some areas enjoying a better supply than others, this unequal socio-geography of availability has presented an opportunity for others to make money by transporting water to areas persistently affected by water scarcity. These individuals do charge many times the price one would pay for a unit of water at the city’s water supplier. The highly polluted nature of available open water sources, and the legal restrictions on underground water abstraction within

Blantyre Water Board’s supply area, further occludes the availability of alternative sources. The urbanisation of Blantyre has spatio-temporally spoiled beyond use many of the key water sources, which traditionally provided free water to the local population before colonial urbanisation. Take for example Naperi and Mudi rivers

(See map 6.1, chapter 6); while these have historically remained a critical resource to the city, over-urbanisation of their catchment areas has in time and space rendered water from here unfit for human consumption. Such water can only be made safe through application of expensive processing techniques; but unfortunately, these are beyond the economic wherewithal of ordinary residents of the city. Many open water sources within the urbanised environs of Blantyre have over the years suffered a similar fate. There is virtually no open water source of reasonable quality left in this city. Subsisting from underground water sources too, is not only illegal under the waterworks act of 1995; these sources also present a real health risk. With

34 a large number of the city’s poor relying on pit latrines, underground water in

Blantyre is generally considered to be injurious and unsafe for human consumption.

It is partly such potential health risks these sources pose that has led to the outlawing of underground water abstraction in this city.

Even more interesting is the manner Blantyre’s water situation has been represented in official discourses, and the kinds of strategies that have commonly been promulgated to deal with it. Traditionally, the official mind-set, as for example epitomised by the city’s water supplier, and other key players in national water policy making such as non-governmental organisations, has been to conceive of the problem as mostly a technical one. For many years, the approach to Blantyre’s water question has been to augment supply through acquisition and application of modern science and technology. As will become clear as this thesis develops, much emphasis in the development of Blantyre’s water infrastructure, has historically revolved around developing, maintaining and expanding the modern water network, to overcome the various socio-ecological challenges, and secure the city’s water supply. The role of state politics in influencing this expansionist, supply- oriented approach, cannot be ignored. From the colonial government in the late

1890s to the successive post-colonial regimes, water and state politics in Blantyre, as the thesis shall demonstrate, have inextricably been interlinked. While the city’s major supplier for the most part has had to financially fend for itself, those in power have always taken keen interest in how it operates. Of course it is a well-articulated fact that water is a powerful weapon for political patronage (See Swyngedouw 2004 on water and social power). Its availability or non-availability can make or break political careers. For the ruling elites in Malawi too, constructing powerful narratives around promoting access and/or keeping water prices reasonable has been an integral part of their political machinations, in an attempt to woo the urban vote. Controlling and manipulating water institutions such as Blantyre Water Board, has therefore been at the heart of party politics in post-colonial Malawi. Successive

35 governments after independence have maintained a tight grip on water infrastructure, to such an extent that these are largely seen as state/public assets.

The vesting of ultimate decision-making powers in the Malawi cabinet through the waterworks act (Waterworks Act 1995), and the conferring of prime authority upon the head of state in appointing board of directors, are some of the powerful means through which the ruling elites have exerted their influence on the operations of the water supplier. While politicians have been so keen on keeping water prices down to appease the urban voter, or are generally accused of siphoning resources from parastatal organisations such as Blantyre Water Board for political campaigns

(Bertelsmann Stiftung 2014), the reality is that the economic dynamics such as cost of water production, financing mechanisms are beyond the control of the state and are determined by forces much more global and economic in nature. The implication therefore is that, over time, Blantyre Water Board has found it increasingly difficult to sustain its supply-oriented, politically-manipulated water supply logic. To a greater extent, the chronic problems the water supplier experiences today, reflect the unravelling of this logic.

The overly-supply oriented approach and interference of state politics has in recent years come under criticism from those advocating for demand-management, deregulation of state control and privatisation of water institutions. To those with such a neo-liberal mind-set, economics and private capital is largely seen as the answer to Blantyre’s water problem. In Malawi, this narrative became prominent following the structural adjustment programme funded by IMF, World Bank, and to a greater extent supported by other bilateral institutions such as the British

Department for International Development (DFID), since the 1990s. The period

1990-1994 marked a watershed moment in attempts to push for privatisation of

Blantyre’s water utility corporation—Blantyre Water Board. More generally, this was a chaotic political economic phase for Malawi. As Malawi transitioned from the autocracy of Kamuzu Banda towards multiparty democracy during this time, she

36 found herself in a fiscal crisis; long periods of donor sanctions, depreciation of the local currency, dwindling foreign exchange reserves, poor earnings from major export crops etc (See Van Donge 2002) combined to cripple state institutions, and greatly undermined the legitimacy of Kamuzu’s government. To a larger extent, this economic crisis was socially-engineered as part of collusion and political machination among western donors to force regime change in Malawi. Major western governments notably USA, United Kingdom and others, withdrew aid and imposed economic sanctions, in a move to push Kamuzu to oblige to western liberal democratic reforms. When Kamuzu succumbed to pressure in 1994, the IMF and

World Bank stepped in to administer an economic shock therapy, in an effort to resuscitate Malawi’s fledgling economy. As part of conditionalities to the structural adjustment programme that followed, Bretton Woods institutions prescribed the privatisation of erstwhile public enterprises including Blantyre Water Board (World

Bank 2000). Primarily intended to improve quality of and access to infrastructure for private sector development (IMF and IDA 2000), the Malawi Government was inveigled through carrot and stick measures into a utilities reform/divestiture sequence plan. This took the form of stringent austerity measures more specifically the cutting back of state social spending and tying donor budget support to economic liberalisation. For example, donor support for debt relief under the Highly

Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative was partly made conditional on government’s commitment to see through the privatisation of public enterprises.

With the enactment of the privatisation act of April 1996, and the formation of privatisation commission in August 1997, a privatisation and utility reform project took off shortly after, with a $32 million price tag. Through this project, 100 public enterprises including water utilities in major cities of Blantyre and Lilongwe were earmarked for privatisation. In June 2000, an American Consultancy firm Stone and

Webster had been contracted to study the options for private sector involvement in the management of water utilities in Blantyre and Lilongwe.

To a larger extent, attempts to formally privatise/commercialise water in Blantyre have largely not materialised (Hall 2010). Among other hurdles, the unattractiveness of Malawi’s water infrastructure as an investment opportunity to private capital, and resistance from different actors such as opposition members of parliament, trade unions, employees of water utility companies, human rights campaigners and water consumers, has made it difficult for water to be fully formally privatised/commercialised. I qualify my phrasing carefully here by affixing

“not formally” to underscore that this does not necessarily imply that water is not a private/commercial good in Blantyre, and/or that privatisation/commercialisation is exclusive to this highly checkered encroaching formal neoliberal market rationality.

As a matter of fact, as briefly described in this section, and as the last two empirical chapters of this thesis shall show, the interplay of various socio-natural dynamics in the production of Blantyre’s waterscape, has created conditions for the privatisation and commercialisation of water—partly through informal markets. It is through exploring these oft-ignored, and in some cases informal possibilities through which water is commodified, that this thesis aims to construct a critique of current debates on neo-liberalisation of water. It is partly a contention of this thesis that despite water infrastructure in Blantyre not formally taken over by private capital, the wider historical-geographical effects of capitalist urbanisation on the city’s waterscape, has historically created possibilities through which water here, including that outside the formal market rationality, is been commodified. For example, while Blantyre’s main water supply remains unprivatised, economic pressures at present have been hard to contend with. As highlighted earlier, the institution has increasingly adopted a more commercially-oriented stance in recent years. This has reconfigured its relationship with residents of Blantyre. Whereas before neo-liberal discourses made inroads in 90s, water was discursively represented as social service and residents as beneficiaries, it is now increasingly seen as an economic good, and residents as customers. Such a shift becomes apparent when sifting through the

38 organisation’s annual reports from the 1960s to present and/or official rhetoric captured in various pronouncements in the media or organisation’s websites (see for example figure 1.1). Violent incidents (see for example figure 1.2) against

Blantyre Water Board’s bailiffs disconnecting water, epitomise the growing bewilderment among the city’s residents, and tensions sparked by this commercially-oriented ethos.

Figure 1:1: Extract highlighting the commercial-oriented nature of Blantyre Water Board Source: Blantyre Water Board Webpage ( http://www.bwb.mw/disconnections.php)

Figure 1:2: Captures violent backlash against water disconnections in Blantyre Source: Nyasatimes (19 August 2014)—with minor photo-editing by author

This is therefore to suggest that in considering this contemporary reconfiguration of human-water relations, this thesis intends to go beyond the formalities of state- private capital articulations we have tended to describe as neo-liberalisation, and takes seriously the importance of the informal and non-obvious ways water has historically been produced as a commodified good. A ‘commodified good’ shall loosely mean that whose production and access is not a direct transaction between humans and the hydro-social ecology, but rather depends on monetary exchange among human beings.

Quickly making sense of the above contextual issues raises various critical questions about the Blantyre’s water situation. Firstly, there is a suggestion here that despite the city’s relatively good reach to fresh water, and efforts over the years to improve the water situation, chronic water problems and inequalities continue to

40 plague this waterscape. Secondly, while efforts to privatise water in this city, in the manner envisaged by neo-liberal ideologues, have largely been unsuccessful, there is no question that water in Blantyre today is already an economic good. These observations casts doubt on the adequacy of the dominant technocentric/neoliberal approaches in dealing with and or accounting for the actual underlying causes of

Blantyre’s water problem. It is the contention of this thesis that seeking alternative answers to these difficult questions requires looking at Blantyre’s waterscape beyond the technocentricity of the engrained approaches, and the economism of the checkered neo-liberal experiments. As discussed in the rationale to this thesis, the approach I take aims to trace these structural problems to the very critical moment

Blantyre was urbanised and produced as a commodified waterscape. I aim to explore the contemporary urban water condition, and the commercialisation of water in this city, as inherently part of the historical legacies of capitalist remaking of nature and space. It explores these processes from the colonial transformation of human -nature relations from the 1850s, through the post-colonial politics in the mid-1960s, to the present. The colonisation of Blantyre, from the late 1850s by

European church missionaries and entrepreneurs, sought to produce modern economic subjects and space, thereby significantly reconfiguring indigenous socio- nature relations. While slave trade was an important embryonic stage in introducing

Blantyre to the global capitalist economy (I elaborate on this point in the introductory section of chapter 4), I argue that it is the colonial modernisation project that significantly changed local inhabitant’s relationships with their socio- ecologies through, for example, the dispossession of land resources, establishment of commercial agriculture and trading activities, introduction of wage labour, monetary exchange and similar activities by European settlers. From being direct producers of own means of existence by hunting, gathering, subsistence farming, barter trading, Iron smelting etcetera (See Mandala 1990; Mulwafu 2010), colonial economic modernisation began to transform African communities around Blantyre

41 into modern urban citizens who would become increasingly dependent on selling their labour to acquire basic needs of life. This political economic transformation marked a critical moment when monetary exchange and modern techniques would be embedded at the heart of hydro-social interactions, and began to transform

Blantyre into a modern commodified waterscape. Although the independence struggle eventually purged colonial rule in 1964, the thesis argues that this transformation did not challenge the status quo and re-socialise water production and distribution as a use-value based activity involving the direct interactions between humans and nature. It is in fact argued that decolonisation only worked to further embed Blantyre’s water infrastructure into modern global-local capitalist networks of financial and technological flows, which further distanced humans from water, and made monetary exchange even more critical in hydro-social interactions. This thesis further goes on to consider the implications of these post/colonial water productions logics and contradictions in shaping the water socio-geographies of contemporary Blantyre. Through daily experiences of residents in informal settlements of the city, the thesis excavates how these complex socio- geographies of water access haven in turn reproduced conditions and made possible the dispossession and commodification of water within the current largely state- controlled water governance regime. It is hoped that by bringing history, politics, economics and socio-ecological dynamics together, to illuminate Blantyre’s contemporary water condition, this thesis offers a different perspective into the city’s water situation. To this end, the thesis attempts to answer the following questions:

1. How has Blantyre’s waterscape historically been produced as a modern

waterscape, and with what implications for human -water relations?

2. How might the legacy of these historical geographical processes help explain

the contemporary water condition in this city?

3. Is produced water in contemporary Blantyre a commodity?

1.3 Structure of the thesis

This thesis looks to explore the present state of Blantyre’s water political ecology and its implications on the process of commodification of water. It does so within the context of the historical remaking of socionatural relations in this city. It specifically makes the claim that Blantyre water woes, and the commodification of hydro-social relations, are historical-geographical phenomena deeply rooted in the capitalist remaking of nature and space in this city. In exploring these claims, the analysis in this thesis generally progresses from charting key historical moments in the remaking of Blantyre’s waterscape, to an examination of the contemporary socio-geographies of water access. Towards this end, chapter 2 sets out the theoretical and methodological framework upon which this research problem has been explored. Chapter 3 begins to explore the early moments in the colonial remaking of human-nature relations in Blantyre, and its implications for socio- geographies of water access. Chapter 4 develops this analysis further while specifically focusing on colonial attempts to centralise water governance under the colonial administration and its bearing on hydro-social relations. The general argument in these two chapters is that the colonial transformation of Blantyre’s waterscape fundamentally reconfigured human-water relations, and inserted monetary exchange, modern technologies and elite experts, at the heart of human- water interchange. Chapter 5 shifts the analysis towards post-colonial state politics, and examines the impacts of the political transition from colonialism to independence on the dominant water production and distribution logics that came to organise human -water experiences in the colonial past. In chapter 6 and 7, the thesis examines, through the historical context laid out in previous chapter, the nature and dynamics of contemporary socio-geographies of water in Blantyre; it does to with the view to exploring how these reproduce conditions for the commodification of water at present. Chapter 8 brings the discussion to a conclusion. Here I summarily assess major themes discussed in the thesis. I then

43 bring to light the implications of the major findings in this thesis for our political ecological understanding of the nature of public water institutions in general, and the process of water commodification in particular.

Chapter2: Theoretical and Methodological Framework: Inquiring into

Capitalist Remaking of Hydro-social Relations through a

Historical Geographical Materialist Perspective

2.1 Introduction

In setting out a rationale for this thesis, I suggested the need for a critical

examination of the neo-liberal perspectives on water commodification vis-à-vis the

state of public water institutions. One of the major problems I see from these

conceptions is that, oftentimes, they generally stem from an abstract construct of

how a capitalist market ought to operate, or from ideal notions of a state as a

public qua public institution; thus, it bears little connection to the actual social

situations in which water and institutions governing it are and have historically

been (re)produced. As Karl Marx surmised many decades ago in German

Ideology, the general obsession with philosophical idealisms emanates from a

specific inversion in our understanding of the real nature of things and contexts in

which they exist. It is an inversion that reflects a particular philosophical

charlatanry in which, the history of men and nature, is thought to originate from

pure thought (Marx and Engels 1932). I aim to adopt in this thesis a materialist

conception of water and modern institutions that mediate hydro-social relations.

Instead of beginning from an ideal realm of what constitutes water as a

commodity for example, or the nature of public institutions governing it, this

approach sets out from a critique of real material conditions that constitute hydro-

social environments, and is concerned with power relations that historically

reproduce water injustice within waterscapes. I intentionally invoke Karl Marx

here because the critical perspective I propose is decidedly a Marxian historical

geographical materialism. The approach I adopt is Marxian for the very fact that

“it follows the historical materialist philosophy/method of Marx (Loftus 2005:4).

In this chapter, I lay out the theoretical and methodological parameters for this framework. Whereas in critically parsing through some literature on water neo- liberalisation, the introductory chapter had mainly intended to identify gaps in our current understandings, and lay out a rationale for this study, this chapter further develops the materialist theoretical and methodological framework I suggest therein as having the potential for generating alternative understandings of the present water condition in urban environments of the global south. Making explicit this theoretical and methodological perspective is in itself important because, as scholars, the positions we take in conducting research, has enormous implications on how we approach what we set out to investigate. Thus, among other things, the kinds of questions we ask, how and why we ask them, and the sort of conclusions we draw, is significantly influenced by our theoretical and methodological expositions. It is precisely for this reason I wish to consider these issues in this chapter. I therefore begin the chapter by developing this theoretical framework, and its implications, before going on to consider the methodological intricacies of this research project.

2.2 Historical geographical materialism and the critical theorisation of

waterscapes

The problem with traditional readings of urban water infrastructure is that they have overly been dominated by positivist conceptions of human-water relations.

The dominance of science, economics and modern techniques as the basis for theorising and governing water has tended to foster a schism between society and the hydro-logical cycle, such that water ecologies appear as ahistorical and separate from society (Kaika 2005; Swyngedouw 2009). As Kaika and

Swyngedouw have long illuminated, the difficulty with such a perspective is that it, among other things, promotes a promethean attitude toward water ecologies, naturalises water problems as inevitably technological, and ignores the importance of politics and history in producing urbanised water ecologies. By

46 explicitly or otherwise adopting the historical geographical materialist perspective, urban water political ecology has suggested potent ways alternative critical perspectives can be developed beyond the engrained economistic understandings of urban water problems. With ontological emphasis on historical and geographical material conditions through which humans interact with their environment, this approach compels us to look beyond things in themselves and understand particular social, historical and geographical contexts through which they are constituted. Swyngedouw (2003) captures this materialist ontology when he argues for a more relational understanding of things or phenomenon as embodiments of relationships and the outcome of processes that have themselves ontological priority. One of the critical strengths of this historical geographical materialist perspective, is its ability to enable us confront the obvious surface appearance of things, and or their ideological representation, and inquire into the hidden relational processes through which they are actually produced (Loftus

2005). In the case of water in Blantyre, this means going beyond dominant water narratives, and focusing on examining the social relations and conditions through which this waterscape has historically been reproduced under capitalist urbanisation of nature and space. In its simplistic form, this materialist approach contends that the mortar of human history and change is daily struggle to reproduce material conditions for human existence from nature. As humans, we have naturally-imposed biological needs such as hunger, thirst, procreation and others. To fulfil these needs, requires working up the natural environment. It is this fundamental relation that the materialist Marxist approach considers to be the foundational basis of human existence, and all attendant institutions that emerge to mediate this relationship.

This thinking has been developed to illuminate societal change in many fruitful ways within neo-Marxian scholarship (Smith 1990; Swyngedouw 2006a;

Swyngedouw 2003). It would therefore be unhelpful to simply retell this theory here in its entirety. Of interest to this investigation is the extent to which this fundamental relation is transformed under capitalist production. This is interesting because, the extent to which capitalist production significantly reconfigures human-nature relations, points to the possibilities through which virtually all manner of things are subsumed in this configuration. In its primordial state, production is constrained by the dictates of nature, and is primarily driven by need to directly acquire useful things from nature to meet daily human survival needs. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels emphasised this point in the

German ideology, by posting that “the way men produce their means depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and they have to reproduce…the nature of individuals thus depends on material conditions determining their production” (Marx and Engels 1972:7). This direct relation between humans and nature thus entails far less complicated modes through which this activity is mediated. In less advanced societies, humans produce their means of subsistence by directly labouring on nature. Such societies have simplistic divisions of labour; the collective production of social surplus is primarily dictated by risks and limits imposed by this human-nature interaction.

Thus, production of surplus is purely a survival strategy. In contrast, this relation manifests itself in significantly different ways under capitalist production. In capitalist societies, means of production are controlled by fewer and fewer people such that majority of the population depend on selling their labour to earn a living. This situation comes about as production of social surplus is no longer a primary collective means of survival. Rather it is done for its own sake i.e. to increase surplus accumulation to owners of the means of production. An important distinction is made here between production for use value in pre-

48 capitalist societies and production for monetary exchange value in capitalist societies (Smith 1990). Under capitalism, production is no longer solely about meeting basic human needs. It is rather for the sake of accumulating money; human needs takes the form of socially and historically defined wants (Fromm

1961), and a large number of individuals are dispossessed of their direct means of production. Their fate and survival therefore inextricably becomes tied to how much the capitalist owner of the means of production is willing to pay in form of wages. The generalised prevalence of the wage labour and monetary exchange relation as a means of reproduction is an important distinguishing feature between capitalist and pre-capitalist societies. Under capitalist production, a basic premise for societal reproduction is that one has to earn a wage to obtain necessities of life through highly stratified and exploitative money-based commodity exchange relations.

Prudham (2009) sheds some critical insights on the ramifications of these generalised wage/money-based relations as a means for distributing social surplus in capitalist societies. This entails that all manner of useful necessities of life have to be produced as commodities irrespective of whether this is done under private- controlled or public institutions. Prudham shows that commodification of labour- power and the emergence of more and more people dependent on wages to secure their own means of reproduction is the fundamental basis for the deepening of the process of commodification in capitalist societies. The implication of this assertion is of specific interest to this thesis. It thus entails that virtually all manner of goods and services necessary to meet the biologically-defined or socially-produced needs, wants and aspirations of more and more people, have to be met through money-based commodity exchange relations. In places such as Blantyre, where monetary exchange and commodification of labour dictate economic interactions, it raises some important questions on whether anything including water, and institutions that govern it, can exist outside the realm of these relations.

The materialist conception of capitalist society-nature relations, generally attempts to uncover the fundamental origins, of the pervasiveness of exploitative socio- ecological conditions in contemporary society we live in. One of the important ways in which this Marxian theory has been taken up is through work that seeks to understand the ramifications of the capitalist production on socio- spatial/natural relations (Castree 2000; Harvey 1973; Heynen et al. 2006; Smith

1990; Swyngedouw 2006a) and institutional dynamics that mediate these relations

(Althusser 1971; Altivater 1978; Holloway and Picciotto 1978; Muller and Neussus

1978; Offe and Ronge 1975). The main concern for these critical scholars has been to reincarnate and reinterpret this Marxist approach and or address some of the underlying weaknesses and misunderstandings within it. For the former set of critical scholars, the primary concern has been to interrogate the place of nature and space in Marxian theory vis-à-vis our understanding of the capitalist systems.

For Louis Althusser, John Holloway and others, on the other hand, their primary focus has been to develop a materialist theory of socio-political institutions that emerge from the capitalist production dynamic. Bringing together insights from these two strands, provides a robust foundation upon which this thesis, develops a critique of the contemporary water condition in Blantyre, beyond the mirage of dominant discourses. It formulates a two-prolonged critique; thus, it insists on reading water commodification within the historical geographies of capitalist urbanisation, and takes a critical view of the nature of public institutions that mediate hydro-social relations in capitalist cities we live in. In the sections that follow, I outline the major precepts upon which such a critique is to be mounted.

2.2.1.1 Capitalist urbanisation of nature/space and the process of

commodification

In their attempt to reinterpret and make central questions of nature and space in

Marxian scholarship, critical Geographers have generated illuminating insights on the implications of the capitalist production relations on society-nature relations.

We learn from this critical scholarship that, capitalism’s distinct production dynamics, transforms nature and space “at a scale unprecedented in human history” (Castree 2000). The shift from production of own use values from nature, to production for monetary exchange mediated through commodification of labour, induces an expansionary dynamic within the capitalist system. This dynamic creates a distinct form of urbanised environments. Through mobilising various metaphors—cyborg, hybrid, metabolism, rhizomes, imbroglios etc— to interrogate the nature of capitalist urban space, critical scholarship (for example,

Heynen et al. 2006; Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000; Swyngedouw 1999) has generated rich insights on what makes the urban/cities distinct in societies the dominated by capitalist production relation. Capitalist urban socio-ecologies are highly uneven and contested spaces largely dominated by commodity exchange relations, exploitation, socio-ecological dystopia and injustices. The urban too embodies latent potential for revolutionary change. Thus, while “entwined with spaces of oppression, exclusion and marginalisation, cities seem to hold the promise of emancipation and freedom while mastering the whip of repression and domination” (Heynen et al. 2006:9).

David Harvey explains this distinct character of capitalist urbanism through the unique nature in which surplus value is produced and appropriated in capitalist societies. Surplus value is defined as “part of the total value of production which is left over after constant capital…and valuable capital have been accounted for”

(Harvey 1973), or simply profit. Owing to the class exclusivity and expansionary nature of capitalist production, Harvey argues that maintaining a healthy surplus requires over exploitation of certain sections of the population, and the natural environment, in order to accumulate and reinvest profit in expanded production.

In capitalist cites, therefore, few appropriate profits while majority are divorced from control over the means of production. Expanded production, therefore, thrives on a process Harvey describes as primitive accumulation. Social

51 stratification also plays another equally important function in reproducing this logic. It facilitates the social production of scarcities upon which the process of market exchange thrives. Thus, depriving access to the means of production implies that the majority of population cannot produce to satisfy own basic needs.

This therefore creates scarcity as well as demand for commodities produced by those in control of the means of production. Here there is a strong suggestion that exploitation and social inequalities are an inherent part of the process of enlarged production and commodity exchange relations in a capitalist city. The capitalist city is what (Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003:900) describes as “ a kaleidoscopic, metabolic socio-environmental process” motivated by the perpetual drive to commodify all kinds of socio-natures to maximise the accumulation of surplus value. Commodification, therefore, is an inherent part of the process of capitalist urbanisation of nature.

These insights points to many possibilities under capitalist urbanisation through which nature and space is embedded within the commodity production relation. Critical scholarship suggests that, the notion that nature and space exist outside this configuration, is a result of particular fetishing processes that veils the real nature of social relations constitutive of the urban, as a capitalist space. The overriding mission of critical inquiry, therefore, is to penetrate through the iron curtain, and reveal power relations and dynamics that confer advantage on others and disadvantage on some, and in doing so envisaging ways for promoting more just socio-ecological change. Of particular interest in this thesis, therefore, is to mobilise these insights, and critically examine how hydro-social injustices are reproduced under public water institutions. Such a critique allows this thesis to go beyond the mirage of state politics and uncover ways capitalist economic relations reproduce water injustices under state-controlled water institutions. Doing so both exposes the falsity of neo-liberal ideologies on water commodification as well as helps to explain why state politics has failed to deliver water equity and justice in

52 cities such as Blantyre. I will next explore the theoretical concepts upon which this critique will be developed.

2.2.2 The ideological nature of the state, capital and the commodification of socionature Literature on the urbanisation of socio-nature has taken interest in deconstructing how ideologies of nature under capitalist production legitimate the commodification of all manner of socio-nature. A problematisation of nature vs. society binaries and the manner socionatural relations are fetishized under capitalist urbanisation, has been one of the most popular entry points in developing this critique (Castree 2003; Castree 2001; Castree 2000; Kaika 2005;

Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000; Swyngedouw 1999a). In this regard, there has been a sustained engagement with efforts to expose the extent to which capitalist urbanisation or modernisation is based on a dualistic ideology of nature and society as being separate and independent realms. Such an ideology has been attributed to the very foundation of instrumentalist or promethean ethos which underpin capitalist production—the treatment of nature as purely an object of human kind, the economic means for surplus value accumulation (Harvey 1973;

Horkheimer and Adorno 2002). Treating nature and society as putatively separate, human kind as superior to nature, and or nature as something to be tamed and controlled for utilitarian purposes, are powerful bourgeois ideologies through which various forms of social power and control has been legitimated and exercised (Castree 2000; Smith 1990; Swyngedouw 1999). Taking a relational and dialectic approach that ontologically views the urban as a socionatural hybrid constituted of flows, flux, contradictions, contestations and tension, this work makes explicit the falsity of these ideologies and their potency in fostering exploitation, social exclusion and control (See for example Swyngedouw 1999).

This critical geographical work has adequately engaged with these processes from the abode of capitalist production. I nevertheless still argue that this critique can

53 be further harnessed within political ecological readings of urban waterscapes by developing penetrating insights into political institutions that mediate these relations. With the exception of (Loftus 2005), there is still more that can be done to understand the role of political institutions such as the state in the production of these false ideologies about socio-nature. The state, in its many forms and guises, is an arena through which social power relations that produce the urban as a commodified realm of exploitation and domination are fetishised and contested.

In this thesis, I draw from neo-Marxist materialist interpretations of the state

(Althusser 1971; Altivater 1978; Holloway and Picciotto 1978; Muller and Neussus

1978; Offe and Ronge 1975; Poulantzas 1972), to penetrate through the veneer of state institutions, and uncover how these capitalist dynamics play out to reproduce the commodification of human-water relations. Such a framework, is for example useful in exposing the false neo-liberal ideologies, through which the state has been falsely labelled as tout court a socialist institution, and the manner failings in water institutions it controls have been attributed to the failure of the common means to provision water, in-order to legitimate the deepening of commodification of goods and services through the total take over by private capital. As I pointed out at the outset, the discursive framing, within neo-liberal discourses, of the state as inherently socialist and antithetical to free-market competition, has been a potent ideology upon which the water neo-liberalisation campaign has partially, and yet strongly been mounted.

Neo-Marxian critiques of the state provide illuminating insights into the illusory nature of the state as a democratic/socialist institution, and points to its capitalist nature. Such insights are to be found in, for example, state derivation theory (Altivater 1978; Holloway and Picciotto 1978; Muller and Neussus 1978;

Offe 1975; Offe and Ronge 1975). Generally developed in response to the weaknesses of mainstream Marxist theorisation of the state ( Althusser 1971; Marx and Friedrich Engels 1848; Poulantzas 1972; Ralph Miliband 1969), this theory,

54 sought to develop a materialist understanding of the state, which transcends the instrumentalism and structuralism of earlier work. This approach represented an attempt to move the analysis of the state towards a more relational understanding.

State derivation theory aimed to move beyond the surface categories of political economy and reveal social relations which constitute the state form in capitalist societies (Holloway and Picciotto 1978). This theory views the state as a fetishised amalgam of social relations which veils exploitative economic relations (Loftus

2005). From this perspective, the state emerges to resolve contradictions and mediate antagonistic class interests within the capitalist society. Although appearing impersonal and over and above any specific interests, the state ultimately serves the demands of capital. This is not only because the dominant class monopolises state power, but also, it is in the best interest of the ruling class to maintain a health regime of capital accumulation. Thus the survival of the state depends on rent extracted from the accumulation process through taxes and the like (Offe 1975). It is therefore in the best interest of the state in capitalist societies to often act in favour of the process of accumulation. Based on this perspective,

Muller and Neussus (1978) have argued that the notion of a welfarist state is illusory. In a capitalist society, state paternalism is not solely intended for collective social reproduction for its own sake; maintaining a health regime of surplus value accumulation–and not social subsistence–is the main driver of such interventions. Therefore, an institution that appears above and beyond specific bourgeois interests is necessary to pick up costs for providing social conditions necessary in the production process and yet not directly profitable to capital. State welfarism, in societies dominated by capitalist production, is therefore critical to maintaining and reproducing the existing social order i.e. continued surplus value accumulation, than being a truly conscious political programme aimed at promoting collective and democratic social reproduction.

In exposing what lies behind the state, the materialist theory of the state reminds us that in capitalist societies, the state and its constitutive institutions are inherently bourgeois. Unless the fundamental logics on which capitalist production is premised i.e. surplus value accumulation is abolished, it is ideological or illusory to presuppose that state institutions can deliver on social equity. These institutions internalise many of the exploitative class relations and contradictions from the capitalist production process. Oftentimes, resolving these ultimately means prioritising vested interests of the owners of the means of production, and not really meeting common social concerns. The materialist state theorists would, for instance, have much to say about the widespread government bailing outs of banks, the painful welfare and public spending cuts, and such other punitive measures implemented in many western countries following the recent economic implosion.

From this critical perspective of the state, it becomes possible in this thesis to begin unpicking, beyond the dominant discourses, the various urban water access inequalities presided over years of state control. Of course the history of the modern state in Blantyre, as the chapters on colonial production of nature will illustrate, is inextricably linked to the process of capital accumulation. Modern water infrastructure has historically not only been mired in politics of class exploitation but also originated to serve a particularly capitalist urbanisation process. Through a historical political ecological analysis, this thesis will therefore show that such state controlled water institutions have come to internalise the logics, tensions and contradictions from this state-capital articulation. These contradictions have only worked to further reproduce conditions for producing contemporary Blantyre as an unjust and commodified waterscape.

2.3 Research Methodology

A historical materialist ontology subscribed to in this thesis simply posits that waterscapes are historically produced socio-natural ecologies imbued with a plethora of intricately interconnected processes. As Swyngedouw (1999) suggests, capturing these intricate dialectics through a historical geographical materialist method requires taking a constructionist perspective that views nature and society as deeply interconnected metabolised socio-natural configurations. It requires not taking as given, what confronts our gaze, but rather engaging in a critical inquiry aimed at uncovering hidden social relations through which things have historically been produced. This Marxian approach therefore is concerned with capturing and reconstructing, both at a material and ideological level, and in time and space, the dialectics of this historical socio-natural transformation. In practical terms, operationalising such a task presents a formidable challenge, for the processes and dynamics that shape socio-nature are much more complex and dynamic than can be captured in a geographically limited and time constrained study such as this. I however take heart in the understanding that all social research is a deeply political and partial process. As such, an honest reflection and accounting for these limitations on knowledge we produce is much more important and liberating than pretending that through some other means, we can be seen to speak objectively or neutrally or produce a full account of that we seek to investigate. In laying out the hows of the research process herein, I shall therefore be more concerned with critically accounting for these limitations than providing a clocklike outline of how this panned out. In so doing, therefore, acknowledging that other than being a complete and objective monograph about water realities in Blantyre, this thesis is a partial political ecological account. One nonetheless that raises important questions about the nature of existing modes of managing water in global south cities such as this.

2.3.1 Research Approach The materialist ontological perspective adopted in this thesis has had enormous consequences on how this research has been executed. Thus reading the contemporary urban water condition and water commodification in Blantyre, entailed penetrating beyond the surface realities of the present situations, and inquiring deeply into underlying historical, socio-political and ecological dynamics that accounts for what we see happening in this city today.

Theoretically, this required treating the present water situation as a moment or instance which demands that we excavate the historical geographical dynamics that have produced it. Empirically, this has therefore constituted an arduous task of tracing the current water realities in Blantyre to the colonial origins of capitalist production of nature and space. This study therefore has consequently been a two- parter. The first part has inquired, largely through archival research, into colonial remaking of nature-society relations with the view to establishing a critical moment when Blantyre was produced as a modern waterscape. The second part has mobilised these historical insights, and together with primary research into the everyday water politics of the city, it aims to uncover how the various historical- geographical structural dynamics continue to reproduce conditions for commodification of water in contemporary Blantyre. However, in the field, the necessary primary and secondary data to do these two parts was collected more or less concurrently. Thus, I, for example, alternated between spending time in the archives and conducting interviews, field observations and the like. The manner in which different elements of the research process are presented herein therefore does not suggest any order of linear progression but is merely done for convenience. I as such begin below by reflecting on the primary aspect of this process before considering the archival/secondary research done to tackle the historical component.

2.3.1.1 Primary research and selection of field sites

For a critical political ecology study of this nature, capturing daily lived experiences of those working particular waterscapes is crucial for constructing knowledge about the nature of these produced socionatures. In this research, capturing stories of those working Blantyre’s waterscape was a critical part of this process of excavating how at present, these infinitely complex and historically produced hydro-social ecologies, reproduce conditions through which some have water while other have not, some make a profit from water while many have to put up with high prices, etcetera. People’s subjective experiences being of particular interest, qualitative ethnographic approaches were considered to be more appropriate for this task. As LeCompte and Goetz (1982) describe it, ethnographic approaches admit into and considers valuable, the subjective human experiences in the research process; it also allows one to account for the complexity of phenomenon within natural settings. To usefully capture these subjective daily water experiences, methods used included interviews, focus group discussions and field observations. In total, 41 unstructured interviews with conveniently selected participants, 5 focus group discussions, and about a month of field observations were conducted. Undertaking these tasks inevitably demanded spending considerable time in the field. I began my field research in early November 2011. Resource constraints meant that I had only 8 months to spare for this exercise. Whether 8 months was long enough to adequately submerse oneself and undertake a comprehensive ethnographic study of people’s lived water experiences is certainly debatable. Blantyre, with a population of nearly one million people, is no doubt a largely diverse place; accounting for the experiences of the entire inhabitants would require incalculable amounts of time, and is certainly impossible given the exigencies of time and resources. I took solace in what (Krefting 1991) has had to say on rigour and trustworthiness in qualitative research interested in the messiness and contradictions of the

59 everyday. The aim of such research is to represent multiple realities as honestly as possible while recognising that insights captured are only partial and tentative, therefore one cannot draw definitive conclusions from them.

Even then, the question that gnawed on my mind when I arrived in Blantyre on 5 th November of 2011 is, whose story to capture then? This was not an easy question. But guided by my research questions, and tapping into the knowledge of my local Minder—Kondwani Chinyama—it became clear that daily water struggles of those living in high density settlements of Blantyre City would be of interest. Due to their diverse nature, these settlements are not only a microcosm of the city’s life; it is also here that the city’s political ecological realities of capitalist urbanisation of nature and space have come home to roost in significant ways.

Blantyre has a large number of settlements classed as high density (see Map 2:1).

While these settlements are in many ways highly differentiated (discussed in chapter 6), they share certain commonalities vis-à-vis the general social geographies of the city.

Therefore the specific choice about which settlement to focus on was purely a matter of convenience and circumstance than a priori objective determination of what could best represent the complex realities of this city. Thus, the choice of settlements to study was very much shaped by perspectives of some participants in the field. This was a deliberate decision. I ventured into the field with an open mind cognisant of the fact that truth value in research of this sort can only be claimed if discovery of human experience is shaped by research participants. With my local contact Kondwani pointing me in different directions, I first of all purposely surveyed the breadth and depth of Blantyre city, hopping on and off public transport and taking long walks, while seizing upon every opportunity to observe the goings on, and randomly talking to the countless friendly souls encountered along the way. After two weeks of these preliminary investigations,

60 two cases stood out as warranting further attention—Manase and Bangwe townships.

Bangwe Township to the east of the city is socio-geographically no different from many of high density neighbourhoods of Blantyre City. What sets it apart is the nature of water problems this settlement faces. Bangwe, situated on the foot of

Bangwe hills about 10miles from Limbe CBD, is in a dire water situation arising from a combination of ecological and social factors. Chapter 7 accounts for these hence I shall not pre-empt them here in greater detail. It is worth mentioning that the physical geography of Bangwe and the exclusionary nature of Blantyre’s water politics have concocted to produce a persistent water scarcity in this Township.

While many poor residents of high density neighbourhoods of Blantyre face water scarcities of some kind, the water situation of disadvantaged residents of Bangwe is among the very worst. Inquiring into the dynamics that have shaped this hydro- social configuration therefore promised to offer useful insights into how politics and ecology have combined to produce a particular dire water situation in underprivileged spaces of Blantyre.

On the other hand, my interest in Manase Township was sparked by claims made by one resident I encountered through my preliminary investigations in

Bangwe Township. Formally a resident of Manase, this individual had mentioned that this Township is one of the very few high density neighbourhoods with a good water supply in the city. This sounded counter-intuitive considering the prevailing understanding in national water discourses that poor neighbourhoods of major cities such as Blantyre are usually underserved (See for example Manda

2009). Out of curiosity, I inquired further and learnt that Manase’s proximity to low density neighbourhoods, and its strategic location near the water mains supplying the presidential palace at Sanjika, had given it an advantageous access to a reasonable water supply. Preliminary investigations in Manase seemed to confirm claims I had heard.

Map 2:1: Location of Manase and Bangwe Townships Source: produce by Nicholas Scarle (The University of Manchester Cartographic Unit)

There was a relatively fair presence of physical water infrastructure coverage in this neighbourhood than I had witnessed in Bangwe. There seemed a sizable number of public stand-pipes within reasonable distance. In certain areas, I at least encountered a water point of some sort roughly every 500m; nevertheless, in

Bangwe, I could trek a several miles before sighting a water point of some sort.

Even when I eventually did come across a water point in this neighbourhood, it was mainly in a form of dysfunctional water pumps (see for example chapter 7

62 photo 7.5). In Manase, tap water connection in form of ‘communal’ kiosks appeared to be the main water source. Albeit still largely intermittent, Manase enjoyed a somewhat lengthy supply by the city’s checkered water supply record.

In Bangwe, prolonged water shortages could extend for days or weeks. It therefore became apparent that the seemingly contrasting water fortunes of the two settlements would provide an ideal ground for reading the ecological politics of water in this city. A combination of these case studies, I reckoned, would make it possible to investigate how politics and ecology combine to create and mask conditions through which scarcities and inequalities are socially reproduced, and water is commodified in Blantyre City.

The selection of field sites therefore was not rigidly predetermined but rather was an iterative process between me as a researcher and participants. I endeavoured to let knowledge of those familiar with the local environment count more than my pre-ordained field plans. The extent of this flexibility is reflected in my later abandonment of field sites chosen during the planning phase. I had initially proposed Ndirande Township and Sunnyside as case studies for this research. Both these were discarded following the initial field encounters I briefly highlight. In a model of trustworthiness in qualitative research, Guba (1981) has argued that credibility in qualitative research interested in peoples’ lived experiences can partly be established if investigations are not rigidly defined apriori but are rather subject oriented.

2.3.1.2 Negotiating access to the field, primary data collection and my awkward

multiple positionalities in the research process

By its very nature, research that aims to capture the everydayness of peoples’ water getting experiences would require use of a combination of methods. In my case, it was apparent that triangulating people’s individual stories collected through interviews, field observations and focus group discussions, would be crucial to minimising bias and increasing the worthiness of findings. Before any

63 such data collection strategies could be put to work, it was critical that the distance between me as a researcher and participants had to be narrowed down as much as attainable. As Harawayʹs (1988) call from decades ago still relevantly reminds us, knowledge production is a deeply political process involving different positions of power and privilege. Therefore, as researchers, we can attempt to ensure credibility in our work by constantly seeking to reconfigure power relations throughout the research process. This partly and yet crucially entails being fully aware of the baggage we bring into the research process, and critically evaluating our positionalities (Mansvelt and Berg 2005).

Entering the field, I found myself in a particularly awkward position regarding my social standing vis-à-vis participants. Being a Malawian, carrying out research in this context might seem advantageous to some. One would suppose I should not have struggled as much with positionality issues such as race, language/culture barriers and such other difficulties usually faced by those conducting research in a foreign land. Whereas on these counts it was relatively easy for me to relate with participants, there were other equally critical positionalities I needed to renegotiate in order to break social barriers. Suffice to say that to these communities, I was still a stranger; I was not a resident here.

Perhaps insider-outsider would best characterise my situation in this context. The immediate sense of shared identity subtly established through cultural or lingual commonality would more often be challenged when some of my ‘intimate’ personal details came to light. For example, university education is an exclusive preserve of a privileged few in Malawi let alone studying for a doctorate degree in

England. While ideally I would have preferred such personal information not to come to light, I was caught up in an ethical obligation to reveal my identity and what the research was all about. Through this, those I interacted with got to know a bit more about me. This often awkwardly changed social dynamics; suddenly I was no longer part of them—at least that’s how some would make me feel. For

64 example, in Bangwe, one woman participant appeared to behave differently towards me upon learning a bit more about my situation. While during pre- interviews we spoke freely, upon formally introducing myself, her perceptions of me seemed to shift; I now uninvitedly came to be seen as someone in a position of power that could potentially offer solutions. Similarly, in some cases, I felt that peoples’ perceptions of what they thought I was, obliged them to treat me differently or rather sometimes too generously. For example, Julius, the very first resident of Manase I met, and later became a friend, insisted that I stayed away from certain spaces he considered too polluted or dangerous for ‘someone like me’. He also always offered up his only seat at the maize selling stall he owned at the public market, although I always denied taking up the offer given his senior age to me (in Malawian culture, it is disrespectful to occupy a seat at the expense of someone your senior). Also my gender as male often put me into awkward social positions with female participants. Water getting is predominantly a women’s’ chore in these communities. Talking to a male stranger therefore made some women feel awkward and less comfortable to engage in a freer manner than

I found with male participants. Therefore, far from being the stereotypical insider,

I was in many ways an outsider in this process.

Therefore, building rapport with participants through sustained engagement, deploying various tactics to break social barriers and deconstruct preconceptions about my social status, were absolutely critical if any credibility had to be ensured in the collected information. In Bangwe Township, Kondwani my minder is a local resident here, and gaining access to the field, was less difficult to do through his knowledge of the local area. In Manase, I had to start from nowhere as I was a total stranger here and knew no one beforehand. In either cases, nevertheless, it required that I somewhat immersed myself in the everydayness of life for considerable amounts of time. Prior to carrying out interviews or focus group discussions, I spent about a month just loitering about

65 and getting to familiarise myself with life here, and in the process, hoping I would become a more familiar presence in the community. In Bangwe, Kondwani at the time ran a makeshift chip shop at a popular community market; I regularly spent time there. I patronised local drinking or food joints like locals did. In Manase,

Julius was a maize seller in a very busy local market. His maize stall was one of the most patronised at the time, and was also located right next to one of the busiest water kiosks in the community. I spend considerable length of time here mingling with locals and giving Julius a hand in running his stall.

While the overall aim of this was to break the social barriers between me and the informants, the specific acts I mention were not purely done for patronage in return to gain people’s confidence. This to me was very much a personal if not nostalgic return and re-adaptation to my traditional roots having spent considerable time in a foreign country. It was second nature to take part in this sort of life given my own social background growing up as a son of a factory worker in a socially diverse community. Hanging out in street corners, conducting manual labour, communal sharing, struggling to make ends meet etc was very much part of the community life I grew up in. It is this social background I instinctively appealed to so as to deconstruct any preconceived ideas some residents of these communities might have had about me. My blasé attitude to misconceived first impressions informants had about me and my very down-to- earth approach to life, in some cases helped to knock down social barriers and naturalise my presence. As one resident jokingly remarked “after all, he said, I was one of their own” (Field Notes: Charles 20 th December 2011). I was nevertheless fully conscious that completely shrugging off these awkward positionalities was difficult to do. In few cases, it became evident that sometimes people could exaggerate their accounts or be less comfortable to open up because of who they thought I was. For example, despite making it explicitly clear mine was an academic research, many a times desperate residents expressed hope that perhaps

66 my work could offer immediate solutions to their water woes. In some cases, it was therefore hard to judge whether people genuinely wanted to share their stories, or rather their keenness to do so arose out of such expectations.

To minimise the effects of these biases on the credibility of information collected, I triangulated a range of information collection techniques. Apart from

41 in-depth interviews conducted, I also carried out lengthy field observations and at least 5 focus group discussions. Of interest in the interviewing process was to capture perspectives from different social groups; thus, from those who own water sources and those without own connection, those who manage community water sources, public and private water traders etc. Identifying these different social groups was randomly snowballed from initial contacts I made in these communities. One of the recommended strategies to increase the truth value of qualitative investigation of this sort is to ensure spontaneity and unstructuredness

(Guba 1981; Krefting 1991). This requires the researcher to learn as much as possible from participants’ stories than exacting control through very structured and inflexible data collection procedures. In interviewing participants therefore, I endeavoured to encourage participants to speak more by asking open-ended questions than closed ones. I encouraged the interview process to be conversational by avoiding unnecessary formalities such asking from a prepared questionnaire, taking notes as the interviewee spoke, camera recording the interviews, etcetera. With a more general memorised mindmap of questions to guide the conversation, I let the process evolve more organically, while generating new questions as the process unfolded. Apart from initially seeking permission to audio record the interview, I attempted to make the recording process as non- intrusive and unnoticeable as possible from the participants. I tried to focus more on the conversation than getting distracted with fiddling with the recording technology. The caveat here though was that left unattended, the recording device could sometimes fail to capture the interview or the output could be too poor. I

67 therefore made sure that after every interview, a few moments were spared to reflect on and scribble down some notes about this process. I also endeavoured to validate what I had captured by preparing preliminary transcripts in the local language in which the interview took place. I would then go through these with participants in order for them to confirm whether what I had written reflected what they said or not.

Field observations and focus group discussions were meant to capture some aspects of water-getting experiences not readily attainable through the interview process. Group discussion was also particularly useful in verifying the validity of general claims made during interviews about the community water situation. For example, I relied heavily on participant observations to capture the nature of interactions between informal water traders and their customers. As I became a ‘usual’ presence at water points of interest, I appeared not to affect interactions as much as I did when I first spent time here—everyone seemed to carry one without minding my presence. I make this claim because the initial suspicion and the stone-cold silence I could encounter initially among female participants drawing water, would eventually give way to carefree gossiping, and sometimes about men, never minding I was a man in their midst. As trivial as this may sound, it somewhat reflected that women patronising these water points were no longer guarded, and interacted naturally as they normally would. I am mindful of the fact that as researchers, it is inevitable that our entering a group, to a certain extent automatically alters its dynamics (McBurney and White 2009).

Even then, the more time I spent in these spaces, the more naturalised my presence would become. To further ensure this, I also ventured to remain discreet and interact naturally with participants by not recording my observations in their presence. I relied heavily on registering things mentally and then record these immediately after leaving the site in my field diary. Here, once again, the problem of things being ‘lost in translation’ or chances of my own biases getting in the way,

68 loomed large. I also had to confront the moral pitfall of covertly observing human interactions. Such ethical pitfalls have very well been established in qualitative research literature (Maanen 1988). One of the ethical problems is that covert observations raise critical issues about intrusiveness, privacy, transparency, consent etc. However, mine was not a covert study. Through the various interactions with residents of these settlements, I provided as much information as was necessary about me and my research work.

2.3.1.2.1 The challenge of making sense of collected primary material

One of the most critical and yet challenging phases in any research work is how to make sense of the collected material. This presents a range of practical challenges, it demands navigating complex decisions and processes that can make or break a research project. Collecting information is one thing but usefully making sense of this information to answer one’s research questions is quite another. In this study, primary field research yielded a variety of information; it required carefully considering how best to make sense of this material in order to usefully answer the fundamental research questions the study raises about the present water condition in Blantyre. Such material included audio recordings and field notes from interviews, focus group discussions and observations. In total 40 recordings averaging 20 minutes long, and 20 A4 size pages of field observation notes, comprised the bulk of the primary material collected. How best to process and analyse this material posed an immediate challenge after field work. Of particular interest in collecting primary data was to understand, from people’s daily experiences, the present-day human-water interactions, and how these in turn are reproducing water access problems and the commercialisation of water in these settlements. It is this overall object that guided my analysis of primary data.

Making sense of this data involved electronically transcribing audio recordings in transana and manually trawling through field notes. The transcription process generally entailed first translating interview recordings into English and

69 presenting these in a dialogue format. Determining the level of detail and accuracy, at which to work, was a biggest challenge in this task. This was particularly the case given the open –ended, unstructured nature of the interviewing process. While general questions derived from the overarching research themes were used as prompts in the interview process, I aimed to let this process evolve as organically as possible without imposing too rigid a structure.

This generated a large quantity of information without a straightforward blueprint upon which it can easily be analysed. Hence coming into the transcription process meant keeping an open mind and aiming to painstakingly capture as much detail from the recordings. This was time consuming—on average a single interview took over two hours to transcribe. The analysis of transcripts was a multi-faceted thematic process primarily intended to identify and interpret emerging ideas from participants. To do this, I combined both deductive and inductive means of interpreting qualitative data (See Babbie 2010). Thus, deductively, the analysis was guided by a set of pre-defined themes formulated from key questions and theories underpinning the study. Such themes provided a framework for interpreting participant responses. Nevertheless, imposing a predetermined structure on the data was in some cases unhelpful given the extent and depth of the material collected through this unstructured process. To get the most out of this material, it was therefore necessary to carry out a more grounded (inductive) analysis; this generally involved systematically generating concepts from within the data by coding different aspects of the transcript and looking for emerging themes.

Inductively making sense of the material was necessary in generating new insights on people’s daily lived water experiences in Blantyre.

2.3.1.3 Secondary research and its conundrums

Archives validate our experiences, our perceptions, our narratives, our stories. Archives are our memories. Yet what goes on in the archives remains remarkably unknown. Users of archives (historians and others) and shapers of archives (records creators, records managers, and archivists) add layers of meaning, layers which become naturalized, internalized, and unquestioned (Schwartz and Cook 2002:18).

Equally important to this research were secondary information sources. To usefully make sense of the contemporary water political ecology of Blantyre, it was essential to contextualise these within key moments in the historical capitalist production of nature and space in the city. Such key moments lay in British colonisation since the late 1850s. It is this period that began to modernise and significantly transform human-water relations in Blantyre. It is by capturing these material processes of transformation and change that we can come to a better understanding of the nature of Blantyre’s waterscape in the present. To gain this understanding, I had to embark on a search for archival records that could provide insights into how the colonial modernisation project reconfigured nature and space here. It was necessary to be very clear from the very outset about the sort of historical records I would be interested in and where to find them. Given the colonial links between Malawi and Britain, it made logical sense to begin the search in the archives here in the UK before flying out to Malawi.

Of general interest in my historical analysis were competing discourses, interests, motives and such like realities that underpinned the colonial modernisation project, the key decisions and actions taken to fulfil the project, and the material effects of these on human -nature/water relations. Of specific interest also was to conduct a political ecological analysis of various water projects undertaken during this period. Before the archival search, I surveyed literature on the history of colonialism in Malawi so as to determine what sort of colonial actors or organisations might be relevant in making sense of these issues. Through this, it was apparent that records pertaining to church missionaries, early settlers,

71 colonial administration, the African Lakes Corporation, the department of

Geological Survey, Blantyre’s municipal Administration would be useful in this regard. I trawled catalogues of The National Archives, Public Record Office in

London, Oxford University Rhodes House, British Library Archive; University of

Manchester Library Archives and others. It was evident from the unsatisfactory results from these preliminary investigations that Malawi’s National Archives would be a useful place to do the archival study. I learn that in post-independence years, through a collaborative programme between the British and Malawi

Government, most of colonial records officially held in British Archives were repatriated to Malawi.

I spent 3 months sifting through colonial records at the national archives in

Zomba City in Malawi. This was a painstaking and laborious process. All records are manually listed through a very fragmented cataloguing system. This made it virtually impossible to know where to look. I eventually realised that it is people working here and not technology that made this Archive work. With the guidance of Mr Langwe and other staff, I slowly got the hang of the record identification system. This required manually scanning through subject/author/institution indexed guides, capturing record identification numbers and passing these on to the librarian. In some cases, such searches did not return results because of missing records. Apparently because of lax monitoring and security procedures, the National Archive has over the years been haemorrhaging important records through unscrupulous users, misplacement and not strictly following filing procedures by some members of staff. I came across instances where search catalogues suggested particular records were held on site but such could not be found. Because of missing records, it was in most cases difficult to obtain adequate information on particular issues of interest. The scantiness of records has in some instances limited my discussions and/or somewhat compromised the quality and depth of evidence I put forth to make certain claims.

Furthermore, the power-ridden nature of the archive along racial, class or gender lines is very well documented in research on African Colonial history or archival science studies (Frederiksen 2010; Ketelaar 2002; Schwartz and Cook 2002; Stoler

2002). Similarly, I also confronted some of the biases flagged up in this literature.

Thus, it is often the voices of select few influential male colonial settlers that are predominantly privileged in the collected archival material. Perspectives of Black

Africans and Women are conspicuous by their absence in many of the colonial discourses and practices I captured. Analyses that emerge from such information trove are inherently partial. I therefore do not profess to offer a complete account of the colonial reality I seek to investigate. Rather I only present partial insights into the fundamental logics, processes and consequences of the colonial modernisation project. Relatedly on power politics and the archive, we have tended to assume that questions of our positionalities as researchers do not really matter in such secondary-based investigations. After all, we would argue, negotiating access to the archive is an impersonal process in which our positions of power would have little or no bearing. We might further argue that we spend considerable amount of time interacting with inanimate records; it is difficult to envisage how our positions of power and influence might have any definitive agency on such material to the extent that can alter the quality of information we collect.

My own experiences though have revealed how my positionalities and the power politics beyond my narrow interactions with the physical record, can have an influence on the archival research process, and ultimately the information collected. As I indicate above, the National Archive in Zomba is more dependent on human labour than machines. This inevitably meant my ability to collect the necessary information depended on dealing with a number of staff on a regular basis. There were many occasions I felt that the manner different staff reacted to my presence, and their willingness to assist, was somewhat influenced by their

73 perceptions of who they thought I was. A number of junior staff referred to me as

Bwana (boss) despite my persistent attempts to reject this labelling and have them address me by my first name. Awkwardly, many of these were many years my senior. This label of social superiority, uninvitedly bestowed upon me, did not only place me in a certain elevated position of power, but also, came with certain expectations from some of these well-meaning officers whenever I sought their services. As I regularly spent time in the archives and got to personally know many of them, some would ask for a private moment to seek advice about work- related problems. There were also occasions some would ask for financial assistance. I could not help but wonder whether the generous help I got from some of these staff members was genuinely intended, or it was simply influenced by their expectations of gaining certain favours in return. Furthermore, spending time here naturally meant that I developed closer working ties with some of the staff members. In doing so, regardless of attempts to be professional and friendly with everyone, I eventually realised I alienated few individuals. This was noticeable through unspoken reluctance by some staff to assist me in the absence of those that I regularly worked with. I soon realised that I was indirectly sucked into some institutional politics and machinations (personal rivalries among some staff) although I did not in any way have anything to do with it. I therefore could not help but wonder to what extent such unspoken politics might have affected my access to the records. There were a number of occasions my stay in the archives did not yield the expected material partly because of this awkward politics.

2.3.2 Inclusions and omissions in the research process From field work, through data analysis, to the thesis writing up stage, as a researcher, I engaged in a series of unavoidable decisions regarding what to include or omit. Done consciously or unconsciously, such decisions might have been influenced by a number of pragmatic, theoretical or personal factors. I am fully aware that whatever the reasons behind such omissions and exclusions, their implications are far-reaching and there is only so much that can be claimed from this thesis. This thesis is in no way a complete representation of the totality of social realities I sought to investigate. It is rather a partial representation of such.

As Raghuram and Madge (2006) impresses upon us, the real is more complicated than we can possibly tell. As such, researches and theories are merely a sort of empirical disembedding—an abstraction. I can truly only wonder what I could possibly have known differently had I extended my study beyond Bwange and

Manase Townships. If I had interacted with different/same individuals on different terms, could the result have been any different? If I had spent much longer in these communities than I did, could I have possibly known more than I do? Did I miss out on anything during the time of my occasional absences from these communities? It has been long since I left the field in July 2012; if I had a chance to go back now will the outcome be any different from claims I make in this write-up? These are pertinent issues that reflect some inherent omissions in the field.

In translating collected information into the writing up process, I am also fully aware of the potential omissions that obtain in this regard. For instance, all interviews had been recorded in a local language, and had to be translated into

English for purposes of writing up. Often Chewa language, in which the interviews were originally recorded, does not lend itself to easy direct translation into English. This process therefore entails the translator having to subjectively rely on general lingual meaning than literal translation. One can therefore only

75 wonder how much of the original message conveyed by participants in this process was retained or lost through this process. Relatedly, an enormous amount of information had been collected from the field. This had to be sifted, sorted, digested and distilled before finding its way into the writing up process. In fact, in the writing up process, some evidence has been given more prominence than the other. One cannot deny that such omissions and inclusions are sometimes determined by researcher’s own personal and subjective judgements about what we think makes evidence good evidence to support claims we make from collected information. There is often a danger though judgements such as these might not always objectively reflect the real nature of phenomenon we intended to study. It would admittedly be naïve to pretend that this research, like any other, could possibly have been totally immune to these subjectivities. Additionally, a limited number of accounts and lived experiences have been prominently relied upon as evidence in staking claims in this write-up. One has to take consideration of the fact that aside from being merely representative, individuals to whom such accounts pertain are also themselves political subjects with vested interests. We therefore need to read cautiously into what they claim, and treat such accounts just as pointers, and not absolute truths about social reality.

As a researcher, I am also fully cognisant of the extent this research has been shaped by my own theoretical and personal subjectivities. The intensely religious manner, in which I subscribe to Marxian theoretical thought, and my very anti-capitalist posture, is very evident throughout this write up. I am fully aware that such posturing inevitably builds in certain biases. In so doing, my work might make an uncomfortable reading and alienate certain readers that do not subscribe to this theoretical school of thought. I still staunchly believe that the radical theory I invoke is best suited to my quest for seeking alternative critical insights and explanations to persistent water problems facing many poor cities in

Africa. I have yet to come across any theoretical expositions that have attempted

76 so effectively to penetrate beyond the perverted bourgeois realities than radical

Marxist thought in its many forms and guises. While I make no apology for my dogmatic theoretical beliefs, I am also fully aware of my own personal experiences and subjectivities that have greatly shaped my interest in radical thinking. My first encounters with radical theory through engaging with the work of the likes of Erik

Swyngedouw, Alex Loftus, Maria Kaika and other critical scholars during the very initial moments of my PhD, significantly challenged my own views about the world. Radical theory, for example, retrospectively changed the way I related to my own experiences growing up in a poor country and community. It marked a watershed moment in which I began to critically question why in my social context, a few are well off, command too much money, social power and influence, while many are desperate, dispossessed and hopelessly poor. Such a radical awakening of my conscious about the root causes of these social injustices has often provoked personal feelings of frustrations and anger. I am as such well aware that such personal and impassioned subjectivities have had an influence in the expositions I put forward in this thesis. Acknowledging and making explicit these inherent personal tensions and subjectivities is in itself liberatory. It allows me to proceed and present the material not as a complete account of phenomenon

I sought to investigate, but rather as a partial contribution to an on-going struggle to produce situated knowledge with liberatory potential.

Chapter3: A Political Ecology of Early Colonial Remaking of Blantyre’s

Waterscape (1850s to the late 1890s)

3.1 Introduction

A historical political ecological study of the contemporary urban water politics

ought to begin from the very critical moment capitalist relations make inroads to

mediate people’s relationships with water. It is this critical moment that marks a

transition to a new ethic, in which water is disembedded from indigenous forms of

governance, and becomes a resource bundle to be technologically controlled or

manipulated— often as a means to economic ends. Critical research has shown that

the externalisation of nature/water as an out there ‘thing’ and the scripting of it as a

resource bundle, a bounty to be appropriated for human progress and wealth, lies at

the heart of capitalist urbanisation and commodification of nature and space (Kaika

2005; Katz 1998). In Europe, Kaika and Katz in their respective studies, trace this

process to European modernity from the 17 th century. This period marked a decisive

moment in changing attitudes, and the scripting of nature as an out there object to

be tamed for human progress through rational scientific means. In former colonial

towns such as Blantyre, nevertheless, it is my contention that this process need to be

understood within the context of colonial remaking of nature and space. Western

colonisation introduced a particular form of modern capitalist economic relations

such as monetary exchange, private property and wage labour, and transformed

people’s relationship with water. Is it precisely at this critical moment, this thesis

argues, that traditional modes began to be modernised thereby making possible the

entry of monetary exchange, modern technologies and the ‘expert elites’, as

important interlocutors in human-water relations.

However, giving prominence to colonial modernisation as an important moment in entrenching these capitalist relations is not to insinuate that capitalism was first introduced here through European colonisation. As Eric Williams richly demonstrated in his classic “capitalism and Slavery” (Williams 1944), there is a strong interrelationship between slave trade and the development of capitalism both in western metropolis and satellite underdeveloped economies of the global south.

For Blantyre too, it is of course through this trade in human beings that this territory would first be linked to the advanced global economies of the West and Far East.

Nevertheless, largely predicated on conquering, capturing, exchanging (through barter trade), and shipping of the local population, and less concerned with the social, cultural, political, economic and/or ecological transformation of the local socio-ecologies, Arab Slave trade did not significantly impact human-water relations in Blantyre to the same extent as European colonisation did. It is generally because of its focus on changing the local inhabitants into modern economic subjects and transforming their ecology along western visions of modernity that British colonisation of this space was an important moment in urbanising socio-nature and space more generally, and specifically manipulating human-water interactions along capitalistic lines.

In this chapter therefore, I put to work the urbanisation of nature theoretical framework laid out in the first two chapters in order to understand the hydro-social implications of this early remaking of Blantyre under British colonisation. The chapter first examines the underlying ideologies that shaped the colonial project here and subsequent attempts to materially bring into effect utopian visions to modernise this space through capitalist economic modernisation. While discursively framed as an ecumenical mission to Christianise the Other, I argue that the colonisation of Blantyre was equally a modernist project predicated on geographic transformation of space and nature through capitalist economic relations (Kaika

2005; Swyngedouw 2007). I draw from the nature urbanisation literature to show

79 that, in this project, the taming and controlling of indigenous socio-nature was an integral part of legitimising ideologies and practical strategies in realising a particularly colonial/Eurocentric vision of modernity. I first of all explore the activities of early European colonisers, especially capitalist traders such as the

African Lakes Corporation. More specifically, I examine how the modern economic space they sought to create was an important precursor in capitalistic reconfiguration of indigenous socio-natures. Of interest is to reveal how particular forms of capitalist economic relations were entrenched in Blantyre’s waterscape thereby changing human-water relations. A specific examination of the activities of prominent settler enterprises such as the African Lakes Corporation is attempted to illustrate how this transformation entrenched a culture in which money and technologies began to dominate in the metabolic interchange between humans and water. Furthermore, through water and sanitation interventions implemented during this period, the analysis eventually moves towards a critical examination of the sort of social-geographies that emerged from this change. I contend that the prominence of private commercial interests in the water urbanisation process led to the production of a more fractured and unequal geographies of water distribution and access in Blantyre. This is not to suggest that pre-colonial forms were more benign or just. Rather the intention is to reveal that a different form of water politics took hold, in which for the first time, skin colour and money came to determine one’s access to basic necessities of life including water. This chapter then begins to explain the very critical moment capitalist urbanisation begun to produce Blantyre as an alienated waterscape. It is by understanding this critical moment I argue that, the historical nature of this space as an unjust and commodified waterscape is brought to light.

3.2 Early moments of colonial urbanisation of water in Blantyre (late 1850s on-

wards)

Literature on the urbanisation of nature has long demonstrated the transformative effects of modern water infrastructure on the human beings and water interact with each other. The capture and domestication of water through modern techniques has not only historically made possible societal change (see for example Wittfogel 1957).

Also, in contemporary societies, the urbanisation of water through modern technological networks has brought this basic need into the realm of commodities.

In “fetishising the Modern City” Kaika and Swyngedouw eloquently demonstrates the role of urban water networks in the commodification of necessities of life.

Modern technological networks, including water infrastructure, allow the metabolisation of urban environments as a “theatre of accumulation and economic growth”(Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000). Kaika and Swyngedouw therefore argue that this enables the insertion of such metabolised goods into relations of commodity production, circulation and exchange. There is a strong suggestion in this literature that key to the production of commodified urban space is the reconfiguration of socio-natural relations from production for use values to production for monetary exchange. It is through the dominance of relations of monetary exchange that modern urban environments are produced as spaces of economic accumulation.

This thesis insists that the distancing of humans from water, and the insertion of a monetary price into this basic necessity of life in Blantyre, is the inevitable outcome of the embedding of urban technological networks through which water is produced and distributed into capitalist production logics and economic exchange relations. From this realisation, the thesis claims that it is difficult for goods produced under this configuration to be provided outside the realm of commodities. In this section, I wish to demonstrate that for Blantyre, a critical moment in the embedding of these logics and relations can be traced to early

81 colonial remaking of socio-natural relations. Thus, it was through the interactions of early colonial settlers and indigenous socio-nature that Blantyre for the very first time came to be produced as a modern waterscape. Monetary exchange, modern science and technology, and the technical elite came to be firmly inserted at the heart of human-water interactions, and would forever transform the traditional permutations of social power that mediated access to water.

An analysis of the early remaking of Blantyre’s waterscape ideally needs to begin by looking at pre-colonial formations. This would help put into perspective the hydro-social change that has taken place here after colonisation. Such a task nevertheless is not only beyond the scope of this thesis, it is also impossible to do.

Very little has been documented about the nature of human-water interactions in

Blantyre before colonisation. Of much less dispute though, among scholars of

African colonial history, is the fact that modern urban life on this continent is a product of western colonisation (Brett 1978; Colson 1971). In pre-colonial Africa, life was predominantly a rural existence (see photo 3.1) in which the majority of inhabitants were direct producers of their own means of existence (Jarrett 1996).

Hunting, foraging, shifting cultivation, and such like direct means of subsistence, had generally been an integral part of rural African existence before coming into contact with non-African cultures. Similarly, accounts of early Europeans and contemporary historians (Livingstone 1857; Mandala 1990;Moir 1924; Mulwafu 201;

Buchanan 1885; Duff H 1903) broadly agree that, prior to colonisation, Blantyre was a traditional settlement of semi-nomadic indigenous population. We generally learn from these accounts that Blantyre was home to the Yao, Mang’anja and Ngoni tribes.

These Africans, among other direct means, mainly subsisted through foraging and shifting cultivation off communally owned land resources. John Kirk and John

Buchanan—two of the earliest British settlers—partly capture this indigenous life as follows:

The land is a property of the tribe; no individual can possess a freehold. The separate possession of individuals is secured to them so long as they occupy: no one can transfer land to another. The chief has the power of allowing the alienation of land, but the common rights of the community restrain him; without the common consent he could not dispose of any part of his territory (John Kirk in Foskett 1965).

As for the system of farming adopted by Central Africans it is as follows. They first “betroth” the piece of land on which they intend to operate by planting stakes upon it, tying up wisps of grass, or marking it in some other way. Native custom puts no restriction on them in this matter, save that they may not tamper with ground already broken by another. Subject to this proviso, they are free to appropriate just as much as they please in any direction, without asking any man’s leave or paying any tax or tribute whatever (Duff H 1903:295)

Photo 3.1: A Portrait of an African village life in Blantyre in the 1900s Source: (Moir 1924).

It was with the arrival of British missionary explorers from 1857 then that Blantyre would begin to be transformed into an important urban centre in Malawi’s political economy, with significant ramifications on human-nature relations. British colonisation of Blantyre was largely driven by the desire to thwart Arab Slave trade.

This was a mission predominantly led by the daring British Church Missionary explorers such as Dr David Livingstone and missionaries under the University

Mission to Central Africa (UMCA). The devastating effects of slave trade, and efforts to abolish it, brought this largely unknown part of the African interior into imperial discourses in Britain. The horrors of Slave trade as witnessed by European missionary explorers, and the discursive representation of this problem, provided an important master narrative for the colonisation of this region. I as such argue that this discursive representation was of consequence in the remaking of socio-natural relations in this newly claimed British territory. The barbarism and cruelty of slave trade was discursively framed as a problem which reflected the deep ‘moral ineptitude of Africans’ (see quote below). Seeing the barbarism of slavery as inherently rooted in what Europeans considered to be the ‘primitive and feeble’ nature of African moral qualities, meant that only when made to rise to higher things and moral purpose, would an African be emancipated from this existence and become a modern subject. This would require taming and disciplining Africans, from what Europeans thought of as an immoral existence, and reconstituting them into becoming modernised citizens. What was modern was European and Africans had to aspire to a European way of life to become modern subjects. A European considered himself/herself as the benevolent benefactor who would lead an African from this ‘doomed path of ignorance and barbarity’ onto the path of ‘modern civilisation’. This bigoted representation of slave trade as a natural outcome of

African way of life was a widely held view among early colonisers. Parsing available accounts of church missionaries, traders and colonial officers reveal the extent to which settlers conflated the problem of slavery as a problem of

84 underdeveloped moral qualities of an African (Duff H 1903; Moir 1924; Livingstone

1857). Through this discourse, settler colonisers found a legitimating narrative upon which they could attempt to enrol an indigenous African into a European way of life. Thus, tackling the slave problem would require changing the nature of an

African. Changing the nature of an African would require inducing him/her into a

European modern way of life.

If it hadn’t been for the philanthropic movement this country would still have been under the blighting influence of the petty native misrule and a happy hunting ground of the slaver. At the Livingstone’s call Christian civilization and industry entered the land and made it possible for the native to rise to higher things, while left to himself he would have remained stagnant or even retrograded…it is necessary for his own normal development that he should be made to rise out of rut of constitutional laziness induced by the habit of centuries. It is necessary for the success of trade and commerce…. (British Central African Times, 1897)

The critical role of ‘scripting the Other’ in modernist transformation of socio-natural relations is well established in critical studies. It has long been understood that, viewing the indigenous Other as inferior, and their environments as a free resource up for the taking by a superior European master, has provided important master narratives for conquest and dispossession of socio-nature (Braun 1997; Cronon 2003;

Harris 2004; Katz and Kirby 1991). Trivialising indigenous way of life provided a rationale for the coloniser to discursively begin disembedding indigenous society from nature (Sullivan 2010). As critical research has shown, it is this severing of nature and society that forms the basis for the privatisation and commodification of indigenous socio-ecologies. The general extent to which colonial narratives generally transformed human-nature relations in this region has been attempted by few studies on colonial socio-ecological change in the Shire Highlands (Baker 1972;

Mandala 1990; Mulwafu 2010; Ross 1975). We generally learn from these studies that

European visions of modernity, and the cultural arrogance and violence upon

85 which such ideals were imposed on Africans played a big role in, for example, dispossessing land and forcing local populations into becoming providers of free labour to European enterprises. Nonetheless, most of these studies have largely focused attention on rural parts of the Shire Highlands; the implication of colonial modernisation on urban questions in places that were important colonial nerve centres such as Blantyre remains largely unexplored. In this thesis, therefore, specifically examining the material implications of these modernist ideologies in the alienation of urban space and water in Blantyre allows gaining critical insights into the processes and relations of power that came to produce these spaces as modern economic hubs, and the effect of this transformation on human-water interactions.

Whereas the colonisation of Blantyre was ideologically framed as a project of moral transformation, the materialisation of this utopian ideal was definitively a geographic endeavour. It was a project predicated on materially creating and deploying modern economic space as a tool for moral subjugation, manipulation and control. Urbanised space was thus decidedly enrolled to bring order, reconstitute the everydayness of indigenous life and create a different sort of political subjects. The birth of Blantyre was a product of domesticating Eurocentric visions of modernity and progress. It was a deliberate programmatic endeavour aimed at bringing rational order into what was seen as a wild everydayness of

African life. Situated on less populated land given cheaply in kind by local chief

Kapeni in 1876, a distinctive economic space had to be produced largely through pioneering capitalists such as John and Fred Moir of the African Lakes Corporation

(ALC). The activities of settler capitalist ventures such as The ALC played a crucial role in producing Blantyre as a modern economic space. These, among other things, introduced money and wage labour as a basis for daily existence, and further opened up this place to the global capitalist economy. The African Lakes

Corporation was initially founded to materially prop up the civilizing mission; it was specifically mandated to implement trade and commerce ventures which

86 would offer alternative modern forms of substance to supplant what was seen as the

‘primitive African existence’. Freeing and civilising Africans was a mission couched in a liberal economic thought of free labour and free commodity exchange. To change the nature of Africans and produce modern progressive citizens, colonisers widely believed would require completely divorcing an African from what was seen as a lowly barbarous existence (Duff 1903; CAT 1897; Johnston 1897). Fredrick

Lugard (1893) one of the foremost colonial officers pithily captures this process by arguing that “the great coffee plantation and buildings of the missions, the Lakes

Company, and Messrs. Buchanan, were the means of instituting on a large scale the experiment of free labour in Africa, and natives came from great distances, even from the warlike Angoni tribe, to engage themselves for regular wages” (1893:72).

From late 1870s, the company opened up trading stores and large scale production and exportation of commodity crops such as coffee, tea or tobacco. It was also tasked with opening up this remote and landlocked country to global trade by establishing viable transport and communication networks between the interior and the Indian Ocean (Moir 1924).

The opening up of Blantyre enabled places such as the ALC’s headquarters at

Mandala to grow into important modern economic hubs. The relative peace and security these spaces offered in a politically volatile environment (Gale 1958), coupled with the diminishing of subsistence opportunities for the increasing number of the indigenous population as a result of widespread dispossession of land and other natural resources, provided the impetus for the growth of Blantyre into an important economic space. Early settlers arrived in Blantyre during a particularly difficult period. Arab slave trade had significantly weakened the inter- tribal cohesion and power fabric which for generations helped maintain relative peace in the Shire Highlands. Slave trade though thrived on exploiting local disputes among rival Ngoni, Yao and Mang’anja tribes. The tribal Yao chiefs such as

Mponda, Jalasi and Makanjila preyed on the largely peaceable Mang’anjas who had

87 for a long time been in control of this region. This chaotic political economic context provided both a challenge and an opportunity to the early European settlers. While the marauding slavers posed a constant threat to the colonising mission, the weakening position of the once dominant Mang’anjas made it easy for the coloniser to occupy the power vacuum and take control of critical resources such as land.

Seen as a benevolent saviour by the desperate and power dispossessed Mang’anja chiefs such as Kapeni, spaces created by Europeans such as Mandala became popular sanctuaries for their subjects who sought refuge from tribal hostilities (see photo 3.2).

Photo 3.2: Africans taking refuge at Mandala, the Headquarters of African Lakes Corporation Source: (Moir 1924)

These also served as pioneering spaces for instituting capitalist production ventures through which indigenous populations would economically be transformed from being direct subsistence producers into becoming wage labourers. For example, pioneering settler enterprises such as the ALC were not only complicit in dispossessing large swathes of land in Blantyre and surrounding districts, and in the process forcing a significant number of Africans into becoming wage labourers

(Macmillan 1975; Alan Smith 1975; Ross 1975); also, through collaboration with local

Mang’anja chiefs, ALC actively sought to recruit African labour into its various commercial operations at Blantyre and surrounding areas. For Instance, in the absence of a modern transport and communications network, able bodied men from

Chief Kapeni and beyond were highly sought after to work as merchandise carriers for Europeans. Initially paid in calico (a piece of cloth) and later coinage, the colonist creation of wage labourers through what came to be popularly known as Machila boys (Buchanan 1885), epitomised the intensification of colonial capitalist commodification of human labour in Blantyre. Largely spending long periods away from home, these men by and large were divorced from the everydayness of their indigenous life. The establishment of European enterprises, and the creation of the

African wage labourer, enabled Mandala to grow into an important economic centre in Nyasaland. From 1870s, Blantyre began to experience a steady influx of the

African population in search of refuge and economic opportunities as wage labourers in European enterprises such as Mandala. For instance, from an estimated population of 22,206 in 1895 this almost quadrupled to 97,282 in 1905 (CAT 1897a;

BCA 1905). For those dispossessed of their indigenous means of existence and introduced into wage labour relations, earning wages through exchanging their labour power increasingly become an important means of acquiring basic needs of life. This, together with other economic changes, marked the transition towards an urbanised life. By introducing capitalist enterprises, British colonisation thus began

89 to radically redefine the metabolic exchange between humans and nature in

Blantyre.

I heretofore highlight these economic changes because they had important impact in redefining the socio-geographies of Blantyre. This, for example, was critical in reshaping the political ecologies of urban infrastructure such as the production and distribution of water; this for example redefined the politics and economics that determined where such services would be developed and who would have access to them. One of the critical entry points into unpicking these colonial political ecologies is to understand the impact of the dominance of settlers in the economic modernisation on the urbanisation of the socio-ecologies of

Blantyre. I argue that the prominence of European settler private enterprises such as

ALC in the early colonial remaking of Blantyre entrenched a highly fragmented and exclusionary urbanisation process. This, for example, had important ramifications in defining where water and sanitation services would be concentrated, and who would have access to them. The Marxian critique of capitalist relations generally alerts us to the dangers that lurks when economic modernisation is dominated by private capitalist interests (Altivater 1978; Holloway and Picciotto 1978; Muller and

Neussus 1978; Offe 1975). It generally argues that the logic of capital demands a constant cherry-picking of more profitable opportunities to ensure continuous accumulation. Non-profitable functions are often externalised onto society and state institutions created to ameliorate these externalities. Where private capitalist interests dominate and state institutions are weak, critical theory demonstrates that it is often social and ecological concerns that are compromised.

In Blantyre, the absence of state institutions (see next chapter), and the dominance of private ventures such as the ALC, had a limiting effect on the development and provision of urban social infrastructure that was necessary in coping with the rapid transformation set in motion through colonial modernisation

(McCracken 1998). While the African Lakes Corporation occupied a centre stage in

90 the early remaking of Blantyre, it was a private shareholding company; it was financed by Scottish capitalists such as Mr James Young an appropriator of Shale Oil

Industry, Mr John Stephen of Alexander Stephen & Sons, James Stevenson, and a

Mr Largs (Moir 1924). Therefore, despite the benevolent ideals of the civilising project, the ALC was primarily answerable to its private capitalist backers. It had to turn profits and pay dividends to its shareholders in Britain. John and Fred Moir, the pioneering managers of the ALC, acknowledged this fact in their memoirs compiled in a book “After Livingstone” (Moir 1924). While initially proceeds from

ALC’s operations were ploughed into propping up the civilising project, this model by and large proved economically unsustainable. For example, the growing anti-

European hostilities among beleaguered local chiefs and Arab slavers significantly burdened the ALC (BCA 1905; BCA 1908). With private money invested in this company, it had to generate a return for its financiers. Ultimately, ALC began to adopt a more profit oriented stance. In Moir Brother’s own admission, the company scaled back its involvement in social ventures and begun to focus more on its core economic activities (Moir 1924). By the 8 th year since its establishment, the company was able to turn a substantial profit and pay a first dividend of about 2.5% to its shareholders in England. My aim here is not merely to describe the ALC’s business model for its own sake. I rather wish to highlight that, given the importance of ALC in the modernising project, a shift towards this profit-oriented stance meant more emphasis on money-making and much less on social-ecological concerns in this rapidly urbanising space. Albeit anecdotal, accounts of church missionaries who were critical of the exploitative nature of private settler enterprises, offer glimpses into the social implications of this shift. For instance, maverick missionaries at

Blantyre Mission such as Michael Scott, Clement Scott and few others, document the social ills resultant of this digression from the benevolent ideals of the colonising mission (Ross 1975). For example, as can be seen from the quote below, Africans largely came to be viewed as beasts of burden in the accumulation process, while

91 their social conditions mattered little to the settler entrepreneur. The colonial capitalist more and more came to see African spaces as free labour camps while committing none of his private money towards improving living conditions of his labourers.

Surely if we use the native as a beast of burden, it is our duty to feed and house him. Instead to avoid trouble and lessen the cost, means bigger dividends to the British shareholder, we trade upon his humanity by making him do the work of an ox and then forage for his food in a foodless country, is this British justice and equity which we pretend to uphold and fight for? (Blantyre Mission 1920:4)

Photo 3.3: Early Mandala House, the Headquarters of African Lakes Corporation Source: (Moir 1924)

The dominance of the logic of accumulation, over and above all other concerns in the early modernisation, began to inscribe in Blantyre an exclusionary and exploitative urban politics. Places of economic or social interest to Europeans such as Mandala, saw a relatively high concentrations and improvement of urban services than the squalid Black African environs (McCracken 1998). In fact, the colonial redefinition of the urban socio-geography of Blantyre, and the exclusionary politics this entrenched, was not merely a side-effect of economic modernisation. I argue that this was also partly a result of an explicitly deliberate programmatic endeavour by the colonisers in their quest to produce Blantyre as a distinctly

European town. I insist that the colonisation of Blantyre was also very much a project of domesticity in which Europeans sought to create home away from home

(See photo 3.3). Doing so required carving out spaces where a European could feel safe from the perceived risk Africans posed owing to what Europeans bigotedly presumed to be a result of centuries of backwardness, barbarity and poor sanitary habits. This set in motion exclusionary practices that had far-reaching implications on the socio-geographies of access to urban services including water. In the section that follows, I explore the political ecological dynamics generally outlined here. It is through these dynamics, I argue, that a particularly exclusionary water socio- geography was forged on Blantyre’s waterscape.

3.2.1 The logic of capital and producing a fractured watering of the colonial Town

Unfortunately, the water supply here is very bad, though a little energy would set it all right. There is the Mudi stream, for instance, which flows perennially without much diminution, even in the dry season; but the upper waters of the Mudi flow through native villages and the settlements of the missionary scholars, and all these people wash their clothes and persons in the river, besides emptying into it all kinds of filth. The Mudi is crossed higher up by another bridge which the Administration has just made the result is that its waters are quite unfit for drinking purposes. A few of the settlers have wells, but all of these except two seem to produce slightly brackish unwholesome water. Away to the north of Blantyre arises another

very fine stream, the Likubula. This is rather too much below the level of Blantyre to make it easy to convey the water to the township. The simplest expedient would seem to be the purification of the Mudi(Johnston 1897:186).

In their political ecological analysis, Erik Swyngedouw and Mathew Gandy have shown the historical trajectory of urban water infrastructure development. They generally identify this progression in the evolution of urban water infrastructure as generally moving from private modes in early urbanisation to state welfarism in a post-industrial city then back to private in neo-liberal capitalist economies. The impetus in this shift, it is argued, is generally sparked by attempts to resolve various systemic contradictions within the socio-nature/space urbanisation project. One of the major insights that emerge from this analysis is that, phases dominated by private capitalist interests, tend to be exploitative, limited and socially exclusionary.

As urban water infrastructure governance historically shifts through the private- public-private continuum, privatised modes have often been generally characterised by limited access to water infrastructure by the moneyed few, and attempts to extract profit from selling water by those who control the means of producing water. Similarly, in Blantyre, the early urbanisation of human-water relations was accompanied by more private water interventions intended to serve the water needs of few European settlers. To understand the nature of these interventions, and their impacts on the water socio-geographies of this place, one has to consider how ecology and politics combined here to produce a distinctly exclusionary hydro- social configuration.

As the quote above highlights, Blantyre’s hydro-ecological conditions posed a great challenge to the pioneering ventures. Blantyre has a particularly difficult hydro-geographic condition, which does not lend itself readily to easy capture and domestication of water resources. The precarity of Blantyre’s hydro-ecology partly inhere in its highly variable climatic conditions, more especially, erratic rainfall patterns. This town lies in the subtropical savannah climatic region. With a distinct wet and dry season, most of the rains generally fall over a period of five months

(November to March) followed by late rains in April (Baker 1993). With 90% of precipitation occurring from November to March, the region receives very little or no rains at all in the dry months. Blantyre as a natural catchment area, therefore, can only yield limited amount of water resources, and most of its naturally occurring water channels are ephemeral. Furthermore, while the mountainous terrain of this landscape form headwaters for some important rivers and streams in the region, many of these water sources radiate away at considerably lower elevation from the chosen location of the town, thus making the harnessing of water resources in there a baffling and costly engineering challenge.

Map 3:1: Map showing low altitude location of Blantyre Town in relation to the mountainous terrain of the general area Source: adapted by Nicholas Scarle from Chanza (2013)

Suffice to say that with an average elevation of over 1000m above sea level, Blantyre town is located at a relatively higher attitude (see map 3.1). This makes conveyance of water from sources below it a daunting challenge. The location of the town, therefore, is inherently disadvantageous in terms of augmenting water supply. Of the limited number of surface water sources within the proximity of the town, it is only the Mudi River whose hydro-geomorphology appears amenable to large-scale domestication.

Even then, Mudi River per se posed inherent limitations to the coloniser. While generally perennial, this had natural potential of producing only 60,000 gallons of water per day in wet years, but this would significantly diminish in drought conditions. A water availability assessment exercise undertaken by Stewarts and

Lloyds engineers in 1929 revealed a flow falling to a daily average of 23,000 gallons, against an estimated water demand in Blantyre of 40,000 gallons per day at the time.

The limited and unreliable water yielding capacity of the Mudi did not therefore make it a viable option either. Furthermore, as Sir Harry Johnston acknowledged

(see opening quote to this section), the rapid urbanisation of Blantyre, and the deteriorating sanitary conditions, further compromised the usefulness of Mudi as a potential water source. Domesticating Mudi would therefore have required large scale investment in water reticulation systems.

In highlighting the potentialities and limitations of Blantyre’s hydraulic environment, I wish to begin illustrating how colonial changes that took place began to create a particularly social water crisis in the context of these natural constraints. I argue that the manner in which Europeans discursively represented

Blantyre’s water problem, and the interventions taken during the early moments in the remaking of the town, had important consequences in shaping the urban water political ecology of this town. In developing this argument, it is important to emphasise, as other scholars have similarly done in other contexts (See for example,

Kaika 2003), that a particularly socially-constructed water scarcity came to be

96 produced in Blantyre as the European colonisers sought to grapple with these nature-imposed constraints and create Blantyre as a modern economic space. Pre- colonial Shire Highlands was a sparsely populated space, whose inhabitants led a semi-nomadic life. Often synchronised to seasonal cycles and climatic perturbations, such a simple life generally allowed for ecological resilience (See Mandala 1990;

Mulwafu 2010). But the wanton parcelling out of productive tracts of land, and fostering wage labour as a means of subsistence, led to a more settled and urbanised life. This, coupled with the underdevelopment of urban infrastructure such as sanitation, greatly undermined the sanitary state of few available water sources in

Blantyre. Thus, high levels of human-induced pollution in major streams such as

Mudi, Nasolo and others, effectively created a water scarcity. For settlers such as

Johnston quoted in the opening paragraph to this section, the water problem was largely represented as naturally an African problem. As an extract below from a

European sanitation officer further demonstrates, deteriorating sanitary conditions were linked to what was perceived as the ‘feeble and backwardness’ of the African

Other. Evidence of this representation is also, for example, glimpsed in editorials of important colonial tabloids at the time (Central African Times 1903b; 1898; 1903c).

Editorials deploring deteriorating sanitary conditions in Blantyre time and again seem to draw a direct link between what is described as, the ‘feral’ nature of an

African and the pollution of the environs of the town (see second quote below)

The native is not dissatisfied with the conditions under which he lives— speaking always of sanitation. He does not appreciate the beneficial effect that cleanly conditions and habits would have on his health and happiness. He is notoriously slow to adopt new ideas that involve departure from established customs or sustained effort of any kind and he is by nature indolent and callous. Centuries of savagery have inevitably ingrained in him a belief in the futility of thought for the morrow and he is suspicious of the motives which lie behind any novel scheme put before him by the European(Anon 1901)

“…be as it may be, if we are going to have a township let it not be a farce…let them see about proper water supply and the other sanitary arrangements which are crying needs. All natives should be put out of the boundaries

except such as are properly housed within the compounds of a European” (Central African Times 1898:4).

Framing the water and sanitation problem as inherently an African problem was a potent ideology that influenced the manner settlers sought to deal with Blantyre’s water and sanitation problem. In short, it was an African that had to be dealt with by creating and keeping him/her out of sanitised European spaces; an African would only be admitted into these spaces upon attainment of sanitary habits prescribed by his European master. In practical terms, rooting out the African

‘pestilence’ took the form of an apartheid process of zoning out space along racial and class lines. Separate urbanism thus became the new mantra of colonial economic rationality and urban policy. In a town council meeting of 1 st December

1903, punitive by-laws were passed to impose restrictions on African activity in

Blantyre Township (Central African Times 1903e). A night curfew was imposed on

Africans such that they had to leave town by 9pm or risk arrest or hefty fines. The washing up and bathing in the Mudi River around areas close to European settlements was outlawed. The production, retailing and drinking of African beer within a radius of 3 miles of the town was forbidden. Strict planning regulations were rustled up such that African dwellings had to meet specific sanitary standards; noncompliance attracted harsh sanctions such like fines or evictions (Central

African Times 1897a). The enforcement of these regulations was a heavy-handed affair, and rested on the shoulders of an army of sanitation inspectors and paramilitary police, many of whom were Africans too (see photo 3.4). Thus, to acknowledge the agency of Africans—whether willingly or coercively—as collaborators in creating this exclusionary urban water political ecology. The importance of this African collaboration in the production of a socially classified watering of Blantyre town is looked at elsewhere in subsection 3.2.1.1. Here, I wish to show that the scripting of the troubled water and sanitation situation as an

African problem by the coloniser provided a legitimating narrative for beginning to

98 enclose urban space along racial lines in Blantyre. Europeans sought to produce a distinctly sanitised space free from ‘native’ contamination.

Photo 3.4: Black African Police Force at Mandala Source: Central African Times (1899)

Among other things, this ought to be firstly understood within a purview of settler cultural attitudes towards bodily sanitation, which differed significantly from that of indigenous Africans. Thus, in late 19 th century, Britain had undergone a cultural revolution in regard to bodily sanitation. The public health crisis of the industrial city prompted a revolutionary transformation in the sanitisation of body-space relations (Gandy 2004; Kaika 2005; Swyngedouw 2004). Miasmic and moralistic interpretations of the public health crisis were supplanted by a far more rational understanding brought forth by systemic and scientific study of disease epidemiology. The causal understanding of the link between the body-space-germs, and the spread of disease, necessitated more systematic state interventions in urban public health. In turn, this significantly reconfigured urban citizenry. This was

99 marked by the emergence of new sanitary attitudes and norms, and more significantly, the increasing individualisation and withdrawal of the body from the public to the private sphere. The extent to which these attitudes permeated settler attitudes towards sanitation matters in Blantyre is evident in extracts below. To

Europeans, Africans were perceived as dirty ‘savages’ that had to be kept at a distance through enclosure of urban space.

the dirtiest people of all are the bestial Anguru of Lake Chilwa, and the inferior races of Central Angoniland, the slaves and dependents of the true Angoni, such as Batumbuka, Ajawa, Achewa, Achipeta and others who come down from their homes to work as carriers or otherwise in the Shire districts. The bodies of these men are often so encrusted with accumulated layers of clay, mud and filth of all kinds that it is scarcely possible to distinguish the natural hue of their skins, while the stench which they exhale is almost intolerable. Fortunately these savages wear next to no clothing. If they did, they would be scarcely approachable by Europeans (Duff 1903, p213).

Secondly, settler demands for a distinctly European space, free of Africans, need also be situated within the economic crisis Blantyre experienced in late 1890s.

During this period, Blantyre’s land-based urban economy slowed down due to plummeting land prices. The economic urbanisation of this place had largely been built on speculative land sales. Few moneyed settlers bought up small plots of land at multiple locations, with the intention of monopolising the land market, and push up land prices (Central African Times 1898). The concentration of land in the hands of a few settlers created conditions for fictitious land valuation as owners sought to maximise returns by hoarding and speculatively inflating prices. While land was largely acquired at knockdown prices and at times freely during the early phases of the colonisation project, by the 1890s, an acre cost £10 which one settler described would be a thousand percent of the original price (Central African Times 1898).

Consequently, overpricing of land in Blantyre became the norm. Land increasingly became unaffordable, and eventually fewer buyers were willing to pay the high premium prices. With no demand to be had, the land price bubble burst. In 1897, for

100 example, “an acre would not fetch the price a quarter of an acre when the boom was on” (Central African Times 1898:4).

To land owners, this problem was not understood as largely an economic one. The reluctance of prospective investors to buy land in Blantyre, and the eventual drop in land prices, was rather directly linked to deteriorating sanitary conditions. The economic meltdown was thus framed as a product of a lack of a moral ethic of cleanliness among ‘primitive’ Africans. All along, among settler landowners, there had been a longstanding fear of and resentment towards the

African presence and its perceived negative economic impact vis-à-vis the price of land. In the early 1890s, Sir Alfred Sharpe, one of the foremost representatives of the

British Government before Nyasaland was formally brought under the British dominion, had negotiated a land re-appropriation deal with the European land owners for purposes of developing Blantyre into a European township. This deal would depend on the administration’s ability and willingness to fulfil settler demands for imposing restrictions on African movement within the designated township. When Blantyre’s economy hit the doldrums and this problem was discursively linked to deteriorating sanitary conditions due to the presence of

Africans, some landowners protested the administrators’ failure to make good on their pledge to deal with the ‘African problem’. In registering their frustrations, some settler land owners left clues in their accounts of the extent this economic malaise was directly attributed to African sanitary habits (see second quote below).Thus, only by keeping Africans away from European spaces would the economic integrity of Blantyre be restored (see first quote below).

the boom which Sir Harry tried to get up and of which Blantyre is monument has collapsed and those who expected that the prosperity of the country was going to be based on a paper township with high sounding names for its streets are finding out that something more is wanted for a township…be that as it may, if we are going to have a township let it not be a farce…all natives should be put out of the boundaries except such are properly housed within the compounds of a European, and even then only personal servants

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should be allowed. In this connection it would be well if the administration would try and get a native town established and the Banyan element wants confirming too. It is not race prejudice that dictates these measures but a matter of sanitation(Central African Times 1897b:5)

...Mr Brown raised the question of Banyana (natives) invasion of the township. Pointed out that the first meeting called by Sir Harry Johnston at which Mr Sharpe presided, the land owners had only agreed to make their land into township on condition that the Banyanas were not allowed to build near the European quarters than two blocks on the other side of the road reading to Mandala. He thought administration had not fulfilled the conditions under which the township was formed. The question was discussed and agreed that the Banyana to be confined to their present limits on the north (Central African Times 1898:7)

Therefore, settler demands to create a sanitised space—a home away from home for the European settler—and the framing of the economic downturn as an African sanitation problem, provided the raison d’être for fragmenting space along racial lines in Blantyre. This marked a pivotal moment in which, for the first time, one’s skin colour and social power begins to determine access to urban space. In the subsection that follows, I shall explore the implications of this exclusionary urban politics in the socio-geographies of water and sanitation access in this town.

3.2.1.1 Race, class and the privatisation of access to colonial water and sanitation

services in Blantyre

The early remaking of Blantyre’s waterscape was an important period in inserting race and class as critical determinants in accessing basic necessities of urban life, including water and sanitation. Critical urban research has usefully theorised the determinacy of racial/class power in the distribution of urban services (Bolotin and

Cingranelli 2009; Coulter 1980; Lineberry 1977; McLafferty 1982; Hero 1986; Smith and Hanson 2003; Squires and Kubrin 2005; ; Swatuk 2008). This research has for long demonstrated that race and class has historically been important in shaping access to social power. This in turn determines who gets what services in modern urban environments. Until recently, the importance of colonial history in the

102 production of these racialised and classified urban social geographies had received very little attention within this literature. It is through research done by scholars such as Karen Bakker and Michelle Kooy in the city of Jakarta (Kooy and Bakker

2008a), for example, that the colonial question has featured in the political ecological analysis of urban infrastructure. In systematically mapping colonial legacies in the distribution of urban social services, Bakker and Kooy provide important insights into how the colonial is critical in understanding inequalities and injustice in the distribution of water and sanitation services in the post-colonial urban space.

Similarly, I argue and will demonstrate in subsequent chapters that the colonial legacies of watering and sanitising Blantyre along racial/class lines has had important ramifications in the production of contemporary socio-geographies of access to water and sanitation. It is within the contours of these historical/colonial geographies, for example, that we begin to witness the emergence of a privatised and commodified watering of urban space here. Piecing together what is by all account anecdotal accounts of the population geography of the town, in relation to the spatial distribution of colonial water wells, for example, reveals an interesting political ecological pattern. The early remaking of this waterscape was dominated by the proliferation of small-scale, settler-owned water wells. As discussed earlier, the absence of large-scale state intervention, and the deteriorating sanitary conditions, forced individual settlers to find own means of coping with the water and sanitation situation. From the various testimonies, we learn that the few water wells available during this period were located in spaces occupied by European enterprises (see map 3.2).Whereas the exact number of wells available at the time is not known, we learn that it was on properties of ALC, John Buchanan, Robert

Hynde, Eugen Sharrer and I Lamagna, for example, that initial attempts were made to sink private water wells (Blantyre Town Council 1903a).

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Map 3:2: Map showing possible general location of water wells within European dominated areas of Colonial Blantyre Source: Produced by Nicholas Scarle (The University of Manchester Cartographic Unit)

In fact, it is even more intriguing to note that the majority of the Black Africans were confined in neighbourhoods such as Mbayani and Ndirande outside of this well watered space. Increasing restrictions on the movement of the African population, therefore, excluded many of them from these European water sources. There were also deliberate attempts by some settlers to bar Africans from using their private water sources. For example, given its importance in the colonising mission, the

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African Lakes Corporation had been one of the foremost ventures to develop modern water wells in Blantyre. While evidence is scanty on the nature of these water sources and the associated politics governing their access, indications are that the shift in ALC’s economic policy towards a more profit-oriented posture led to the enclosure and privatisation of water sources along racial lines. As discussed earlier,

ALC had initially maintained a largely open door policy to indigenous Africans. It therefore seems plausible to suggest that such a policy could have allowed Africans access to water wells available at Mandala.

The adoption of a more commercially-oriented, inward looking policy by the

ALC resulted in increasing restrictions on public access to ALC’s facilities. ALC’

Mandala headquarters—once a space for African transformation and progress— thus came to be increasingly enclosed from the public. Evidence of this enclosure of

ALC’s space and its infrastructure can be seen in a communiqué issued by Manager

Gibbs in late 1895. A senior manager at the company at this time, Gibbs issued the following communiqué to the inhabitants of Blantyre: “on and after 1 st January 1896, the African Lakes Corporation Limited regrets being unable to supply inhabitants outside Mandala with water. The limited quantity now obtainable is fully required by the increased number of European residents at Mandala”(Gibbs 1895). Save its racial connotations, the linking of water restriction to the increasing number of

Europeans need to be partly understood as part of an attempt by ALC to enclose and enrol water as an economic resource in the reproduction of labour power. The

African Lakes Corporation controlled a large expanse of business operations in

Blantyre ranging from banking, retail trading, transport/communication, import/export trade and other (McMillan 1970). These operations required specialized skills and knowhow not readily available among the local population.

ALC therefore recruited a European expatriate workforce, and a sizeable number of this was resident around the company’s headquarters at Mandala. The expatriate population increased multiple-folds from merely a handful in the 1870s when the

105 company just started its operations to about 608 in 1920s (Colonial Blue Books 1920).

It is in the context of this increase that Manager Gibb’s water restrictions ought to be understood. Furthermore, the racial undertones as a basis for restricting water access in Gibb’s communication are also of particular interest. While this is more implied than explicit, the prioritisation of Europeans around Mandala, and the scripting off in such a narrative of many Africans that sought refuge and economic opportunities here, points towards an attempt to redefine access to water along racial lines. While water had traditionally been a common-pool resource in indigenous African society, there is a suggestion here of a particular moment when racial distinction becomes important as a criterion for defining access to this important means of subsistence. Thus, the reconfiguration of body-space relations– as Europeans sought to create certain parts of Blantyre as sanitised spaces for their own existence and/or experimented to transform this place into a theatre of capital accumulation–began to bring race into urban water ecological politics.

Here one must be wary that the risk looms large of over-simplifying these racialised socio-geographies of colonial urbanisation. For example, I argue that while racial segregation was important in the production of these colonial socio- geographies, this equally inserted social class as an important mediator of hydro- social relations in Blantyre. In uncovering this socially classified configuration, the thesis here highlights an important moment when contours of class power begin to determine access to water in this town and therefore pointing to the complex nature of these hydro-social permutations. The importance of reproducing socio- geographies of water access along class lines has had far-reaching implications to

Blantyre’s water political ecology. For example, as I shall demonstrate in chapter 6, while racial differentiation was made irrelevant after de-colonisation, class divisions have endured the test time in underwriting the contemporary politics of water distribution. Thus, this city today continues to be shaped by contours of class division and exploitation inscribed during its colonial past. Understanding class

106 politics in early colonial remaking of Blantyre therefore offers an important entry point for beginning to formulate a richer and complex understanding of how social power has come to shape Blantyre’s water political ecology. With its focus on relational dynamics that shape urban ecologies, the historical geographical materialist perspective adopted in this thesis points towards ways such a conception can be developed (Swyngedouw 1999). A point of departure for formulating such an understanding is to go beyond fixed racial/class binaries, and instead requires viewing urbanisation as a dialectic process fraught with myriad tensions and contestations. For example, to usefully make sense of the colonial socio-geographies of urban services in Blantyre, requires moving beyond the simply racialised view of

European vs African, and looking at the complex permutations of class differentiation that were equally important in defining contours of access to these services.

I therefore argue that colonial urbanisation of Blantyre was never simply about Europeans exploiting Africans. Elsewhere in section 3.2.1, I have, for example, briefly highlighted the importance of black Africans as collaborators in the colonial production of exclusionary water politics. Further examining the social position of such Africans in the colonial modernisation project reveals the emergence of a more complex class dynamic beyond the racial divide discussed previously. Thus, in fulfilling their civilising mission, Europeans depended on the acquiescence and complicity of African elites. For instance, the tribal Makololo and Mang’anga chiefs such as Ramakukan and Kapeni respectively, were important collaborators in the colonising project. These did not only provide land resources and human labour in exchange for material gifts from Europeans; also, their children, and those of their acquaintances, were among the few Africans that would early on benefit from

European education and/or get employed in European enterprises (Macmillan

1975). The exposure of these Africans to a European way of life began to foster new forms of class divisions largely defined by western cultural norms among the

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African inhabitants. For example, one’s social position came to be defined by how far they adopted western cultural values in terms of sanitary habits, education, work, residents and such. It is this clique of westernised Africans, often male, that came to occupy a slightly advantageous position vis-à-vis the rest of the African population, and enjoyed certain privileges from the colonial master. For example, while the entry into European spaces was generally restricted to Africans, those privileged enough to work for white settlers were issued special passes allowing them to work and live in European Areas (Central African Times, 1903). This privileged African lot constituted a distinct category of Africans that assumed relatively higher positions of privilege and status than many of their African compatriots. Living in European quarters, this class of Africans were the first to be introduced to modern water and sanitation methods. As extract below from the

Director of Public Works further suggests, it was also these Africans that for the first time became water rate payers.

Sir, I have the honour to inform you that Mr Chas. Matinga, Native Storekeeper, at present employed in Blantyre is occupying a small disused Asiatic quarter near the public works Department Office as no other suitable accommodation can be provided. Mr Matinga has now been charged water rates which he considers are excessive for a man in his position. He further states that he would rather draw his own water if he could be exempted from the water rate. This however is not possible as by law the Town Council must levy the rate whether their water is used or not (Nyasaland Government 1939:3)

The colonial creation, along western lines, of social divisions among the African population, provides important insights into the contemporary water politics in

Blantyre in terms of who controls/monopolises water and who does not and/or which parts of the city are well-water and which are not etcetera. From chapter 5 onwards, I illustrate that while the independence African struggle wrestled state power from Europeans ruling elites, this had minimal effect on redefining social divisions entrenched through the colonial capitalist urbanisation process. In fact, I illustrate that decolonisation only worked to further accentuate these divisions with 108 important consequences on the present day water political ecology of Blantyre City.

For instance, I show that while the British ruling elites left the colony, in their stead, a tiny clique of privileged African elites came to assume positions of power and influence, and continued to occupy exclusive urban spaces vacated by the European coloniser. Meanwhile, the underprivileged majority had minimal influence over governance affairs, and many still lived in deplorable conditions. Urban water services continued to be shaped by geometries of social/economic/political power defined by the legacies of the colonial configuration considered here. While these matters are taken up from chapter 5 onwards, in the section that follows, I wish to explore further examples that can help illustrate how these political ecological permutations were entrenched during the early colonial remaking of Blantyre’s waterscape. I specifically examine how this configuration introduced modern techniques in the capturing and domesticating of water, and inserted monetary exchange as a medium for accessing this important mean of subsistence.

3.2.2 Money, modern technology and early colonial remaking of hydro-social relations in Blantyre In the previous section, this chapter has concerned itself with interrogating underpinning forces behind the colonial modernisation project in Blantyre. Of specific interest had been to understand how this project began to transform nature and space here. Thus far, it has been demonstrated that the colonisation of Blantyre was, in a large measure, a historical geographic project in which Europeans sought to create a modern space. The implications of fulfilling this vision in reconfiguring urban space along racial and class lines have also been examined. In this section, I wish to specifically examine how the permeation of monetary exchange and modern technology in early remaking of Blantyre introduced a new water ethic. I argue that this new ethic further marked an important moment in the process of commodifying hydro-social relations in Blantyre. I further mobilise the concept of alienation developed in the introductory chapter to illuminate on this dynamic.

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Through the production of nature thesis (See Smith 1990), urban water political ecology literature has demonstrated how money and technology creates a reified or alienated waterscape (Kaika 2005; Loftus 2006; Swyngedouw 2006b). This literature has partly concerned itself with exposing how dependence on money and modern technology alienates humans from water. Traditionally, the metabolic relation between humans and water has always been a direct one. Thus, in pre-modern societies, humans have acquired water to meet their daily needs by directly labouring in the waterscape. As Kaika demonstrates, such a process, often undertaken by women, involved fetching water from natural sources outside the house or settlement (Kaika 2005). The increasing commodification of labour and the dispossession of the direct means of reproduction in modern capitalist economies fundamentally reconfigure this relation. In capitalist economies, money and machines produced and/or owned by those who control capital acquire an important role in mediating the metabolic interchange between humans and nature.

Thus, acquiring the basic needs of life becomes deeply welded into monetary exchange relations and modern technology, to such an extent that the direct link between humans and nature is severed. Money and machines then begin to acquire an objectified status over the lives of humans. The objectification of money and machines in these relations is the foundational basis for the production of a commodified waterscape. I take up these insights and argue that early colonial remaking of Blantyre marked the beginning of capitalistic objectification of modern technology and monetary exchange in human-water relations. It is at this moment a new ethic was introduced in which for the first time water was produced as an economic good.

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Prior to colonisation, one would scarcely argue against the generalisation that monetary exchange and western water technology, as important media in social/economic/hydro-social transactions more generally, and/or specifically as a means for provisioning water, were inexistent in Blantyre. Even though systematic research into this place’s pre-colonial water systems has not been done, there are strong suggestions to this effect in studies of early history of Malawi (Agnew 1972;

Clark 1972; Langworthy 1969; Langworthy 1972; Pachai 1972; Schoffeleers 1972;

Tobias 1972). Pre-colonial societies in Malawi met their water needs, and such like necessities of life, by directly working on their environment. Additionally, after years of rapid urbanisation, relics of this form of existence are not only prevalent in rural Malawi, but are also evident in less urbanised spaces of major cities such as

Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu. Thus, over a century of modernisation, has not completely erased these traditional means of acquiring water. Within the confines of

Blantyre, for example, one still finds humans living in traditional mud houses not connected to modern water infrastructure. These inhabitants rely on getting water from open water sources located at a distance away from their homes (see chapter

6). My point here is to highlight the fact that prior to European colonisation, humans and water in Blantyre were welded in a direct exchange relation mediated through the process of non-commodified labour. Where non-commodified labour shall simply mean that in which obtaining basic necessities of life does not require the selling of one’s labour to those who owns the means of production.

Creating Blantyre as a modern sanitised and profitable space for the coloniser allowed the objectification of monetary exchange and modern technologies in this settlement’s hydro-social configuration. For a European settler, an attempt to extract the potential benefits from the African socio-nature needed new ways of conquering the threats the African subject and his/her ecology was perceived to present. While such attitudes influenced the enclosing of space along racial lines, these also permitted Europeans to seek a specifically modernist approach in overcoming the

111 water and sanitation challenge in Blantyre. A European had to separate himself from what was largely perceived as contaminated and dangerous waters and sanitary habits of an African. Doing so would require a distinct mode of domesticating water than that of the local African. As water quality guidelines (see below) published in 1898 by Mr M. Chochran—an agricultural chemist based at

Blantyre—would suggest, settlers turned to modern science and technology. For water to be safe for a European body, it had to be captured and domesticated in a way that met predefined scientific criteria of microbial, physical and chemical purity. In so far as the African body and ecology were contemptuously considered dirty and dangerous, water from an African environment in its raw form, was effectively off the limits to the European. Such water would first of all have to be divorced from its natural ecology and purified before it can be consumed by a

European.

How to test water? Water having any smells, or any marked taste, to be rejected. Water containing suspended matter, not separable by course filtration, should be looked upon with suspicion. If distinctly yellow or brown by the addition of 40/50 drops of Nessler’s solution, the water should be rejected. A tumbler full of water should be distinctly tinged with 3 or 4 drops of potassium permanganate-strength of solution about 4 grams (not grains) per litre. Bad waters will decolourise many drops of this solution at once; especially in presence of little dilute Sulphuric Acid.

This process would require the use of specialised scientific know-how and modern technologies. At this time, Blantyre was still largely technologically underdeveloped. This meant that these technologies and know-how had to be imported from technological nerve centres in the west. But not every settler had the financial wherewithal to do so. This effectively led to the monopolisation of this process by those with the means to import such knowledge and infrastructure.

Archival evidence seems to suggest that private settler ventures such as African

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Lakes Corporation, Keiller African Trading Company and Lamagna & Co became important players in this process. For instance, the African Lakes Corporation was not only producing and retailing mineral water, it was also a major supplier of purification technologies used in these ventures (see figures 3.1 & 3.2). In 1896, mineral water from ALC came in large cases of two dozen at 3 shillings 6 pence and small cases at 2 shillings 6 pence (Central African Times 1896). Keiller Trading, also had a specialised mineral water trading department and in 1903 floated the following advert “we are in a position to supply mineral waters made from pure spring water filtered by the Pasteur process’ (Central African Times 1903:11). These companies produced and packaged water from their private water wells using imported technologies particularly the Pasteur-chamberland Water Filtration system

(figure 3.2). Consisting of a porcelain filter with a perforated metal core, this technology works by running water under high pressure through inflow pipes; the water then gets filtered by passing through a perforated metal core either by pressurisation or gravity (Franklin Institute 1900). It is interesting to note that while in use in Blantyre’s mineral water trade in 1890s, this technology had just been developed in the west a few years back in 1884 (Chamberland Filter Co 1890).While the exact volume of this water trade is undocumented in colonial records, the short time span within which this technology found its way into Blantyre waterscape shows how trading in mineral began to open up Blantyre’s waterscape to global circuits of technological flow. With an industrial base in Ohio, United States, the importation of Chamberland filters into the colony suggests yet another instance when introduction of modern water technologies begins to tie Blantyre’s waterscape to international networks of technological transfer.

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Note: I bring the reader’s attention to this point here as it reflects the monopolistic control ALC had in this trade. Figure 3:1: Pasteur water filters advert from the African lakes Corporation Source: Central African Times (1987)

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Although not the exact type (i.e. no photographic evidence was found) the filters imported by ALC and or used to produce mineral water would have looked like or been similar to this Photo Figure 3:2: Pasteur-Chamberland water filters Source: antiques.com

The importance of alien technologies in alienating and commodifying water is well established in water political ecology. In Reification and the Dictatorship of the water meters, Loftus (2006) , putting Georg Lukác’s concept on reification to work, captures how water technologies come to dispossess humans of the power to control their own water supply. He partly locates in this dynamic the genesis of alienating humans from water. Thus, water technologies and those who own them have historically enabled the distancing of humans from water, allowed the growing importance of monetary exchange in mediating hydro-social relations, and the extraction of rent/profit from water. In present day urban environments including Blantyre, it is indisputable that more and more people do not produce own water. They rely on expert elites in water institutions, modern technologies

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(often imported from the west in the case of many developing world cities), and on monetary exchange as a means to meet daily our water needs. Therefore, this and other instances discussed in this chapter suggest that colonial remaking of Blantyre was critical in sowing the seeds of this dependency. It is during this critical moment that few individuals and technologies they own began to intervene as interlocutors in the interchange between humans and water, thus beginning to create Blantyre as a waterscape alienated through capitalist production relations.

3.3 Chapter Conclusion

In chapter, I set out to examine the role of British colonisation in the remaking of hydro-social relations in Blantyre. I have argued that for post-colonial cities such as

Blantyre, colonial urbanisation intensified capitalistic transformation of the metabolic interchange between humans and nature from production for use values to that for monetary exchange. I therefore have suggested that understanding the contemporary urban condition ought to begin by excavating this specific moment when colonial urbanisation of socio-nature reconfigured human-water relations. For

Blantyre, this critical moment began in the late 1850s with the arrival of pioneering

British settlers.

For the British, their colonisation mission was ideologically couched as a benevolent one—thus, to thwart the deplorable impact of Arab slave trade. I demonstrated that the manner the slave trade problem was discursively framed, and the methods taken to deal with it, had important ramifications for the nature of colonial urbanisation of socio-nature and space here. Slave trade was scripted as a reflection of the barbaric and feeble qualities of Africans. Dealing with it therefore required modernising an African; he/she had to aspire to European ideals of individual liberties and economic progress. I therefore have argued that the colonial project was a geographic project predicated on Eurocentric visions of modernity. In the absence of geo-political interests from Her Majesty’s government in Britain, this project rested on the shoulders of pioneering settlers, mostly with capitalistic

116 interests. I have shown that private settler ventures such as the African Lakes

Corporation were critical in executing the colonial modernisation project. I as such have suggested that regardless of its other ideological imperatives, the colonial project here was pragmatically a capitalistic endeavour aimed at producing modern spaces of accumulation. Creating this space required producing a modern economic citizen through introduction of wage labour, money-based exchange and private ownership of land. Blantyre therefore emerged as an important nerve centre for executing this colonial experiment. I have shown that these changes brought rapid urbanisation to Blantyre and triggered an influx of African population in search of the modern economic life promised by the coloniser. In the absence of support infrastructure, sanitary conditions in Blantyre deteriorated, much to the dislike of the coloniser. I have located in this contradiction, an impetus force that led to the fragmentation of space along racial or class lines. I have argued that this colonial socio-geography was important in shaping the politics of water distribution. Thus,

Europeans perceived the poor sanitation condition to be an African problem. It reflected what was largely seen as the bad moral qualities of a ‘backward’ African. A

‘superior’ European therefore had to open up to an African in order to civilise them but at the same time keeping away the threat their unsanitary body posed. This schizophrenic attitude towards Africans, I have shown, led to redefinition of space along racial lines. Europeans sought to create sanitised edifices through apartheid laws aimed at controlling use of space. Areas such as Mandala, Sunnyside, Mount

Pleasant and select others were exclusively European; Africans were forced into squalid areas of Ndirande, Mbayani and such. I have demonstrated that early water and sanitation interventions developed along these racially produced socio- geographies. European dominated areas were prioritised while African neighbourhoods were neglected. In charting this early colonial politics of water and sanitation distribution, I begin to demonstrate how race, social power and status for the first came to mediate hydro-social relations in Blantyre. While in pre-colonial

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Blantyre water was a common-pool free resource, the socio-geographies of racial segregation begun to alienate hydro-social relations here.

I nevertheless have further illustrated that despite the bigoted representation of the sanitary problem as an African one, it was largely a manifestation of the contradictions of capitalist economic modernisation project. Private capitalist largely focused on maximising economic returns while invested little or nothing in developing the necessary social infrastructure to cope with the socio-ecological externalities arising from this process. I have then gone on to highlight how these socio-ecological contradictions further alienated Africans from water. Thus, the few available water sources Africans historically depended on for their water needs become too polluted or dried out due to rapid urbanisation. This effectively produced Blantyre as a town in a water crisis. It is in this socially produced water crisis I have gone on to locate the genesis of the growing importance of modern water science and technology in metabolic interactions between human and water.

Europeans turned to rational science as they sought new ways to capture and domesticate water. I have shown that the growing dominance of European attitudes in water and bodily sanitation discourses had far-reaching implications. This opened up Blantyre to imported technologies and inserted monetary exchange into human-water relations. Thus the need to produce water consistent with European cultural understanding of bodily sanitation and disease epidemiology required modern technology and expertise in water production. I have illustrated that such technologies had to be imported from the west and were monopolised by a few settler capitalists. In doing so demonstrating the very moment private capital and technologies begin to make inroads into hydro-social relations. I have argued that this moment is important because it does not only show how the changing water discourses legitimated the objectification of money and technologies in human- water relations. Also, this highlights the very critical moment foundations are forged for the creation of a water institution beholden to global circuits of capital

118 and technological flows. In further examining these issues through the emergence of a mineral water industry, the chapter also has begun to reveal the historical nature of the process of commodifying water. The monopolisation of water purification technologies created an opportunity for settler ventures such as ALC to begin producing water as a good for monetary exchange. In charting the early colonial remaking of Blantyre’s waterscape, this chapter then begins to reveal a critical moment colonial modernisation severed the direct relation between humans and water. In the next chapter, I further develop these insights by examining a different phase in the colonial remaking of this waterscape. It is a phase in which attempts are made for a more substantive involvement of the emergent colonial state in the water urbanisation process.

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Chapter4: Colonial Modernisation, its Contradictions and Shifting

Frontiers towards Institutional Centralisation of Water

Governance in Blantyre (late 1890s- 1950s)

4.1 Introduction

The township requires many improvements but a water supply is a most essential thing, affecting, as it does, the health of the inhabitants. There are considerable difficulties in the way and we think that there should be more cordial government support in the matter. We trust that the council will take the matter up with zest, and that they will be able to do something tangible(Blantyre Town Council 1903:2)

Thus settlers began to seek a more substantive involvement of the colonial

administration in resolving the water and sanitation question in Blantyre. The

extract above captures a resolution of a meeting of concerned landowners in April

of 1903. This meeting was part of a series of consultations, among them, that took

place since the economic decline in late 1890s. These meetings were intended to look

into the deteriorating sanitary condition, its economic implications, and thrush out a

plan to address this conundrum (Blantyre Town Council 1894b). Thus, the private

settler-led urbanisation process unravelled. It eventually was realised that the

disparate and uncoordinated settler-led interventions of early moments of

colonisation modernisation were inadequate; more was required to bring the

worsening sanitation situation under control. Around the same period, after years of

lobbying, the imperial government in Britain recognised Nyasaland as its

protectorate. While this was largely symbolic–without much material support– it

necessitated the emergence of some form of government in the territory. This

development provided a convenient context in which settlers sought to externalise

120 the responsibility of watering and sanitising Blantyre onto the emergent state institutions. The urbanisation of space then began to transition towards a new phase. It is a phase in which private settler capitalist interests and state politics coalesced around the water and sanitation question in Blantyre. This was a tense and checkered transition that would have implications on the water political ecology of the town.

This chapter explores this transition and its implications on the politics of water production and distribution. I argue that this transition is worthy examining because the awkward and contradictory juxtaposition of private settler interests, the exigencies of wider territorial concerns, and financial constraints on embryonic colonial state, led to the emergence of a hybridised (neither fully privatised nor state-controlled) and under-funded urban water infrastructure, that came to heavily depend on external financing and foreign technologies. As the next chapter shows, many of the systemic problems Blantyre’s water supplier faces in post-colonial times—chronic debit, underinvestment and decaying infrastructure so forth and so on—are strongly linked to this structural dependency. This chapter will therefore illustrate that the nature of settler-state relations during this transitional period, and the various decisions and pragmatic steps taken to deal with the water and sanitation question, set conditions for the emergence of these structural problems affecting Blantyre’s water supplier at present. These dynamics are worthy examining because, I partly argue in this thesis, it is within this historical geographical context that conditions are reproduced in which water is owned and controlled by a few, and many residents of this city have to increasingly part with their hard-earned cash to access water; all this in a political context where Blantyre’s water infrastructure is said to be under the control of the post-colonial state. In examining the specific moment when state power permeate the politics of water supply, and further reproduce these conditions, this chapter therefore begins to shed light on the inherent limitations of the state as an arbiter of hydro-social equity

121 and justice, within this capitalistically produced configuration. In doing so thus pointing to the various possibilities through which water takes on the alienating commodity form within this political context. It is argued in this chapter that a transition towards institutional centralisation in Blantyre did little to curtail the highly unjust capitalist remaking of Blantyre’s waterscape that was set in train in early moments of colonial modernisation. In fact, the institutional centralisation went hand in glove with the strengthening of ties of dependency on private money, foreign technologies, expertise, and further reproduced exclusionary socio- geographies of water access in this town. The chapter begins by examining administrative aspects of the embryonic colonial state in relation to settler economic interests. It does so to uncover the various tensions and contradictions within this process, and how these affected the state’s ability to intervene more meaningfully in the urbanisation of water and sanitation. I then use this political context to specifically examine the nature of water interventions that emerged out of this.

4.2 Towards Institutional centralisation of the water urbanisation process in

Blantyre (late 1890s to 1920s)

Urban political ecology has demonstrated the critical role centralised state institutions have historically played in modernising urban water and sanitation infrastructure. In the west, Maria Kaika, Erik Swyngedouw, Mathew Gandy and others, for example, eloquently document how the power of the state had been integral in mobilising critical resources for undertaking large-scale urban water and sanitation infrastructure. One of the major themes emerging from these studies is that in 19h century Europe, for instance, the state intervened in more powerful ways to ameliorate urban malaise caused by private modes of watering the industrial capitalist city. The welfarist state deployed its centralised power, control and resource base to implement large-scale urban infrastructure projects and improve living conditions for the urban population. In emphasising this point in

“dispossessing water” Swyngedouw reaffirms this central role of powerful state

122 institutions by noting that: “…in many countries around the world, the state managed to bring water to everyone, light our houses with electricity, erect some buffer against exploitative social and environmental exploitation, build all manner of infrastructure, provide hospitals, make education accessible for all, and thus guarantee some sense of security”(2005:83). Alex Loftus for his part, in the case of

South Africa, also shows how, here too, the state played a critical role in the development of large municipal projects in early to mid-twentieth century(Loftus

2005).

What emerges from these critical studies therefore is a general recognition of the centrality of state power and control in mediating contradictions and the chaos of the capitalist urbanisation process. Where private capitalist-led urban interventions have failed, state power would time and again be seen to be the likely arbiter of injustices and contradictions emanating from this process. Much of this research work traces the trajectory of these processes within the context of availability of powerful and well-resourced state instruments capable of marshalling up the necessary means to undertake large-scale urban infrastructure development.

There is still more that can be learned on what happens to this process in the context where state institutions are incapable of taking up such large-scale socio-ecological responsibilities. I argue that for many poor cities such as Blantyre, it is this latter context that has generally characterised the historical development of large-scale urban water infrastructure. Various commentaries unanimously highlight the long- standing difficulty for developing world cities, in mobilise the necessary capital investments for developing large-scale infrastructure (Bagchi 2001; Bond et al 2012;

Eichengreen 1994). In the case of Blantyre, weak and under-resourced state institutions, and settler-state contestations during the transition towards centralisation of water governance, had important ramifications on the nature of water institutions that emerged from this process. This marked a critical juncture when urban water infrastructure and institutions around it come to internalise

123 various contradictions that would subsequently affect the politics of water production and distribution. This section will illustrate that this critical moment for

Blantyre is rooted in colonial attempts to create centralised urban infrastructure as a response to mounting contradictions from an early private-settler led urbanisation process. Exploring this configuration reveals the nature of water politics that came to be forged and its implications on ownership, control and access to water.

The impetus towards institutional centralisation of water governance in

Blantyre cannot be considered in isolation from the political ecologies of early colonial remaking of Blantyre’s waterscape discussed in the previous chapter. I highlighted in that chapter that private settlers discursively constructed the deteriorating sanitary conditions in Blantyre as casually linked to the economic decline of the late 1890s. In doing so, my intention was to begin showing that this discursive framing of the sanitary condition of space and the economic decline as necessarily linked, produced a powerful narrative around which European settlers sought modern ways of harnessing water. I demonstrated that in this initial stage, these interventions were controlled by individual settlers that could afford them.

Between the late 1890s to the early 1900s there appears a discursive shift towards considering more coordinated and institutionalised ways of watering and sanitising

Blantyre. As the opening quote to this chapter suggests, there was a growing realisation among settlers that a more collaborative effort was necessary to deal with urban decay in Blantyre. The urgency of this need took a concrete expression in the formation of Blantyre Town Council in late 1890s. Amidst plummeting land prices, and the heightened fears because of the economic decline discussed in chapter 3, settlers with a huge stake in private land ownership in Blantyre town such as

Lamagna & Co, Stebleick, Pettitt Bros & Co., Buchanan Brothers, and the representatives of the African Corporation, met on 15 May 1894 to discuss ways to contain the situation. It was out of this meeting Blantyre Town Council would be created. The Town Council was thus envisaged to provide a unified front through

124 which settlers would seek ways to collaboratively sanitise space and revitalise

Blantyre’s economy. The formation of Blantyre Town Council signalled a shift towards centralisation. One settler capitalist, writing anonymously in the Central

African Times, encapsulates demands that led to this shift as follows:

Blantyre is a capital by right of priority. Round it have clustered the main interests of the country. Blantyre is also naturally healthier site than Zomba. Its only natural disadvantage is want of a good supply of water, but that could be overcome. We say it is “naturally” healthier because unfortunately, the town has been allowed to get into an unsanitary condition. This being the result of neglect and the culpable carelessness, could easily be remedied through a coordinated approach (Central African Times 1897c)

Remedying this neglect nevertheless was beyond the means and interests of private settlers. For prominent settler land owners, despite the realisation that Blantyre’s water and sanitation problems needed a much more coordinated approach, beyond individual vested interests, they did not step forward to financially commit to this effort. There is hardly any suggestion in minutes of these critical meetings, of any form of financial commitment from the private ventures, towards developing public water and sanitation infrastructure (see for example, Blantyre Town Council 1903b;

Blantyre Town Council 1903a; Blantyre Town Council 1894b; Central African Times

1898; Central African Times 1903d). This is in sharp contrast to earlier willingness among settlers to invest in own private infrastructure. With scanty archival records on these discussions, reasons for this reluctance among settlers are difficult to pin down. What is certain, nevertheless, is the fact that the urgency with which settlers sought to engage the emergent colonial state institutions on these matters, suggests a growing need by settlers to externalise this responsibility. What is also important to note, as illustrated in the previous chapter, is that such efforts were taking place when private settler enterprises such as the ALC began to adopt a more profit- oriented approach, which contrasted sharply with the benevolent idealism of the early moments of the colonial modernisation project. Through the vantage point of

125 critical theory on state-capital relations, we can somewhat begin to draw theoretically-informed, although largely tentative linkages, between this drive for profit and the desire for settlers to pass on the responsibility of watering and sanitising Blantyre on the state. Critical scholarship illustrates how in capitalist urbanisation, there is a propensity for capital to externalise unintended socio- ecological effects on state institutions (Altivater 1978; Holloway and Picciotto 1978;

Muller and Neussus 1978; Offe 1975). The profit-oriented nature of capitalist urbanisation makes it inherently impossible for capitalists to pay critical attention to non-profitable social functions such as provision of health, education, water, sanitation and similar. It therefore makes convenient sense for capitalists to avoid the cost of these functions in order to maximise profit. In critically analysing the genesis of urban malaise in 19 th century English towns Friedrich Angels, for example, highlighted how the dominance of the logic of capital accumulation leads to neglect of the urban socio-ecological condition (Angels 2009).The state therefore becomes a critical institution in the accumulation process that picks up the cost for mediating these contradictions. In Blantyre also, the impetus to seek state intervention in water and sanitation would appear to have largely been motivated by the desire to externalise the cost of such large-scale undertakings. It shall be demonstrated as this chapter develops further that, it is mostly when it conveniently suited the settler-controlled Blantyre Town Council, that colonial administrators were allowed more space to influence water development policy and projects.

There is a danger here of grossing over complexities around state-capital relations and over-generalising the subservience of state to capital. Nevertheless, as literature on the African colonial state has long demonstrated, the role of its power in mediating socio-natural relations was much more complex; the colonial state juggled a wide array of priorities and interests beyond capital per se. In fact, scholars interested on this topic seem not to agree on precisely what a colonial state in Africa looked like and or its role as a governing body in the colonial project.

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Crudely classified, there is on the one hand, those that subscribe to a more orthodox

Marxist view of the colonial state as an integral part of the process of imperial accumulation (Lonsdale and Berman 1979). On the other hand, are those who take a more post-structural approach, these take as an entry point the multiple/networked sites and the decentred nature of technologies of power through which the colonial state governed subjects and space in Africa (Comaroff 1998). Save their differing theoretical or ideological expositions, what these authors highlight is that it is difficult to precisely pin point the place of the state in colonial remaking of Africa.

Similarly in Blantyre, as this chapter will further illustrate, the relationship between private settler interests and the colonial state around water was a complicated affair.

In highlighting the dominant role of private settler interests in this configuration therefore, is not to suggest a complete co-option of colonial state politics into private economic interests. Rather, the intention is to highlight the various limitations on the embryonic colonial state during this period, and how this affected its ability to get involved, in a more decisive manner, in the urbanisation of water. I argue that the dominance of private settler interests curtailed the influence of the colonial state in centralising water governance; this had consequences on the nature of water institutions that emerged to mediate human -water relations. Making sense of this requires exploring the dynamics of state formation in the Shire Highlands colony, and the role of settler interests in this process.

As generally mentioned in the previous chapter, the early remaking of

Blantyre was largely controlled by private settler capitalist ventures. In fact, the

British Government had no strategic use of the Shire highlands region, and for a long time remained reluctant to directly intervene and impose British rule on this territory (Gale 1958). It was not until 1889 that Britain formally declared Nyasaland its protectorate. This declaration was largely influenced by sustained lobbying by private capitalist ventures such as Cecil Rhodes’s British South Africa Company.

While the British government had no strategic use for Shire Highlands, this territory

127 was part of Cecil Rhodes’s grand idea to establish an all-British empire from the

Cape to Cairo (Gale 1958). Part economic, part ideological, this idea brought this little known territory into geo-political calculations of this most daring imperial capitalist. In collaboration with prominent settlers, particularly the African Lakes

Corporation, Rhodes went on a diplomatic charm-offensive with her Majesty’s

Government; this was aimed at seeking to be granted authority to rule Shire

Highlands by Royal Charter. While Whitehall could not oblige, Cecil Rhodes used his immense wealth and influence to see through his imperial ambitions. The British

Government’s reluctance to intervene imposed limitations on the operations of the emergent local state in Nyasaland. I argue, this constrained the colonial state’s involvement in the development of water and sanitation infrastructure.

For Britain, part of the reasons for avoiding the Nyasaland question, was political economical in nature. The growing apathy towards imperial conquest among the

British population saw officials in Whitehall adopting a more cautious attitude towards proposals to take on new territories (Baker 1972; Betts et al 1985). Bringing

Nyasaland into the imperial fold was therefore done on condition that this did not impose liability on the British tax payer. In fact, Cecil Rhodes’s commitment to finance the colonial administration is seen as part of the critical factors that finally swayed the British to declare Nyasaland its protectorate. Rhodes’s British South

Africa Company made an undertaking to bankroll the colonial state for a period of three years. An average sum of £10,000 annually was committed to this task by the

BSAC (See table 4.2). In 1889, a start-up sum of £2000 was remitted towards supporting the colonial state’s security expeditions in the region, and buying up the support of local chiefs (Baker 1972). With a sizable stake in the African Lakes

Corporation, BSAC also made available, free of charge, various military asserts of strategic importance such as steamers, guns and ammunition, and committed a lamp sum of £5000 toward the recruitment of armed personnel. In return, the

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Colonial Administration had to act decisively to pacify this region in accordance with Rhodes’s geo-political ambitions.

Lack of financial support from the British Government, and the dependency of the embryonic state on private financing, constrained the colonial administration’s budget priorities, with implications on social spending on urban services. The colonial state was, among others, tied in two important ways. Firstly, it had no money to fund such an undertaking. Secondly, its focus was on wider territorial concerns in accordance with the imperial visions of its private financiers. Figure 4.1 below provides a table summarising colonial administration income and expenditure, and a graph depicting the administration’s balance sheet during its early days. What is clear from this data is the extent to which the colonial administration financially struggled. During the period under consideration, the colonial administration generally registered a deficit in its budget owing to expenditure exceeding revenue. A quick comparison of table 4.1 and 4.2 highlights the difficult financial position the emergent colonial administration found itself in.

Aside from contributions from hut tax on Africans, customs duty, Rhodes’s BSAC and other miscellaneous sources of income, the colonial administration had no other means of financing its operations (table 4.2). Looking at the expenditure account reveals a variety of commitments that imposed financial obligations on the colonial administration. Additionally, the involvement of private financiers such as Cecil

Rhodes and ALC imposed on the administration the general necessity to align its activities with imperial objectives of such private capitalists. For Cecil Rhodes, for example, fulfilling his vision of building an imperial outpost in Central Africa, required pacifying Shire Highlands (Gale 1958).

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FINANCIAL YEAR

ITEM 1903/04 1904/05 1905/06 1906/07 1907/08 1908/09 1909/10 1910/11 1911/12

Total Revenue £75,895 £67,552 £76,738 £ 82,106 £75,198 £80,533 £76,648 £94,430 £95,481

Total Expenditure £102,525.16 £122,771.02 £108682.44 £111563.11 £105586.19 £103032.93 £108728 £112368.18 £118069.14

Annual Deficit − £26,630 − £55,219 − £31,944 − £29,457 − £30,388 − £22,500 − £32,080 − £17,938 − £22,588

Colonial State Budgetary Deficit for the Period 1903-1912

Deficit

55219

31944 29457 30388 26630 22500 22588

Annual Deficit 17938

3208 1903/04 1904/05 1905/06 1906/07 1907/08 1908/09 1909/10 1910/11 1911/12 Financial Year

Figure 4:1: Table and graph showing Colonial Administration’s budget deficit for the period 1903-1912 Source: Produced by Author from Colonial Bluebooks for the period 1903-1912

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FINANCIAL YEAR

BUDGET ITEM 1903/04 1904/05 1905/06 1906/07 1907/08 1908/09 1909/10 1910/11 1911/12 Table 4:1: Colonial Administration £17123.94 £18507.8 £19454.85 £30351.43 £34470.43 £38960.42 £30606.31 £39516.81 £39904.05 state Audit £905.16 £980.15 £1005.67 £1123.62 £1304 £1611.91 £1512.11 £1493.18 £1537.13 expenditure Bombay agency £411 £414 £472.34 for the London Agency £313.05 £322.01 £311.33 period Medical Service £4,641.11 £5,113.63 £5147.16 £6253.04 £6965.95 £8033.16 £8,283.13 £8858.44 £14502.31 1903/4- Military and Civil Police £40353.42 £57640.09 £42294.32 £35,641.13 £26,145.11 £20,590.71 £21,354.00 £22,962.55 £16,411.17 1911/12 Miscellaneous £1,310.12 £438.14 £882.26 £5433.92 £6249.39 £6535.49 £5,843.18 £5798.15 £7958.78

Non-effective charges £1,870.70 £868.12 £1758.18 Source:

Postal and Telegraph £5,157.01 £4,226.00 £4409.13 £4300.1 £4075.04 £4903.69 £5,303.17 £4977.16 £5258.53 produced

Public Works, survey department £1,817.51 £1844.11 £14749.18 £13560.82 £12607.85 £12724.95 £15,580.97 £14053.52 £15545.44 by author

Road Making £3,209.61 £4,226.00 from Colonial Shire Highlands Railway £788.80 £1464.13 Blue Books Buildings £7,784.11 £8,818.11 1903-1912 Legal Services £2269.18 £2250.16 £2270.11 £2,494 £2593.17 £1597.24 Rent to Portuguese Government £200.00 £200 £200 Scientific service and forestry £998.20 £1,183.10 £1778.43

Stationery and Printing £1,631.31 £1669.12 £1900.18

Subsidies and presents £190.14 £260.19 £332.18 Transport, passage and Travelling £8,863 £9,399.13 £9805.63

Agriculture Forestry and Botanical £1,953.18 £2,117.31 £2082.86 £2,066 £8858.44 £14502.31

Treasury £2,192 £2,283.11 £2609.16 £3033.31 £3239.17 £3,392 £3542.17 £3434.19

Total £102,525.16 £122,771.02 £108682.4 £111563.1 £105586.2 £103032.9 £108728 £112368.18 £118069.14

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FINANCIAL YEAR

SOURCE OF REVENUE 1903/04 1904/05 1905/06 1906/07 1907/08 1908/09 1909/10 1910/11 1911/12

Native hut tax £26,276.50 £29,023.19 £31,074.90 £35,619.90 £36,605.17 £38,388.15 £41,530.10 £ 46,533.15 £50,970.00

customs and duties £25,377.08 £19,918.45 £24,943.83 £21,343.15 £14,515.37 £13,872.12 £11,503.10 £ 20,189.61 £ 22,035.62

£14

Contribution B.S.A 3,500.00 £5,350.00 £7,350.00 £7,350.00 £8,000.00 £10,000.00 £8,000.00 £ 8,000.00

rent of crown land £467.39 £908.27 £1,168.71 £2,521.31 £1,977.16 £1,872.13 £2,000.47 £1,558.19

Sales of Crown Land £707.26 £ 168.10 £280.13 £206.31 £256.50 £681.17.6 £55.10 £550.00 £1,873.14

Survey fees £499.76 £499.76 £403.13

Stamp Duties, Licences, etc £3,042.00 £1,774.51 £3,723.71 £4,074.21 £3,954.71 £3,715.14 £3,996.00 £5,070.18 £ 5,281.15

Judicial Fees and fines £631.15 £824.16 £963.17

Postal Services £2,986.18 £3,194.13 £3,184.14 £2,388.19 £4,640.13 £2,477.71 £3,601.11 £3,637.17

sales of timber £ 461.19 £450.17 £336.11

Rents, Sales, Dues, etc, at Chinde £1,770.26 £2,239.65 £1,690.13 £2,506.11 £4,329.32 £413,819.00 £4,060.65 £5,573.16 £7,808.49

Miscellaneous Revenue £3,241.06 £1,774.51 £1,618.71 £1,094.13 £1,001.14 £1,965.17 £1,498.19 £1,395.14 £2,263.11

Customs & taxes as a % of total revenue 68% 72% 73% 68% 68% 65% 69% 71% 76% Table 4:2: Sources of revenue and collection figures for the colonial state for the period 1903-1912 Source: Produced by Author from Colonial Bluebooks for the period 1903-1912

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The Shire Highland region was under the constant incursions of Marauding tribal

Groups and Arab Slavers; these posed a constant threat to settler interests (Hanna

1956; Ross 1975; Smith 1975). Curtailing this threat was one of the top priorities to

European settlers. In fact, this was one of the prime reasons settlers sought the intervention of the British Government. For Rhodes and private ventures such as the

African Lakes Corporation therefore, bankrolling the colonial administration was done on condition that a major concern would be thwarting this existential threat.

Looking at expenditure accounts in table 4.1 reveals the importance attached to this objective. Military expenditure generally took up a large share of colonial administration’s budget.

A focus on wider territorial concerns, and the financial difficulties it faced, meant that the emerging colonial administration generally had limited capacity for social infrastructure development, let alone specifically taking on more localised water and sanitation responsibilities at Blantyre. Even though the newly established

Blantyre Town Council sought to engage Sir Harry’s administration in addressing the water and sanitation question as early as 1894, the colonial administration did not commit in any meaningful way (Blantyre Town Council 1894a). For Sir Harry

Johnston, the main priority when he took up his position as the first British

Commissioner, was to secure territorial integrity in line with the imperial ideologies of his administration’s financiers (Baker 1972; Smith 1975; Macmillan 1975). Thus,

Johnston’s administration preoccupied itself with developing military capabilities to secure territorial borders and stamp out rogue elements in the Shire Highlands region. The early moment towards institutional centralisation, therefore, very much remained a settler-led process, without much involvement of the colonial state.

Furthermore, the non-decisiveness of the colonial administration in addressing the Blantyre’s water question has to also be understood within contestations around the framing of the city’s urban condition, its causes and solutions, between state administrators and the settler-dominated town council.

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Divergent and competing discourses among colonists on the causes of economic decline, and how to remedy this, had important ramifications on the nature of water interventions that emerged. Large-scale modernisation projects require the mobilisation, often by a powerful state, around a particular unifying vision. This sense of vision forms a platform on which the state exercises its power more decisively to centrally plan interventions, mobilise critical national resources and legitimate its actions. Various studies have shown how the development of large- scale water infrastructure has historically been predicated on rallying the nation around particular geographical imaginations. Take for example the production of the Spanish waterscape through Franco’s dictatorship (Swyngedouw 2007), the sanitisation of the industrial city in 19 century Britain (Gandy 2004; Marvin and Guy

1997) or the urbanisation of water through large-scale dams in Athens (Kaika 2006).

In all these instances, state or non-state action coalesces around a well-articulated, although not often unambiguous, vision about the sort of society ideologues of such undertakings sought to create.

In Blantyre nevertheless, such a vision and general consensus seem to have been difficult to mobilise. The administration and settlers appear to have divergent views about the causes of Blantyre’s problems and did not share a sense of vision and purpose on the direction the urbanisation process had to take. To administrators, the economic decline was linked to wider imbalances and distortions in the land market; this is in sharp contrast to settler’s narrow interpretation of this problem as a result of poor sanitation (Blantyre Town Council

1894a). Various correspondences during the period 1894-1920s between the secretariat of the colonial administration and settlers land owners reveal this divergence in ways of seeing the urban condition between the two groups (Acting

Governor 1921; Chief Secretary 1921; Provincial Commissioner 1921). To the administrators therefore, the solution to the Blantyre malaise required much more than large-scale investment in water and sanitation infrastructure. This stance

134 would be reaffirmed in 1921 when the acting provincial commissioner to Southern

Nyasaland expressed doubts about the colonial administration’s involvement in what he described as “any such schemes as her Majesty’s administration sees unfit to the problem at hand” (Acting Governor 1921; Chief Secretary 1921; Provincial

Commissioner 1921:4). This was in particular response to settler proposals for the colonial administration to fund water schemes in Blantyre. When Blantyre Town

Council was formed, its major priority had been to develop water and sanitation schemes and talk the government into funding such initiatives. When such proposals were brought to the attention of Sir Harry Johnston’s administration, it displayed what one settler described as “blatant ambivalence and unwillingness to get involved in such critical matters” (Central African Times 1918:3). This ambivalence, among other reasons, appears to have stemmed from the different perspective the administration took on the causes and solutions to Blantyre’s economic woes. By linking Blantyre’s economic woes directly to distortions in the land market, meant that the focus for the colonial administration lay in correcting this problem, than investing in what the Provincial Commissioner described as a solution unfit to the problem at hand. Other than focusing on developing water infrastructure as the Town Council proposed, the administration put forward a different plan (see figure 4.2). This deliberately focused on land redevelopment and redistribution programme with the intention of addressing the overheating land market. The colonial administration mandated its land surveyor—a Mr Lloyds—to draw up plans to reapportion land and relocate the township away from existing congested spaces. Mr Lloyd’s plan suggested 100 acres of land had to be given up by private settlers between Chilomoni and Blantyre Mission (Blantyre Town

Council 1903c). The success of this scheme would depend on the willingness of land owners to give up the required land.

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Figure 4:2 A copy of original plan of proposed colonial urban land redevelopment plan for Blantyre Source: Nyasaland Government (1921)

Attempts though to persuade prominent land owners to give up swathes of land, proved largely fruitless. While these plans were hatched very early on, it would take over 20 years of back and forth negotiations between the Administration and prominent land owners before any land could be given up. For example, it was not until 1921 that African Lakes Corporation—the largest owner of land at Blantyre— entered into a land swap deal with the colonial administration (Acting Governor

1921; African Lakes Corporation 1921a; African Lakes Corporation 1921b; Chief

Secretary 1921; Provincial Commissioner 1921). The ALC was not only reluctant to enter into substantive land reform negotiations with the Administration; it also used

136 this opportunity as a bargaining chip. The company sought to give up only small tracts of land i.e. no more than 20.5 acres in exchange for large swaths of productive land elsewhere in the territory. Among colonial administrators, seeing Blantyre’s economic problem, as above and beyond the water and sanitation question, precluded an obligation to act urgently on the latter. For settlers, nevertheless, the contrary view made the water and sanitation question all the more urgent. The town council, therefore, had to find an alternative in the absence of state’s willingness to act on the problem. The urgency of this need would be further amplified by growing criticism from the general settler community on the council’s inability to rectify the water problem. A series of scathing editorials, in settler tabloids, detested the slow pace at which the council acted on these matters (Central

African Times 1903b). Such calls become even more vociferous following a water and sanitation scare that occurred in Blantyre between 1902 and 1903 (Central

African Times 1903e). During this period, the Shire Highlands region was in a grip of a prolonged drought—rains failed, rivers dried up and/ or water levels significantly receded, and most private wells run dry (see quote below). While this drought passed off scarcely causing any water-borne epidemics, it heightened anxiety among residents of Blantyre; they stepped up pressure on the Town

Council, in an attempt to force it to act decisively in securing a reliable water supply for the town. Ecology and politics thus combined in potent ways to prompt the town council seek other means of watering Blantyre.

During the drought of the past months the residents of Blantyre have seen clearly the necessity of having a supply of water which can be depended upon, and it is a matter for gratification that the health of the community has remained so good. It has been impossible to get pure water for some months and had the drought continued much longer, the positions would have been the most serious one. The township requires many improvements but a water supply is the most essential thing, affecting as it does, the health of the inhabitants (Central African Times 1903c).

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I examine these contested discourses around the framing of the causes of the economic decline and its solutions, because they had important material consequences on the approach taken to deal with the water and sanitation question.

I argue that, partly, this provided a context in which Blantyre’s water infrastructure would not only further be hooked up to external financing, but also, for the first time, generating revenue from pricing water started to become an important consideration in the city’s hydro-social calculus. Without resource support from the central administration, what followed were council-led piecemeal interventions that largely depended on borrowed money or that raised through levying a fee on water.

A transition towards centralisation of water governance in Blantyre would therefore further insert monetary exchange at the heart of hydro-social relations.

Whereas, in one way or the other, the remainder of this chapter develops this argument further, a quick glance at the town council’s immediate intervention following the water crisis begins to put the forgoing claim into perspective. With mounting pressure from the European population, the town council finally resolved in its meeting of April 1903 to enlist the engineering expertise of Mr Lloyds. He was tasked with the responsibility of exploring more economically viable means of securing water supply for Blantyre town. The town engineer recommended the purchase of a hand-powered jumper driller, to hasten and improve the process of boring for water at various sites and keep up with growing water demand. In use in the British Cape colony, this machine would improve the rate and depth of boring and hence increase the likelihood of securing enough water supplies to meet current and future demands (Blantyre Town Council 1903c).The need for procuring this machine was largely dictated by socio-ecological conditions in Blantyre. As mentioned in the previous chapter, increasing urbanisation steadily spoiled the few available surface water sources within the environs of the town. For a European therefore, with his modern attitudes towards sanitation and health, capturing underground water was the safest option. Naturally though, Blantyre’s hydro-

138 geology is not very suitable for the capture and domestication of underground water. In a study of the hydro-ecology of Shire Highlands, one the earliest geological experts in the colony–Dr Dixey –concluded that the crystalline geology and precipitous terrain dominating Blantyre, did not make for an easy access to its underground aquifers (Dixey 1923b). The town’s underground water storage capacities were also very limited. Harnessing underground water resources in

Blantyre would therefore require use of far more sophisticated drilling methods; these would allow identification of appropriate sites, and drilling at greater depth.

The Town Council had no means of acquiring this technology. Developing and maintaining the water well project therefore entailed a large cost. It is estimated that the purchase and shipping of the power jumper drilling machine from South Africa cost around £300. Other related construction and maintenance costs for such projects were estimated at £1000 (Hynde 1924). Taking into account historical inflation, in today’s value of British Sterling this would translate to approximately £

58,521 (Browning n.d.). Without state funding, Blantyre Town Council only managed to raise £100 from well-wishers towards this project (Central African

Times 1903d). An alternative means of financing the shortfall had to be found.

Nevertheless, the method by which the council sought to resolve this hurdle suggests yet another important moment in embedding monetary exchange at the heart of hydro-social relations in Blantyre. The council mandated the town engineer to explore ways money can be raised from levying taxes on properties of water users in Blantyre. Earlier in 1895, a quantity surveyor had drawn up a comprehensive property listing and valuation roll assessing estimated value and ownership of property in the township (see figure 4.3). The valuation roll became an important means through which the town council sought to fundraise for the water project. It resolved that a rate of £3 would be chargeable per acre of land, while fractions of an acre were charged pro-rata; this money would be channelled towards the development of water infrastructure and services.

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Figure 4:3: Colonial property listing and valuation roll for Blantyre Source: Blantyre Town Council (1903b)

The insertion of the valuation roll into the politics of water production and distribution signalled a continued shift towards the monetisation of water. Thus, for the first time in the history of Blantyre, one witnesses an attempt to develop a centralised mechanism through which monetary exchange can regulate access to water. You had to be a rate payer to the council to be granted access to water it produced. The valuation roll also further reveals the continued reproduction of

140 racialised socio-geographies of water access during this transition towards centralisation. For instance, a quick glance at the valuation roll (figure 4.3) shows the complete dominance of Europeans (judged by European sounding names appearing thereon) as private property owners. The category ‘rate payer’ was typically a reference to property owning Europeans. The definition of a property was a European one. For any structure to qualify as a property, it had to conform to

European notions of property. Such notions centred on economistic appraisals of capital value expended by the private owner and the legal claim of private ownership. Earning just barely enough to survive, and without any legal claims to private land ownership (McCracken 1998), Africans did not feature into this definition of rate payers. The property valuation roll and its growing importance as a basis for determining access to urbanised water, therefore, further reaffirmed the reproduction of a classified and racialised watering of Blantyre. Thus, it meant that only Europeans–by virtue of them being rate payers–could lay claim to water produced. The valuation roll also further confirmed the transformation of water in

Blantyre from being a free resource to becoming a good for monetary exchange.

Thus access to water produced by the council depended on one’s ability to pay.

All in all, the analysis in the forgoing section generally suggests that at its critical moment, the transition towards municipalised urban water in Blantyre was very much a settler capitalist-led process. Contrary to general trends where the state is seen to intervene substantively as private modes of modernising space falter, this process in Blantyre had been quite a checkered one. Thus, the state did not only lack the means to intervene; also, the contestations and lack of a unified vision with settlers further thwarted the development of large-scale water interventions.

Settlers, through the Town Council, continued to implement very limited interventions that only worked to further alienate Blantyre’s waterscape. Such interventions were under-resourced and largely depended on revenue generated through exchanging water for money. The shift towards what Swyngedouw (2004)

141 might generally term municipalisation of water governance in Blantyre therefore further opened Blantyre’s waterscape to monetary exchange. This transition was a highly contested affair even within the settler community itself. The growing influence of few prominent settlers within the town council, and the council’s inability to deliver on its promises, attracted a backlash from other settlers. In the remainder of the chapter, I demonstrate that these contestations, and continued worsening sanitary conditions in Blantyre, finally prompted the colonial state to intervene in more direct manner than had been the case during early moments towards centralisation. Even then, I further show that such an intervention continued to have a minimal effect on the dominant dynamics that came to shape the urbanisation of water. I highlight that, during this phase, the insertion of state politics at the heart of water the urbanisation process only worked to further reproduce Blantyre as a commodified waterscape. In doing so, not only do I further develop a critique of the role of the state as an arbiter of hydro-social relations, but also, I reveal how water is transformed into an economic good under such modes of water governance.

4.3 The colonial administration seeks to intervene…and the further

commodification of Blantyre’s waterscape (1920s to 1950s)

In the opening chapter to this thesis, I argued against a blind faith, often implied in critiques of pro-water neo-liberalisation ideologues, in public water institutions. I suggested that, an obsession with criticising privatised modes of water governance, without equally taking a critical look at the so called ‘public’ water institutions, creates the impression that the latter are more just and benign. In making this argument, my aim was to begin questioning this blind faith and give pointers to ways the realpolitik of modernist urbanisation of nature and space historically reproduce various contradictions and hydro-social injustices within public institutions. It is in this context I partly seek to situate possibilities for the commodification of water under state-controlled water institutions. I argued that in

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Blantyre, this is a historical fact. In this city, the manner the colonial administration intervened in response to the failings of settler-led interventions provides illuminating insights. It reveals one of the critical historical moments when politics, economics and ecology combined to begin producing a ‘public’ water governance institution scarcely controlled by the state, and perpetually caught up in chronic dependency on borrowed capital, debt, rising water prices and such other structural contradictions. In this section, I explore how this dependency was further entrenched when the colonial state is seen to take more interest in water issues in

Blantyre.

It is difficult to deduce with a degree of certainty the specific circumstances that prompted the colonial administration to intervene after such a period of reluctance. This is mainly because not much could be found in the archives that can help in formulating such as understanding. Nevertheless, understanding this shift within the broader colonial attempts to transform Blantyre into an important commercial and communications hub within the colony might help construct this narrative. The landlocked nature of Nyasaland as a colony, and the lack of efficient transport and communications network, posed a considerable challenge to the import and export trade that was widely seen as critical to her economic development (Phillips 1998). Through settler lobby groups such as Blantyre

Chambers of Commerce, there had been pressure on the colonial administration to develop transport and communication infrastructure in the territory. The administration responded to these calls with proposals to develop a transport corridor from Shire Highlands to the Indian Ocean, with Blantyre as its nerve centre

(Crosby 1974). Not only was a good water supply necessary in transforming this space into an attractive commercial hub, but also, the modern transport network would require ample and reliable supplies to function properly. Water would be a critical element in powering steam locomotives and supporting such other functions necessary in the daily running of the transport network. The imported British steam

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Locomotives–some with a total heating surface of 1.18ft, a grate area of 17-1/2sq ft. and tank capacity of over 3,500 gallons (see photo 4.1& 4.2)–would require a reliable supply of water at strategic points along the transport network. In early 1920s, the colonial administration commissioned a number of water supply development projects to meet these needs (Nyasaland Government 1929).

Photo 4.1: Early steam locomotive in the Shire Highlands Source: (Mike’s Railway History 2010)

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Photo 4.2; Early train station at Limbe, Blantyre Source: Mike’s Railway History (2010)

It is in this economic context that the colonial administration would be seen to begin paying critical attention to the water supply problem at Blantyre. If Blantyre had to be transformed in line with this economic vision, it was necessary to find solutions to its water woes; this necessitated the administration to start paying serious attention to the water question in the territory. It needed moving beyond the fragmented and narrowly-focused interventions towards more coordinated and geographically expansive interventions. From early 1920s to 1950s, one witnesses an increased involvement of the colonial administration in the development of

Blantyre’s water resources. This would for example concretely materialise through its active involvement in a water boring project of 1923. A team of government geologists, engineers and surveyors were assembled to undertake rigorous water boring tests in Blantyre and surrounding areas. Dr. Dixey, a government geologist and his team were specifically mandated to explore viable options to augment

Blantyre’s water supply (see quote that follow). 145

Making detailed survey of the Blantyre area, be with a view to obtaining data which should enable me to make definite proposals as to the development of the water resources of the locality. From my recent observations it is evident that any water boring should include trials at Sunnyside where geological conditions are very different to those prevailing around neighbourhoods of the upper Likhubula valley; the Blantyre Mission and the gently undulating area around Mandala Boarding House are also favourable localities for trial borings(Dixey 1923a:2)

Exploring the political, technical, economic and ecological considerations around these projects shows the extent to which such state interventions only worked to further redefine human-water relations in Blantyre. Apart from water required to support the economic infrastructure modernisation project, Blantyre’s domestic water demand had steadily been increasing. From an estimated demand of 10,00 gallons per diem, this had increased three-fold to about 30,000 gallons in 1920s

(Hayter 1921; Stewart Lloyds 1929). Meeting this growing demand would therefore require developing water sources with a more ample and sustained supply beyond the hydro-ecological limits of Blantyre. I explained in chapter 3 that the physical geography of Blantyre imposed natural constraints on water source options available to the town. For Dr. Dixey and his technical team therefore, the immediate task had been to explore alternative ways these natural limits could be conquered, and adequate supplies made available. Options were limited. Supplies had to either be found within the confines of Blantyre’s natural hydro-ecology or from distant places. Within Blantyre, given the limited and highly polluted nature of surface water sources, plausible options were limited to harnessing undergrounding water resources through deep boring and/or capturing and sanitising water from these highly contaminated surface sources. From outside Blantyre, this would entail a costly option of capturing and channelling water from distant catchments such as

Likhubula or Shire River. Sanitising water from Blantyre’s surface sources or capturing water long distance would incur huge capital investment in infrastructure development (Dixey 1923a:2). For example, it was estimated that it would cost in the

146 region of £16,000-£30, 000 to develop surface sources within Blantyre. Understood in the context of colonial state’s finances around this time, perhaps it is not an exaggeration to suggest that such an undertaking would almost wipe out annual budgetary allocation for public works (see table 4.2); this was considered too high a cost. The technical team therefore ruled out these options on financial consideration and instead recommended developing underground water sources.

Nonetheless, the contested nature of collaboration between state experts and

Blantyre Town Council, and the manner the proposed intervention would be implemented, had important ramifications. It further opened up Blantyre to the technical expert, water technology and monetary exchange thereby further distancing common men and women from water. Making sense of this partly requires looking at the nature of politics around decision-making processes as colonial elites debated viable options in overcoming the various ecological and political economic challenges affecting the water boring project. Firstly, boring for water at Blantyre was never going to be a straightforward affair; this is given the hydro-geological conditions highlighted before, coupled with the low level of technological development in the colony. Overcoming these technical challenges would in the long run create space for the increased dominance of technical elites and owners of specialised water boring technologies. Secondly, the contested nature of this process meant that the colonial administration could not exert decisive control over the emergent water institution. This, coupled with economic difficulties affecting the administration highlighted earlier, meant that the emerging water institution had to financially depend on other means of financing than the state. To flesh out these two claims, some practical aspects of the water boring project and contestations around these will be examined.

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In February of 1923, Dr Dixey and Town council engineers commenced a water boring experiment. This was intended to be a meticulous scientific surveying and mapping of Blantyre’s hydro-geological condition so as to establish the town’s water yielding potential. This would be a rigorous exercise to identify specific sites with high water yielding potential that can be usefully developed to secure

Blantyre’s water supply. Understanding the politics of collaboration, between colonial officials and Blantyre Town Council in implementing this initiative, allows insights into the extent these efforts intensified the process of alienating water in

Blantyre. This project portended something far more radical and sophisticated in terms of an approach to watering the town; but it did very little to change the exclusionary socio-geographies of water access imprinted on Blantyre’s waterscape during the early moments of the colonial modernisation project. With an initial sum of £1000 earmarked for the exercise (Hynde 1924), Dr. Dixey’s water boring scheme was largely designed to be experimental, so as to yield useful data, on the basis of which important decisions could be based, such as location of water pumps, specific design aspects e.g. depth, type of pump designs and its internal characteristics, average water yield obtainable per pump location, and the number of wells required to meet the city’s water demand etc. While Dr Dixey had earlier reported on underground water supply potentialities of the region in his 1920 preliminary investigations, his earlier study was more of a general nature, and did not address the specific hydro-geologic characteristics of Blantyre (Dixey 1923a).

The water boring experiment was therefore intended to be a baseline scientific survey on the basis of which more informed decisions could be made regarding the nature and scale of the underground water scheme to be implemented. Such a task required sinking of trial wells at carefully chosen sites; in this case, Dr. Dixey had recommended Sunnyside located on the valleys of River

Naperi. The intensity of this exercise demanded the collaboration of government experts and Town Council engineers. The water boring scheme was technically

148 more advanced than earlier water schemes undertaken by the council. In contrast to the trial and error approach of earlier times, the scheme involved a meticulous and painstaking mapping (see figure 4.4) of the underground hydro-geology, so as to pinpoint with a certain degree of accuracy, the locations that would yield adequate amounts of water to meet the growing demand of this town. A rigorously designed geo-physical field survey was conducted followed by a detailed examination of the underground water potential of different geologic environments. This stretched two miles across the section of Blantyre-Limbe and Mandala road, and on slopes of the

Mudi River following a dyke traversing this area (Dixey 1923a).

Given its pioneering nature, the scale and technical sophistication of this exercise, there was no support infrastructure such as advanced boring equipment and laboratories in place within the colony. However, the mining industry in the

Cape Colony (South Africa) and Southern/Northern Rhodesia had necessitated the advancement and diffusion of deep-boring technologies than anywhere else in

British Central Africa. Evidence suggests that in planning and designing the water boring project, Dr Dixey and his team relied mostly on knowledge imported from here. In fact, Dr. Dixey had learnt a great deal about coal-boring techniques through his associate Mr A.R. Thomson. Mr Thomson, was a General Manager of Wankie

Colliery in Southern Rhodesia, and Dr Dixey had spent time here mastering core- boring technique. Also, a private firm (British South Africa Company) was drafted in to supply boring outfits, windmills, pumps; it also was tasked to undertake more advanced boring work that was beyond the capacity of government/council engineers. Due to its monopoly over the mining industry in British central Africa,

BSAC had unparalleled expertise and technology for boring under extremely difficult geological conditions.

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Figure 4:4: A sketch of water boring mapping in colonial Blantyre Source: Dixey (1924) Report on progress of Blantyre water boring project to the Chief Secretary of State MNA S114/23

Observable in the forgoing therefore is not only the further opening up of Blantyre’s waterscape to foreign technologies. Also, the sophisticated nature of this project allowed the intensification of the encroachment of technical managerialism in watering Blantyre. The water boring project marked a watershed moment in intensifying the production of a particularly techno-instrumental institutional culture and norms around questions of water supply. These are norms defined by a widespread rationalisation of allocative decision-making functions where purely

150 economic cost-benefit considerations become the basis for water project decisions

,than any other imperatives—social, ecological etc. There is also a growing obsession with scientific rigour, and an intensified application of techniques of calculability, as a basis for decision-making. In short, rational science and principles of economics is all that is required to decide the what, where and who in watering urban space. Consider for example the level of technical and economic rationality that underpinned evaluative judgements on this project. Such decisions hinged on a meticulous observation, capture, processing and analysis of water yield data, as well as a careful consideration of cost parameters. From rigorously measuring water strokes per minute, to calculating the amount of water discharged by test wells per day (see figure 4.5), these measurements were designed to be as rigorous as possible. The town engineer was required to keep detailed logs on a number of parameters. What is partly fascinating in this exercise is the dominance of rational considerations than any other concerns especially in the manner such data informed project decisions. For example, when the council ultimately made a decision to abandon the water project, this was purely based on two grounds, thus, concerns about the sustainability of the project based on water yield data, and cost. Nowhere does one witness other concerns such as social, cultural or ecological featuring in these decisions. It was the fact that water yield was considered too inconsistent, and the long-term cost too high, that the council finally decided to abandon the water boring option. Thus:

My council considered that as the pumping test was carried out by their engineer and as it was entirely to their interest to take advantage of any circumstances in their favour that seeing his report was too hopeless, it was useless considering the matter further. We understand that on your advice a perforated casing had been put in the borehole and that in spite of this the yield was so small. My Council thought this was only a formal test, simply to make sure of the amount of water before proceeding with the third borehole…my council have at present under consideration another scheme which does away with any necessity for power pumping, and they have forwarded this to Hon. Chief Secretary (Blantyre Town Council 1925:1).

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Figure 4:5: A copy of log sheet for the Sunnyside/Naperi water boring tests Source: Blantyre Town Council Engineer’s Report (December 5 1924)

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Critical scholars have historically analysed the alienating effects of increasing managerial rationality in everyday life. For example, through the concept of reification, Lukács elaborates how clipping bureaucratic rationality in capitalist societies permeates the everydayness of life, with devastating consequences on human consciousness (Lukács 1971). While Lukács sought to understand this process from a vantage point of a worker and his political consciousness, his ideas provide illuminating insights into how increasing scientification of life generally alienates humans, and brings commodity exchange relations into every nuke and cranny of everyday life. In Blantyre, attempts to centralise decision functions as reflected in the water boring project, brought the engineer, his machines and methods of calculability at the heart of human-water relations. This was yet another important moment when the technical expert and his technology were accorded space as important mediators in this permutation. Whereas in traditional Blantyre, the expertise to produce water had been a common activity mostly done by women, here one begins to see how the state, technical elites and private capital collaborated in potent ways to transform this daily act into an exclusive preserve of the technical expert and his tools. The water boring project, therefore, somewhat illustrates how the increasing involvement of the state in the urbanisation of the hydro-social nature further distanced the common inhabitant from water and brought the elite expert and his machine at the heart of human-water relations. In the section that follows, in further examining the contestations around the water boring project between the state and town council experts, I shall further show how these political machinations reinforced these processes.

4.3.1 Blantyre Town Council vs. state contestations around the water boring project and its hydro-social implications

In the opening section I demonstrated that divergent perspectives between settlers and colonial administrators had a bearing on institutional infrastructure that emerged to mediate humans’ relationship with water, as Blantyre transitioned

153 towards centralised urban governance. Here also, despite the state making inroads much more substantively than had been the case before, its collaboration with the town council remained a shaky one. In this section therefore, I further suggest that enduring contestations further highlights the checkered influence the colonial administration continued to have on this process. Also, understanding these contestations in the context of poor financing mechanisms within the state apparatus, further highlights the particular moment large-scale water projects in

Blantyre came to be tied to external means of capital financing. This is a critical historical moment when urban water infrastructure in Blantyre internalises some of the troubling contradictions affecting the production and distribution of water today—over-dependency on borrowed money and perpetual debt. My contention is that despite increasing state involvement, very little changed and the production of

Blantyre as a commodified waterscape continued. While the institutional politics had somehow changed, with the state staking a bit more space in decision-making, the underlying logics and contradictions entrenched in early moments of transitioning towards municipalisation remained unaltered. In fact, to a certain extent, as shall be demonstrated, the superficial involvement of the state only worked to intensify these processes.

“…the cost of boring varies so much that I hesitate to give any idea of the cost, but probably the B.C.A. Co. would be willing to quote for say 15 boreholes, 120feet deep…my personal view of the matter is that in the long run the Council scheme if successful would probably be the more satisfactory, although the initial cost is high”.(Dixey 1924:1)

With reference to the proposed water supply from boreholes selected by Dr. Dixey and Mr Whitley I have the honour to enclose a report on a pumping test which has recently been carried out at the instance of the council…as you will see from the report, the borehole will only deliver a little over 4000 gallons per diem. In order to get a supply of 30,000 gallons per diem this would mean boring another 8 holes and the expense would be out of proportion, the council has decided to abandon this scheme. The council

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have in hand another scheme to supply the Township with water, which they are confident, will be equally good as the borehole scheme, and which will supply the township with a much large quantity of water (Hayter 1924:4)

Considering some specifics of the joint water boring scheme begins to reflect the effects of these tense relations between the colonial state and the town council on water governance. The collaboration between BTC and the colonial administration over the water boring project, was a highly contested affair. As the two quotes above seem to suggest, this contestation partly centred on the technical and financial viability of the project. On the one hand, colonial administrators held a firm belief that, under the difficult hydro-ecological circumstances and lack of financing, water boring was the most viable option (see first quote). On the other hand, the Council from the start expressed cynicism about the technical viability of this project (see second quote). This attitude had been emboldened by unsatisfactory results of water yield obtained by the Town engineers. To meet the city’s water demand, it was necessary to identify boring sites that could produce a combined water yield of not less than 30,000 gallons per day for extended periods of time. However, when pumping tests started 8am of November 26th 1924 at chosen sites, a maximum yield of 11,000 gallons was recorded out of the 3 boring sites; but with time, this yield diminished to as low as 4,500 gallons/day (Blantyre Town Council 1924). The town engineers also noted that water yield fluctuated considerably through an eclectic mix of highs and lows. From these observations, the council concluded that in the long-run, water boring was not technically and financially the most plausible option. As the quote below from the council suggests, a major concern hinged on the understanding that to supply the required amount, the council would have to invest in multiple sites and continue prospecting for water as and when existing sources run out. But these concerns were not equally shared by experts from the colonial administration. In fact, in various exchanges with the Town Council on these matters, Dr Dixey questioned openly the reliability of the water yield data upon which such conclusions were arrived at, and the extent the Town Council

155 engineers attempted to exclude government oversight in this process. These frustrations are to some extent highlighted in Dr Dixey letter to the Council as follows:

I would have been in a better position to express an opinion on the test had I been present to see the preliminary arrangements & conditions of the test. On the occasion of previous tests I had been especially requested to attend; I did so in company of Mr Whitley with the BSAC company water specialist (who also was not present at this test). I could scarcely be contended that I was not available at this time, since I was in Limbe on the day of the test but was unaware that it was in progress. It would be interesting to know why only one of the two holes was tested; the one not tested had been shown by Mr. Whitley to yield not less than 10,000 gallons per day at the end of the previous dry season. It is therefore fair to assume that the quantity of water available on November 29 was fully 14,000…(Dixey 1925:1)

The Council’s indifferent attitude towards the government’s water boring project need also be contextualised in wider settler interests beyond pure technicalities of the boring project. Doing so does not merely reveal the limited nature of state influence in this process, but also, this shows how projects implemented within this context, fundamentally changed the way water was produced and distributed in

Blantyre. Thus, just about same time as the colonial administration had been mulling over the water boring option, the town council had also been considering an option to capture surface water from the Mudi River. The Town Council, for reasons not easily fathomable from existing records, would appear to have been largely in favour of this alternative scheme (See quote from Mr Hayter—the Town

Engineer above). Popularly known in colonial parlance as Hynde scheme (named after one of the prominent settlers at Blantyre, Robert Hynde), this scheme (figure

4.6) suggested something even far more radical than the government’s boring scheme.

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Service reservoir Pipe line Series of dams-Mudi Filters

Sedimentation tank R.S. Hynde Estate

Figure 4:6: A scanned copy of original sketch of Hynde Waterworks (Callouts added) Source: Nyasaland Government (1924)

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The Hynde waterworks epitomised a decisive shift towards a large-scale capture and domestication of water than Blantyre had seen before. This would not only require a new level of technical, managerial or financial organisation, but also would lay a foundation for a highly modernised water production model, which continues to underwrite Blantyre’s water infrastructure to the present. Technically, the scheme would involve construction of weirs and storage dams at strategic points in the course of Mudi River and on upper reaches of its catchment area. Raw water would then be gravitationally conveyed and processed via a series of sedimentation tanks and sand filters located at determinate points before a service reservoir. From here, water would thus be conveyed through 3inch wide pipes to points of consumption. To the town council, the Hynde waterworks symbolised a panacea to Blantyre’s water woes. With an estimated water yield capacity of about

60,000 gallons in wet months (Stewart Lloyds 1929), domesticating the Mudi River, it was believed, held the promise of sorting out Blantyre’s water issues more effectively than previously had been the case. This sense of optimising is captured in the quote below:

Upon the invitation of the Blantyre Water Board and Town Council, a crowd assembled at the new dam situated on the Mudi stream…among those present—Honourable Acting Judge, Senior Provincial Commissioner, Director of Public Works, Director of Geological Survey, Postmaster General, Mayor, representatives of Imperial Tobacco Limited, Nyasaland Railways, and many other Government and towns people. Later in the day a large number of Blantyre and Limbe people took the opportunity of acquainting themselves with the works which has so successfully been carried out, and to most visitors the dam and its surroundings made a strong appeal…the Mudi dam will be one of the local beauty and should be a great boon to the two townships not yet provided with public parks, gardens or recreation ground (Blantyre Town Council 1934: 2).

The colonial government’s experts did not share into this optimism. The proposal to harness the Mudi catchment was considered to present a range of technical and political challenges. These were seen to portend long-term cost bottlenecks that would heavily outweigh the perceived benefits. Among other things, government

158 experts pointed to the cost of the project. Estimated to need between £16,000 and

£30,000, this scheme entailed an unprecedented capital spend on a single publics works project than had been the case in the protectorate before. In the context of the poor financial state the colonial administration was in at the time (refer to section

4.2), this meant that, realising this ambitious plan, would depend on heavily borrowing capital from elsewhere. The Colonial Administration therefore was largely in disfavour of such costly water schemes. Furthermore, government experts raised concerns over the efficacy of Mudi River as a useful water source in what was by then a rapidly urbanising Blantyre. The Stewart Lloyd,s report, I have referred to before, had indicated that Mudi had a highly variable water availability regime. For example, while an estimated wet season flow of 60,000 gallons/day could be obtainable, there was a steep diminution in river discharge in driest months to about 23,000 gallons/day (Stewart Lloyds 1929). With a highly variable rainfall pattern and frequent drought conditions, the risk of failure to meet demand during critical periods was very high.

Further compounding the technical feasibility of this project were potential social political and health risks associated with it. The water gathering ground on the upper reaches of the Mudi River was densely occupied by African settlements.

Aside from the risk of contamination and siltation of storage facilities, the success of this scheme required relocating African settlements and or imposing restrictions on use of certain areas within the catchment area. In 1927, the Town Council through

Mr Hynde, implored the Chief Secretary for the colonial administration to grant permission to reallocate Africans away from the headwaters of Mudi water source

(Hynde 1927). Although records are not clear on whether the administration obliged, this further gets to show the extent to which modern techniques of domesticating water further required distancing Africans from their socio-ecologies.

Moreover, the highly polluted nature of the gathering ground did not only entail a health risk, it also meant huge financial costs in installing and maintaining water purification systems. The project required the procurement of expensive filtration

159 units from Bells & Brothers in England. The question of the appropriateness of such sand filtration units was raised by independent experts, especially considering that the system required the use of special sand not readily obtainable locally, and would therefore have had to be imported at higher cost from elsewhere. Although efforts were made later, with the help of the government geologist, to find suitable sand locally, the filtration units were inappropriate for the conditions under which they had to operate, and caused untold technical glitches in the project. Simply put, the Hynde’s water works plan did not pass the technical, financial and socio- political feasibility assessments of both government and independent experts. On the measure of cost-benefit analysis, one expert advised that “before embarking upon storage, pipeline, and filtration schemes costing from £16,000-£30,000, it would be desirable to examine, at a cost of few hundred pounds, the possibilities of obtaining underground water by means of bore-holes”(Dixey 1932:5).

The decision to press ahead with this project in light of these various concerns from state experts had profound implications on the political ecology of water production and distribution in Blantyre city. Crucially, in the absence of state financing, the implementation of the water scheme relied heavily on money borrowed from the Colonial Development fund in Britain (Hayter 1924). In the next chapter, I partly examine the nature of borrowing arrangements under this fund.

What is partly evident from this analysis is the extent to which the Colonial

Development Fund partly operated as a conduit for imperial capital seeking new avenues for investment in the colonies. Thus, the dependence of large-scale infrastructure such Hynde waterworks on funding arrangements such as these, further tied Blantyre to international capital networks and flows. Various technical and operational challenges also further reaffirmed the determinacy of this relation of dependency in the production and distribution of water in Blantyre. Thus, after a few years of implementation, the Hynde waterworks started to unravel. The system was beset by various capacity problems requiring further capital and technological investment. This would be amplified through persistent drought conditions in

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1930s. For example, water demand soared to 50,000 gallons/day against the consistently lower dry season yields of 27,450gallons in 1928, 11,000gallon/day in

1931 and less than 16,000gallons/day in 1932 (Dixey 1932). While a supplementary water augmentation scheme through boring was urgently implemented during this period, it did little to stem capacity problems. In a subsequent drought of 1949 and

1953, the scheme was further stretched to its very limits resulting in supply shortages and drastic water rationing in Blantyre (Nyasaland Government 1962). In

Kaika’s parlance, the ‘promethean project’ to tame Blantyre’s waterscape time and again proved challenging to the superior European. Resultantly, the modern water infrastructure was locked in a perpetual cycle of droughts, rising water demand, under capacity, high capital borrowing and expenditure, budgetary deficits, rising debts etc. By 1950s, the maintenance, expansion and running costs of the scheme had reached £900,000 with further networks expansion from Walker’s Ferry set to cost Blantyre Water Board £2.3million in early 60s. Table 4.4 captures snippets of financial data at the institutions created to manage the water scheme—Mudi River

Water Board. What quickly becomes evident from this data is the extent the cost of borrowing threw the water institution into a budgetary deficit. While Mudi River

Water Board registered a surplus in the first few years, debt obligations eventually caught up with the institution and the institution registered perpetual budgetary deficit in subsequent years.

For the residents of Blantyre, this had one important consequence—water had to be paid for and its price increased if at all the Board was to keep up with its obligations. Evidence would seem to point towards the emergence of a more commercially-oriented culture at Mudi Water Board from the very early moment the reticulated water system become operational. The demand of operational costs, loan obligations and lack of state support, meant that the institution had to externalise the cost of producing and distributing water to consumers. For example, in 1930, barely after the Hynde water scheme became fully operational, the Board in accordance with section 27 of the waterworks ordinance act carried out a detailed

161 valuation of all buildings in Blantyre and fixed a water rate of four pence and half penny; it required that all rates be payable in advance on the first day of October

(Mudi River Water Board 1930).

Year Loan Interest and Income from Surplus(+) Repayments Water Charges Deficit (-)

1956/57 925 55,369 +49,454

1957/58 36,360 70,037 -15,996

1959/60 36,770 76,145 -4,395

1960/61 60,869 88,987 -3,584

1961/62 80,049 115,504 -13,763

Table 4:3: Summary of financial status at Mudi River Water Board 1956-62 Source: adapted from (Nyasaland Government 1962 p6)

Some literature on contemporary reforms of water infrastructure in the global south has tended to attribute the changing institutional culture towards a more commercially-oriented outlook in public water institutions to a wider neo-liberal strategy to dispossess and privatise water (McDonald 2005; Smith 2004). Analyses in this literature generally assume a transition from state controlled public water institutions toward greater commercialisation to be coterminous with neo-liberal restructuring. This process is widely discussed in relation to recent attempts to neo- liberalise water. Nevertheless, what the history of the centralisation of water governance in the context of state formation in Blantyre seem to suggest is that, attempts to commercialise water here are deeply imbricated in the historical efforts to resolve contradictions internalised through this contested colonial state-settler politics. As such locating these processes to the very historical moment the state intervenes in mediating human-water interactions.

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4.4 Chapter Conclusion

This chapter has further explored the hydro-social implications of colonial remaking of Blantyre’s waterscape. It has done so in line with the general postulation in this thesis that the changes in human -water relations under colonialism marked a critical moment in the production of an alienated and commodified waterscape in

Blantyre. The focus in chapter 3 had been on early moments of this colonial transformation. In this chapter, the focus had shifted to a different phase in this process. It is a phase marked by attempts to create a more centralised and coordinated approach to watering and sanitising Blantyre. This was largely in response to the failings of earlier interventions to deal with contradictions of modernist production of nature and space. In shifting the focus towards this phase, the intention had been to examine what changes, if any, this shift had on hydro- social relations. In prising this open, this chapter has generally established that the transition towards centralisation further worked to entrench a particularly techno- economic rationality at the heart of human-water in this waterscape.

First, it has been established that this shift occurred in the context of weak and under-resourced state institutions. Attempts to centralise water governance in

Blantyre occurred at the time the colonial state was in its incipient stages. Without financial leverage from Britain, and largely funded through private financing, the embryonic state did not have the wherewithal and appetite to shoulder the water and sanitation burden. Divergent views about the nature and causes of the economic decline further influenced the colonial administration’s unwillingness to intervene in watering the town. Whereas settlers understood the decline as causally linked to the deteriorating water and sanitation conditions, the administration considered this problem to inhere in distortions in the land market. Of priority therefore had been correcting this problem than investing in water and sanitation infrastructure. The general implication of these constraints and contested discourses were such that settler interests continued to dominate the urbanisation of water.

Considering the water project implemented by the settler-dominated town council

163 during this period reveals the hydro-social consequences of this configuration. Such interventions came to depend on money raised through selling water, and further reproduced the racialised socio-geographies forged during earlier moments in the colonial remaking of Blantyre.

In the second part, the chapter transitioned to examine colonial hydro-social relations during a period when this place witnessed a much more substantive involvement of the colonial administration. During this period, the colonial administration would be seen to take a much more proactive interest in the water and sanitation question. Of particular interest here as well was to examine the implications of this transition on the politics of water production and distribution. It generally emerges from this analysis that inserting state politics at the heart of hydro-social relations did little to challenge the dominant discourses, logics and contradictions that came to define the very basis of colonial water production and distribution. In fact, through a government’s water boring scheme, it has been established that an instrumentalist culture become dominant in which economic calculability and technicalities overrode any other concerns in the politics of supplying water to this urban settlement. It has further been established that the involvement of the state did not radically change the way water interventions were financed. The administration did not fund such initiatives. Without financial leverage, this process was further monopolised by the settler-dominated town council. The checkered nature of state influence in this process, and the decisions taken by the town council, created a water institution that was deeply dependent on borrowed finance. The changing political context therefore only further worked to entrench logics and contradictions of capitalist urbanisation of water.

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Therefore, by paying particular attention to the material circumstances in which institutionalisation of urban water governance emerge, this chapter reveals how colonial production of nature and space further inserted monetary exchange and modern techniques in hydro-social relations in Blantyre. In circumstances where these dynamics dominate water politics, it is difficult for water to be provided as a social good. What is partly remarkable in this discussion is that efforts to centralise water governance under the state did little to challenge this dynamic, and only worked to further intensify it. Such a revelation suggests the need to go beyond state politics and look at the underlying forces that shape the capitalistic urbanisation of water. One of the major concerns in this thesis has been to shift a focus from a neo-liberal purview of water commodification processes towards a historical geographically situated understanding. I argued that such an analysis has to consider alienation and commodification of water as deeply embedded in logics and contradictions of capitalist urbanisation. The analysis in this chapter therefore partly shows that insofar as such logics and contradictions remains unaltered, these processes can only intensify albeit in qualitatively different ways. The next chapter will further illustrate this argument through an examination of human-water relations in the post-colonial period. The chapter generally illustrates that during this transition, also, the changing state politics as Blantyre transitioned into the post- colonial era, did little to change this configuration.

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Chapter5: ‘Decolonised’ Blantyre and the Enduring Legacies of the

Logics and Contradictions of Colonial Remaking of Blantyre’s

Waterscape (1964 onwards)

5.1 Introduction

What ‘post-coloniality certainly is not is one of those periodisations based on epochal ‘stages’ when everything is reversed at the same moment, all the old relations disappear forever and entirely new ones come to replace them. Clearly, the disengagement from the colonising process has been a long, drawn-out and differentiated affair. (Hall 1996:247)

The previous two chapters have examined the nature and consequences of colonial

remaking of Blantyre’s waterscape. These chapters have demonstrated that the

colonial urbanisation of nature and space marked a critical moment in reconfiguring

the metabolic interchange between humans and water. The colonial project here, in

whatever manner it is defined, was a decisive turning point when money, modern

science, technology and the ‘water expert’ came to be inserted into what was

indigenously a direct relation between humans and water. As Blantyre transitioned

towards this modernist colonial vision, this direct relation was severed and water

came to be deeply embedded in relations of monetary exchange. The intention in

the previous two chapters was nonetheless not to analyse these historical processes

for their own sake. Rather it was to develop insights that might be useful in

explaining the ‘troubled’ contemporary urban political ecological condition of this

city. To be sure, one of the central claims in this thesis is that the historical

geographies of colonial remaking of hydro-social relations are salient in making

sense of the present water condition in this city and the recent neo-liberal attempts

to further commodify water. This chapter therefore marks the transitional point

where these historical insights are mobilised to begin interrogating the politics and

economics of water production and distribution in Blantyre today. In doing so, I

166 seek inspiration from geographic critiques of post-colonial theory as elaborated in

Braun (1997).

For Braun, and a few other scholars that have looked into this question from a historical geographical perspective (see for example, Harris 2004), the post-colonial does not necessarily entail a complete rupture from the distant colonial past, or merely the endurance of imperial text/discourse as a form of colonial power that continues to remotely organise experience in decolonised territories. They rather argue for a more materialist and geographically-situated theory of the post-colonial that renovates temporality and spatiality in historical periodisation. Thus, post- coloniality entails paying attention to a multiplicity of ways colonial relations continue, through time and space, to organise socio-natural relations in former colonies (Braun 1997). Post-coloniality also requires moving beyond the text and being attentive to the real material effects, and the uneven and exploitative socio- geographies, this experience continue to differentially reproduce at multiple sites or social groups in former colonies. Viewing the post-colonial not purely as discourse or a complete break from the past, therefore, allows us to pay critical attention to ways the present political ecologies are infused with and are material products of processes, decisions and power relations of the colonial past. The contemporary condition, therefore, cannot be usefully understood from the present alone.

This chapter draws inspiration from these insights and argue that, the political transition from colonial to self-rule in the 1960s did not completely wipe out the dominant logics and contradictions that came to organise the modernist remaking of human-water interactions in colonial Blantyre. In fact, it is proposed, in some instances, these logics and contradictions came to be amplified in ways that further worked to reproduce hydro-social injustices from the colonial past. Drawing on two important water infrastructure in Blantyre–thus, the construction of the largest water scheme (Walkers Ferry) and the operations of the city’s major water supplier

(Blantyre Water Board)–the chapter shall, for example, demonstrate how colonial ties of dependency on global financing and modern technologies intensified the

167 capitalist remaking of the city’s waterscape, with debilitating consequences on hydro-social relations in this city. I partly show through a Marxist critique of state politics that, in post-colonial Blantyre, save the anti-colonial political rhetoric of the post-colonial ruling elites, this was not matched with radical steps to redefine and delink urban water infrastructure from the exploitative relations of the colonial past.

This city’s water infrastructure was, among other things, further hooked up to high- interest loans, a highly techno-centric/economistic production logic, crippling debt levels, and such other structural conditions. Consequently, water had to be produced and sold at a higher price, and class and social power continued to determine access. In post-colonial Blantyre, therefore, the political transition, if anything, only worked to consolidate processes of alienating and commodifying water.

5.2 Shifting political frontiers and the enduring legacy of the colonial logics of

modernising Blantyre

In analysing the relationship between the state politics and economics, critical scholarship provide some vital insights into why transformation in the former, without a corresponding radical reconfiguration of the economic base, only goes so far to effect change in human-nature relations. For orthodox Marxists, more generally, real democratic change inherently lies in a radical transformation of the economic base and much less so in the superstructure of high state politics

(Althusser and Balibar 1968; Altivater 1978; Holloway and Picciotto 1978; Marx and

Friedrich Engels 1848; Offe 1975; Miliband 1969; Muller and Neussus 1978).

Therefore, real societal change inheres in radically transforming the fundamental logics upon which the base and superstructure are articulated. It follows that change in the superstructure i.e. politico-legal institutions of laws, the state and ideologies, without corresponding transformation of the structural relation to the base, does not lead to radical societal change. As shown in the introductory chapter, while this materialist interpretation of society and change has been criticised for

168 being overly economistic (See for example Poulantzas 1972), I argue that it still offers some insightful perspectives that can usefully be deployed in critiquing the contemporary urban water condition of this city. In the discussion that follows, I contend that, the political transformation from colonial to self-rule in Blantyre did not lead to a radical reconfiguration of underlying logics and contradictions within the capitalist economic system instituted during the colonial period. I thus argue that the post-colonial modernisation project internalised many of the systemic problems and reproduced the socio-natural inequalities from the colonial past.

A critical examination of what Swyngedouw (n.d.) might term the ‘politics’ i.e. strategies, actions, procedures and institutional changes at a critical historical juncture when Malawi politically transitioned towards self-rule, presents an entry point for beginning to develop a post-colonial critique of the country’s contemporary political economy and its implications on urban water ecological politics in Blantyre. Here, therefore, I begin to highlight how the post-colonial state further entrenched capitalist production relations of the colonial past. I argue that the transformation in the political sphere was largely ostentatious, it did not correspondingly lead to effective changes in colonial relations that came to organise human -water relations. As a result, the post-colonial state, just as its colonial predecessor, did not socially intervene in any substantive manner to create the necessary conditions for the development of a socially just urban water infrastructure. With much emphasis on economic growth and cutting social spending to eliminate budgetary deficit, there was no appetite to effect radical changes in the manner urban water infrastructure operated. This is to the extent that

Blantyre’s water infrastructure continued to increasingly depend on borrowed capital and revenue generated from providing water as an economic good.

Examining the nature of the political economic transition (in terms, for example, of its underpinning ideologies, politics and material practices and effects) is one of the fertile starting point from where we can begin to make sense of how and why the post-colonial transition worked to further reproduce unjust water

169 political ecologies of the colonial past. The nature of this transition, nevertheless, is a subject that has been considered adequately in studies of Malawi’s political history

(Baker 1972; Boeder 1982; Cammack and Kelsall 2011 ;Mccracken 2012; Kamchitete

Kandawire 1979; Kydd and Christiansen 1982; Roberts 1970 ; Rotberg 1965 ; Sindima

2002; Thomas 1975). There is a general consensus in these studies that the anti- colonial struggle here was a protracted affair that was precipitated by the growing disenfranchisement with brutal dispossessions and exploitation of Africans and their resources by private European enterprises. For example, Baker, Boeder and

Kamchitete Kandawire situate the incipient moments of the anti-imperial struggle in land and labour related disputes on European plantations in the Shire Highlands region. Such a growing anti-colonial resistance came to the head with the violent uprising of John Chilembwe and his compatriots in 1915. These authors have written extensively on this topic, there is therefore no need for a detailed rendition here. Of specific interest to this analysis is the general understanding within this scholarship that the anti-colonial struggle was, save much else, mainly a peasant struggle against the systemic exploitation within the colonist capitalist economy.

This locates the political struggle in economic dynamics and reaffirms the importance of the metabolic material interchange between humans and nature as a foundation for the development of political consciousness in Malawi. Of little dispute among these authors is the fact that, poor living conditions, low wages, dispossession of land resources, and the violence Africans suffered at the hands of the European capitalists, were important triggers of the anti-colonial protest. In emphasising this point Mccracken (2012:304) notes that:

During the 1940s and 1950s, the colonial government of Malawi was faced by mounting opposition larger in scale and more intense in type than anything it had previously experienced. The nature of the opposition varied considerably from place to place. In the Shire Highlands, long-term resentment among tenants over the exaction of thangata on European-owned estates deepened from the early 1940s, leading in 1953 to an outbreak of peasant-based violence, the nearest that Central Africa experienced at this period to the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya.

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The implication of the forgoing, therefore, is that for the poor African masses, real transformation could only have been possible with radical reconfiguration of exploitative economic relations of the colonial past. However, literature on Malawi’s economic history shows that the anti-colonial project did very little to transform the capitalist base upon which Malawi’s economy had been built on during the colonial period (Kayuni 2011;Thomas 1975);Williams 1978). In fact, it is argued that the post- colonial regime pursued what has loosely come to be defined as a quasi-state capitalist economic agenda, which further worked to entrench capitalist economic modernisation without real change on the class-based exploitative structure synonymous with the colonial agri-based economy. These authors, for example, have generally pointed to the emergence of African elite controlled tobacco plantations and the worst forms of exploitation African workers have had to suffer on these ventures. Under this system, in the stead of a European planter has emerged a Black African estate owner, in place of a forced Thangata wage labourer has entered an underpaid African tenant living in deplorable conditions on tobacco plantations (McCracken 1983; Prowse 2009; Tobin and Knausenberger 1998; Otañez et al. 2007).

The extent to which the post-colonial regime failed to radically transform

Malawi’s economic base is evident through what has been described as a period of restructuring and consolidation (Kayuni 2011). The period 1964 to 1979 is heralded in Malawi’s economic history as a period when the post-independence regime staked a claim to delink Malawi from the colonial past and consolidate its place as a sovereign post-colonial African state. At this stage, also, the country was confronted with many of the economic challenges from its not too distant colonial past. As

Kamuzu Banda noted “we will be independent in July. But our economy is a frail one” (Banda 1964 in Kayuni 2011:113). Post-colonial Malawi inherited a structurally weak economy whose social sector depended heavily on remittances from the central government in Northern Rhodesia. While the British Government had largely pursued a hands-off policy in formative years of colonisation, the

171 federalisation of Northern/Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, in August of 1953

(Rosberg 1956), led to Nyasaland’s public spending becoming heavily dependent on remittances from the federal government. Paucity of meaningful revenue base within Nyasaland, and the astronomical growth of government services and functions (Thomas 1975) as the colonial administration sought to fiscally establish sovereign control, tied it to a vicious cycle of perpetual budget deficits (see figure

4.1 in chapter 4). Federalisation, therefore, saw Nyasaland becoming too dependent on support from the central government in Rhodesia. In table 5.1, Williams (1978) shows the extent of this dependency. Thus, of the three territories constituting the federation, Nyasaland did not only contribute less to the federal budget, she also effectively became a net benefiter.

Year 1954 1955 1956 1957 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 Payments to 1.3 2.0 2.5 2.6 2.2 1.9 2.2 2.8 2.9 2.9 Nyasaland Revenue from 0.6 1.7 2.2 1.6 1.8 2.3 2.1 2.6 2.7 2.7 Nyasaland Net benefits to 0.7 0.3 0.3 1.0 0.4 -0.6 0.2 0.2 0.2 0.2 Nyasaland Table 5:1: tax sharing and net benefits to Nyasaland (British Sterling million) Source: (Williams 1978)

When Kamuzu Banda’s Malawi Congress Party took over in 1964, the dependency of Nyasaland on Rhodesia had to be swiftly dispensed with if Malawi was to take up her rightful place as a sovereign state. It was considered that the pan-African political project would be meaningless if it continued to rely on financial support from the federal government, and be bound by the various conditionalities, decisions and controls that came with the federal system (Thomas 1975). The economic dependency came to symbolise an intolerable insult to the post-colonial administration, prompting Kamuzu Banda to remark that “it was demeaning to me sending our Minister of Finance to London every year, hat in hand, as it were, begging for assistance on our recurrent budget. Certainly as a head of State, I could

172 not walk with my head up” (Malawian Hansard 1973 cited in Thomas 1975:34). For the African ruling elites, therefore, cutting economic ties with the federal administration became one of the overarching obsessions in its economic restructuring programme.

In an attempt to eliminate these ties of dependency to the federal administration, the post-colonial regime pursued an economic strategy that further entrenched the reliance of Malawi’s economy on private capitalist enterprises through what was largely seen as state-private sector cooperation (see quote below).

The defining features of this economic plan included creating favourable conditions for large foreign capital investments, reducing state social spending and expanding a tax base within the local population (Thomas 1975). In practical terms, the implementation of this economic plan meant guaranteeing the continued participation of existing capitalists in the post-colonial economy. Kamuzu Banda personally made a commitment to existing and potential foreign capitalists in the following manner:

We are here now this morning, opening this brewery. It is because we are an independent state. I have told the business community here. People who have invested money here. That there will be no nationalisation here. There will be no state socialism here. I do not believe in nationalisation; I do not believe in state socialism. But, while I do not believe in nationalisation; while I do not believe in state socialism; I believe in cooperation. Working together between the state and private enterprise (Kamuzu Bandaʹs speech in Mitole n.d.).

Thus, despite the anti-colonial political rhetoric upon which Kamuzu ascended to power, his government’s policies largely worked to maintain and intensify the capitalist production base upon which Malawi’s economy was built on. European capitalists continued to dominate ownership of the means of production while the majority of Black Africans still occupied the position of lowly under-paid labourers.

Following the implementation of economic strategies such as the Gwero 2 plan

(Kayuni 2011), Malawi witnessed the entry and further domination of the economy by foreign capitalists such British American Tobacco in the tobacco sector, Lonro

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Limited in the sugar industry, David Whitehead and Sons in the cotton and textile industry etc. In fact, the post-colonial administration’s policies “favoured exporters and its land reforms only furthered the expansion of estates onto communal land, turning the rightful occupants into tenants and generating a new class of landless people”(Grain 2012:2).

Kamuzu’s post-independence economic strategies and policies are worthy highlighting here because they had important implications in the development of social services such as urban water and sanitation in cities such as Blantyre. In his historical review of Malawi’s social development policies, Kishindo (1997) analyses the impacts of pro-capitalist, growth-oriented economic modernisation on social development in post-colonial Malawi. One learns from this analysis that the obsession to bring down the budget deficit after independence saw the government adopting a more spendthrift attitude towards social spending. While Malawi registered an unprecedented economic growth, with the growth domestic product expanding from MK151.4 million in 1964 to K280.5 Million in 1973 (Kayuni 2011), social development was neglected and trickle down effects were minimal; the majority of Malawians did not benefit. By the 1980s for example, Kamuzu’s government spent roughly no more than 3% of the National GDP on public services.

To a certain extent, this section therefore, begins to show that decolonisation in

Malawi was largely limited to the political sphere. Economically, this did not translate into a rupture with the capitalist economic relations and production logics of the colonial past. In fact, just as the colonial economic modernisation project, the post-colonial restructuring and reconstruction project depended heavily on private capital. An obsession to bring down government spending, cut the budget deficit, and promote economic growth, led to a minimalist government with no appetite for social spending or radical reforms to economically empower the Black African majority. The sub-section that follows will begin to examine the implications of this political economic context for urban water politics in Blantyre.

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5.2.1 The Walkers Ferry Scheme and enduring ties of colonial dependency The previous section has highlighted that the transformation of the political landscape in Malawi did not result in radical change in economic relations of the colonial past. In fact, the post-colonial state further entrenched the capitalist economic strategy. In this subsection, I use the case of the Walkers Ferry water scheme to explore the implications of this political economic context on urban water politics in Blantyre. Conceived during the colonial period, and implemented after decolonisation, the position of the Walkers Ferry Scheme within Blantyre’s political economy presents a unique opportunity for assessing what the post-colonial state politics meant to the urbanisation of water in Blantyre. With its development taking place at the very critical moment of transformation from colonial to self-rule, this scheme provides a useful case study for interrogating the effects of the changing state politics on dominant relations that came to organise urban water during the colonial period. Specifically focusing on the operational and financial aspects of the scheme, it shall be demonstrated in this section that the change in state politics had little bearing in reconfiguring the modernist logics and ties of economic or technological dependency entrenched in Blantyre’s waterscape during the colonial period.

The Walkers Ferry Scheme is the largest ever capital intensive water infrastructure project to be implemented in Blantyre City in modern times. With an estimated initial cost of over £2million, this water scheme would entail the capture and domestication of water from Shire River at a distance of about 23miles from

Blantyre. The scheme emerged as a response to the unravelling of Blantyre’s water infrastructure discussed in the previous chapter. When Blantyre’s old waterworks persistently failed to cope with rising demand and recurrent droughts, the

Municipal Administration sought to develop a large scale water infrastructure that could effectively withstand these challenges. In 1956, the Municipal administration commissioned a consultancy report from a London-based private engineering firm

(Scott Wilson Kirkpatrick & Partners), to examine potential alternative water sources

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(Nyasaland Government 1960). The terms of reference on the basis of which the

Scott & Wilson et al report was commissioned, specified the need to identify an alternative water source with a potential supply capacity of 9,000,000 gallons per day. Such an enormous supply capacity required looking beyond the hydro-ecology of Blantyre. While the initial interventions had focused on the local sources

(discussed in the previous chapter), the focus in this exploratory work shifted beyond the confines of the city. Three possible sources were considered, namely,

Shire Highland, Mulanje Mountain and Shire River catchments. In weighing up these options, Scott & Wilson recommended that the Walkers Ferry Scheme (see figure 5.1) on the Shire River would be the most ideal alternative. At a distance of about 23 miles from Blantyre, this scheme would require pumping water from the

Shire River located at an altitude of about 3,300feet below Blantyre town. This would be an enormous engineering feat. It meant pumping water at an elevation over long distances through a series of pumping stations.

The complexity and sheer scale of the Walker’s Ferry project had important implication for hydro-social relations in Blantyre. Firstly, the study and capture of water from remote places of Blantyre, for the first time materially brought socio- nature from the fringes the city into its urban water politics. There was a shift, from a more localised purview to water problems, towards a more regional focus.

Through detailed hydrologic surveys, and use of different datum to understand the nature and efficacy of different water source possibilities in the region, this exercise opened up the remote-flung of the Shire Highlands region to water prospecting.

Scott & Wilson engineering studies extensively examined regionally the nature and supply capacities of surface water sources, catchment geomorphologic characteristics, rainfall patterns and other geo-physical conditions. This firm’s engineers mainly deployed time series analysis of hydrologic data and empirical techniques to determine runoff from rainfall. Thus, the socio-ecologically produced water crisis in Blantyre further necessitated the permeation of scientific techniques in the urbanisation process, and enabled the enrolling into this process, of nature

176 and space hitherto physically distant from the city. Through the Walkers Ferry

Scheme, therefore, the realm of capitalist urbanisation of hydro-social relations extended beyond the immediate confines of the city.

Map 5:1: Sketch map of Walkers Ferry Water Scheme Source: Blantyre Water Board annual Reports (1981-84)

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Figure 5:1: A systematic layout of Walkers Ferry Scheme.

Source: Blantyre Water Board Annual Report (1983:6)

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Secondly, designing, implementing and operating such a complex undertaking, would require the application of modern technology in ways unprecedented in

Blantyre’s waterscape. The Walkers Ferry Waterworks consists of a series of reservoirs, pipelines, pumping stations and water treatment works (See figure

5.1/map 5.1). Raw water is captured, treated, conveyed, stored and distributed through a complex combination of various production processes, raw materials, technologies, capital, labour etc. From Nkula, on the banks of Shire River, the scheme starts with an intake pumping station. It has a 100ft long open channel, and

4 sets of submersible pumping plants each abstracting 1 million gallons of water per day. These convey water through a 12 inch diameter pipeline to the treatment works located at 2000 feet above sea level (Ruxton 1966). Water is then purified through processes of clarification, filtration and sterilisation. The purification process is an intensive process. It involves the rigorous manipulation of the chemical, physical and biological properties of water through a series of carefully calibrated and timed processes and stages before the water is let on into storage reservoirs. Here water is held and further tests are carried out before it is let into the supply network. The conveyance of dosed water from the reservoir to supply is a multi-staged process.

Water passes through a network of 21-24 inch diameter pipes interspersed with intermediary reservoirs and pumping stations from Nkula through Chileka to

Ndilande (see map 5.1).

Such an undertaking—akin to a modern industrial production complex (see figure 5.1)—would no doubt require a high level of dependency on modern science and technology, specialised personnel such as engineers and such other critical production inputs. The Walkers Ferry scheme, therefore, not only confirmed the continued dominance of the modernist production logics in urban water services but also took this to a completely new and complex level. The impact of these modernist logics and their contradictions on further reconfiguring human-water relations has partly been considered previously, and shall also be further examined later in the chapter. More generally, it has been argued, and will be further

179 demonstrated, that these logics inserted at the heart of hydro-social interactions things such as technologies and money, and concentrated the power and responsibility to produce and distribute water in the hands of few technical experts and/or those that own and control the means of production. With the development of Walkers Ferry scheme this transformation further intensified; technology, money and the expert became ever more critical in shaping the political economics of water production and distribution. I shall later consider these matters more substantively in relation to the operations of Blantyre Water Board. Before doing so, I wish to first of all consider the manner this complex scheme was financed. I argue that this reveals the extent colonial relations of dependency continued to shape urban water politics in Blantyre after decolonisation.

The Walkers Ferry project’s funding arrangement is an important, but certainly not the only one factor, which has come to shape the manner water is produced and distributed in Blantyre. Exploring these dynamics provides a window into yet another decisive moment when human-water relations were firmly tied to the dictates of global capital financing networks, and its consequences on the functions of the city’s water service provider—Blantyre Water Board. The Walkers

Ferry project entirely came to be funded through foreign capital. To be precise, a loan of £2.3 million, with an annual repayment cost of £150,000 in 1962, was committed by Blantyre Water Board. With a projected borrowing costs estimated to rise by more than £200,000 in 1966/67, this loan was guaranteed by the colonial state

(Nyasaland Government 1962). To get to the bottom of the significance of this funding arrangement in relation to the Walker’s Ferry scheme in general, and the functioning of Blantyre Water Board in particular, it is important to understand the historical origins and character of the Colonial Development Corporation. In 1947,

John Strachey, a minister of Food, introduced the Overseas Resources Development

Bill in the House of Commons. This was in accordance with the British Imperial

Government’s policy shift from private settler-based economic development towards a more state-sponsored economic strategy (Wicker 1955). It is upon the

180 passing of this bill into the Overseas Development Act that the CDC was created.

The fund was placed under board of directors appointed by the Secretary of State for Colonial Affairs. A few peculiar features of the CDC funding arrangements are of interest to this analysis. Although under the political oversight of the British

Government, the CDC was designed to operate as a semi-autonomous capital financing body of overseas development. For example section 15(1) of the Overseas

Development Act states that:

It shall be the duty of the Corporation so to exercise and perform their functions as to secure that their revenues are not less than sufficient to meet all sums properly chargeable to their revenue account (including, without prejudice to the generality of that expression, provisions in respect of their obligations under the two last preceding sections) [Treasury guarantees of outside loans by C.D.C and the establishment of a Reserve Fund] taking one year with another (Overseas Development Act 1947 cited in Wicker 1955:215)

Section 1(2) of the act also explicitly empowers the CDC to carry out all activities the

Board deemed in the best interest of the Corporation. This constitutional autonomy conferred upon the CDC meant that the organisation had no recourse to state financing. It had to find own equity to support its operations. Such financing partly consisted of loan advances from the Colonial Office. Paid through the Treasury department, these loans had a repayment period of about 40 years, and an interest of between 3% and 4.5% (Wicker 1955). The CDC was also mandated to enter into funding or project development partnerships with private financing bodies. This was an important mode through which it financed its operations over the years. The development fund’s financing mechanisms are of consequence in understanding the nature of the relationships it entered with institutions in the colony. The fund had to repay its dues to the Treasury and private financiers. This meant that the cost of its loans was very much determined by the cost of borrowing and other operational expenses.

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The dominant role of the CDC in financing large-scale projects such as the Walkers

Ferry waterworks in the colony, would therefore consequently subject such undertakings to its operational logics. For Blantyre Water Board, the effects of the

Walkers Ferry loan from CDC in 1960s, as shall be demonstrated shortly, were long term. Although the Walkers Ferry scheme was conceived during the colonial period, this project did not get to completion until after Malawi attained its independence in

1964. The post-colonial state wholly inherited the funding arrangements with the

CDC forged by colonial administrators in Nyasaland. In fact, the key architect of this project in the colonial administration‒Sir Henry Phillips—continued to play a key role in seeing through the project (Phillips 1998). There is in fact a suggestion in

Sir Phillip’s account that, after decolonisation, the cost of borrowing from the CDC was even higher than anticipated in the formative years of the project. While he does not make explicit the reasons for this, such rising costs have had significant impacts on urban water infrastructure in Blantyre; these effects have been long term, and continue to affect the way Blantyre Water Board operates at present. For example, in 1992, an African Development Bank assessment found that around 30% of BWB’s total long-term borrowing costs were as a result of loans made to the board by the CDC in the construction of this project (African Development Bank

Group 1992).The full extent of these implications shall be interrogated in detail later in the chapter.

From the forgoing, some important implications can tentatively be drawn.

Thus, this shows that the post-independence administration did not commit to socially finance the development of large scale water infrastructure in Blantyre. This further shows that the development of such large-scale infrastructure continued to dependent heavily on global networks of capital financing. As shall be further demonstrated, the post-colonial administration did not only fail to radically reconfigure these colonial ties of dependency, but also, the post-colonial state sometimes acted as an intermediary financier and extracted rent from the water institution. In the section that follows, I shall examine how these enduring ties of

182 dependency on private capital have affected the operations of the city’s water supplier‒Blantyre Water Board. In doing so, the chapter begins to analyse how these structural forces variously shape the ecological politics of water production and distribution in in the city today.

5.3 Blantyre Water Board (BWB), dependency on borrowed technologies and its

discontents

The forgoing analysis of the Walkers Ferry project has shown that BWB exclusively depended on external financing and technological know-how. This section will explore what this dependency meant to the operations of this institution, with a particular focus on its implications for the politics of producing and distributing water in the city. While BWB was never explicitly formulated as a profit-making enterprise, it is hereby argued that, the dominance of the modernist production logics, and exploitative structural relationships with external financing, has historically forced this institution to act in a more commercially-oriented manner.

The general impact of structural dependency of developing world water institutions on global-local networks of capital financing, is very well illustrated in urban water political ecology literature cited throughout this thesis, and also studies on technology and underdevelopment (Stewart 1977; Strijbos 1998). Using insights from these studies, this section shall demonstrate how this dependency has exacerbated systemic problems within Blantyre’s water infrastructure to such an extent that it is difficult for BWB to provide water as a public good.

Urban political ecology has generally established that many of the chronic problems faced by the developing world water institutions are to a greater, but not necessarily only degree, a manifestation of their historical dependence on expensive loans through which large-scale water infrastructure is financed. For example, in analysing water supply infrastructure in Latin American cities, Swyngedouw (2004) demonstrates the political ecological effects of long-term high interest loans. The general shortage of capital has historically forced urban water suppliers to rely on

183 expensive loans from foreign banks and credit markets. The accumulation of these debts, Swyngedouw shows, has over the years externalised high costs on water consumers. As water institutions struggle to repay these expensive loans, they have had to depend on generating extra revenue through increasing water tariffs. While the unattractiveness of water infrastructure to global financing has in this context hampered the realisation of required capital, in cases where potential for financial rewards is high, excess capital has been seen to actively seek out investment opportunities in water infrastructure. Take, for example, the case of Durban in South

Africa (Loftus 2007; Loftus 2006; Loftus 2005). Through the energy-mineral mining complex, Loftus examines how Durban’s waterscape has been opened up as a spatial-fix to global excess capital seeking out new spaces for accumulation. Water here is directly seen as a resource for profit accumulation with equally unjust social consequences—dispossession of water. A political ecology of urban water infrastructure in the global south has therefore drawn our attention to the debilitating effects of structural economic relations between global financing networks and water institutions. These capitalist relations have made it increasingly difficult for water here to be produced as a common social good.

This literature, if read together with studies on technology and underdevelopment, further provide penetrating insights into the contemporary politics of water production and distribution in global south cities. Literature on modern technology and underdevelopment is generally concerned with understanding the negative effects of the dependence of these countries on inappropriate technologies imported from the west. The definition of technology in this case, is not only restricted to the hardware, but also, the entirety of administrative, management, knowledge and skills or financing infrastructure necessary to support the production of a particular product or service (Stewart 1977;

Strijbos 1998). Stewart and Strijbos critically analyse the debilitating impacts of the reliance of least developing countries on technology, markets and financing from advanced countries. They argue that, an economic model overly focused on

184 increasing growth through modern manufacturing, has led to a disdain of traditional endogenous techniques, and created space for the deification of

‘advanced’ ones from the global North. A shift from a basic-need based production, towards adoption of modern consumption habits of advanced countries, steadily renders traditional production techniques obsolete, and hooks developing countries to a dependency on imported technologies. The trouble though, as the two authors note, is that these technologies are often alien to the cultural, socio-ecological or economic context of these countries. Using the concept of decontextualisation, for example, Strijbos specifically analyses the dangers of imported technologies not embedded in the cultural context of a particular country. In the west, advancements in modern technologies have evolved hand in glove with advancements in modern science, and the changing cultural attitudes towards a more materialistic and technologically based society. These changes have necessitated the embedding of modern technologies as part and parcel of western cultural contexts.

In developing countries, modern western technology is alien to the cultural context. The adoption of these technologies, therefore, requires the development of infrastructure critical to their successful functioning. Modern technologies are designed to go with particular software infrastructure such as finance, insurance and government institutions, among others. Such systems are also designed to go with specific inputs such as skilled labour and materials. Unfortunately, access to this technological infrastructure is not readily available within the cultural context of most poor countries. Therefore, as these countries adopt advanced technologies, it also becomes necessary that either they develop or import this necessary infrastructure. Nonetheless, the first option is not readily possible given the various enormous cost outlays required to develop such infrastructure, restrictions through, for example, international patenting laws, and many other constraints that militate against poor countries to develop own capacities. As a consequence, as these countries abandon traditional technologies, and get hooked up to modern ones, they have to continually depend on importing the necessary soft infrastructure to

185 sustain their production systems. With technological research and development time spans becoming shorter and shorter, and new innovations replacing old ones faster than ever before, it becomes expensive and impossible for poor countries to keep up. But as old techniques are rendered obsolete in advanced countries, it becomes difficult and expensive for poor countries to maintain the necessary support infrastructure to keep their systems running. Such systems become dysfunctional and expensive to maintain. This has often meant the high costs have to be externalised on consumers of products and services to the point where such systems are deemed too inefficient, and have to be completely replaced by more advanced ones.

The various technology-related issues highlighted in this literature are of particular salience in understanding the post-colonial political ecology of Blantyre’s waterscape. In this city, the structural dependence of its water infrastructure on global financing and technological networks in important ways shape how water is produced, where it is produced and who has access to it. Aside from the initial capital outlay invested in its modern water network, the operation and maintenance of the water infrastructure here requires a complex mix of institutional, technical, financial and material infrastructure. To a larger extent, these are not produced within Malawi; Blantyre Water Board has had to source them externally. Examining the Board’s records (largely its annual reports) highlights the extent to which critical aspects of its infrastructure are welded to foreign technologies. For example, sifting through the Board’s annual reports reveals how the Board depends on foreign engineering firms in the supply and maintenance of its water pumping stations. The various pumping stations described in section 4.2.1 are critical to the operations of

Blantyre Water Board. Without these, it is impossible for the institution to convey water over long distances (and in some places against gravity), given the generally precipitous topography of Blantyre (see figure 3.1 in chapter 3). These pumping stations require the installation of high capacity multi-stage centrifugal pumps and associated installations (See photo 5.1). Malawi has no capacity to manufacture

186 these pumps locally. Blantyre Water Board therefore has had to import them from

Britain and South Africa (Blantyre Water Board 2004). Compatibility issues have also dictated that these pumps have to be exclusively purchased from select engineering firms such as the Associated Pump Engineers in the UK or through their subsidiary in South Africa (Blantyre Water Board 2010b). As a matter of fact

APE has over the years become an important supplier of these technologies; it is, for example, currently managing a pump upgrade project estimated to be worth over

£5,000,000 (Engineering News 2014).

Photo 5.1: Water pump at Blantyre Water Board Source: (Blantyre Water Board 2010a)

Related to the forgoing, the extent of BWB’s dependency on foreign technological infrastructure is also reflected in the nature of the skilled labour inputs the institution critically depends on to function properly. The complex and sophisticated nature of Blantyre’s modern water system demands a specialised workforce of engineers, hydrologists, chemists, managers, legal experts, accountants and such like. To operate successfully also demands the continual introduction of

187 new technologies and the constant reorientation of staff through specialised training programmes tailored to the needs of the new technology (African Development

Bank Group 1992). Examining the organisation’s human resource structure reveals the high level of specialisation in this organisation’s operations, and the extent to which the organisation takes seriously staff training and development. Historically, the senior management of the organisation has been dominated by personnel with backgrounds in engineering, economics, accounting, law, administration and the like (See for example Blantyre Water Board 2010; Blantyre Water Board 2001;

Blantyre Water Board 1996; Blantyre Water Board 1980; Blantyre Water Board 1967).

Over the years, the organisation has also given priority to developing its personnel in response to evolving knowledge and technological contexts. Thus, the principal human resource policy of the Board has been “to raise the level of managerial and technical competence of the staff in the Board in order to serve the Board’s customers effectively and efficiently”(Blantyre Water Board 2004:8). While Malawi has over the years seen a significant expansion of its tertiary education system, many of the technical programmes fall behind the scientific and technological advances in the west. Some commentators have also criticised the wholesale mimicking of western pedagogical systems and the manner these are not suited to the cultural context and local needs (Kadzamira and Rose 2001; Matiki 2001).

Malawi’s tertiary education, therefore, as others have shown, has generally struggled to adapt and produce individuals with the right kinds of specialised skills or technological know-how needed in modern manufacturing and industry (Castel et al. 2010).

For Blantyre Water Board, the implications of the mismatch between its skills requirements and what is offered by technical education, has been a long-standing reliance on training institutions abroad, and the dominance of external consultancy firms in its critical functions. Blantyre Water Board has since its formative years had some of its specialist staff trained abroad, especially in Europe (Blantyre Water

Board 1967). Also, foreign consultancy firms have for long monopolised its critical

188 functions such as engineering studies, systems installation, maintenance and upgrade, audit services and many others. Parsing through the Board’s reports reveal the extent external firms have permeated its operations. As table 5.2 shows, very few local consultancy firms have been involved in providing vital services to

Blantyre Water Board. Of the 12 consultancy firms appearing in reports for the period 1980-2000, only 3 were local, and these were mainly contracted to provide banking and legal services. Thus, Blantyre Water Board’s functions are largely structurally tied to global networks of scientific and technological transfer.

Nevertheless, as Stewart and Strijbos cautions, these ties of dependency often work to the disadvantage of poor countries and reproduce poverty and inequalities. In the subsection that follows, I shall consider what the implications have been for the practicalities and politics of water production and distribution in Blantyre.

Name Of Firm Type of Service Offered Status

Kier Group International Limited Pumping Station Building and International (United Associated Civil Works Kingdom)

Norse Construction Limited Service Reservoir International (Canada)

Pirelli Construction Limited Transmission Mains International (United Kingdom)

Pelican Pipelines Limited Mechanical and Electrical Plant Regional (South Africa) for Pumping stations

Deloitte Haskins & Sells Audit International (United Kingdom)

National Bank Of Malawi Banking Services Local (Malawi) Commercial Bank of Malawi Banking Services Local (Malawi)

Sir Alexander Gibbs & Partners Special Engineering Study International (United Kingdom)

Enerst & Young Solicitors Legal Services International (United Kingdom)

KPMG Audit International (United Kingdom)

Wilson & Morgan Legal Services Local (Malawi) Table 5:2: External consultancy firms contracted at BWB Source: compiled by author from Blantyre Water Board Annual Reports for the period 1980-2000.

189

5.3.1 The hydro-social consequences of technological dependency

Rising cost of producing water is one of the systemic issues affecting the operations of Blantyre Water Board. I contend that this has been largely exacerbated by

Blantyre Water Board’s overreliance on external means of producing and distributing water. This dependency implies that the institution does not control its own means of producing and distributing water and/or has no ability to influence the prices of inputs critical to its operations. Understanding the internal production dynamics of this city’s water infrastructure provides a good entry point for making sense of the implications of this dependency for producing and distributing water in

Blantyre. Blantyre’s water infrastructure is highly capital intensive. Thus, it relies heavily on dead capital such as machines, chemicals and such other physical assets, and less so on labour power. This fact is illustrated by calculating the percentage difference between the cost of labour and fixed assets for a particular period. In this case, a comparison has been made of BWB’s fixed asserts valuation data for the period 1980-2000 (see figure 5.2 and table 5.3). Calculating cost differentials for this period reveals a marginal difference of about 605.5% between total fixed capital and labour. In fact, labour costs only represents 0.1% of total production costs compared to 97.50% for fixed assets. As figure 5.2 shows, land, reticulation systems, water treatment plants and civil works constitute Blantyre Water Board’s fixed assets accounts. The combined cost of these assets has increased from MK20.6 million in

1980 to MK4.6 Billion in 2000 (taking inflation into account inflationary pressures discussed later). Of these fixed capital assets, the cost of land has not increased as significantly as that of other fixed assets such as water treatment plants and civil works. This is because Blantyre Water Board owns much of the land in its designated water area. It therefore has not been spending as much on this input of production. Nevertheless, to maintain other fixed assets such as water treatment plants requires on-going investment in rehabilitation and/or replacement of aging parts.

190

Year Total Fixed Capital (in Malawi Scatter Plot Comparing Cost of Fixed Capital (1980-2000) Kwacha 1980 20,603,006 5,000,000,000 Land 1981 27,411,678 1982 33,912,606 4,000,000,000 1983 37,641,435 Civil Works 1984 38,808,077 1985 41,364,453 3,000,000,000 1986 43,140,091 Water Treatment 1987 46,270,338 2,000,000,000 Plants 1988 48,184,073 1989 51,116,242 1,000,000,000 1994 629,994,892 Laboratory 1995 1,233,545,498 equipment 1997 1,657,466,000 0 Amount(Malawi Kwacha 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 1998 2,493,781,000 Workshops 1999 4,087,931,000 -1,000,000,000 equipment and 2000 4,655,780,000 motor Vehicle

-2,000,000,000 Reticulation Period (Years) System

Figure 5:2: Scatterplot and table showing cost of fixed capital at BWB (1980-2000) Source: Produced by author from BWB financial records (1980-2000)

191

Year Salaries & Wages Maintenance & Motor Vehicle Administration Electricity Total Cost of Production

1980 525,469 221,418 506,114 1,347,968 2,685,062

1981 626,492 240,896 659,240 1,106,012 2,773,747

1982 892,706 318,577 367,412 1,551,089 3,294,088

1983 984,353 465,077 450,847 1,863,039 3,962,057

1984 1,039,896 473,906 400,655 2,114,232 4,249,649

1985 1,068,743 570,942 491,950 2,386,427 4,782,825

1986 1,167,626 646,628 492,587 646,628 3,258,286

1987 1,275,747 729,168 608,418 729,168 3,672,730

1988 1,626,322 972,600 588,310 3,255,466 6,852,923

1989 2,258,850 1,357,872 913,262 5,044,649 10,524,525

19 94 6,851,057 2,516,573 2,101,241 11,682,335 24,576,700

1995 10,454,377 1,576,166 4,806,963 19,720,462 41,427,294

1997 18,863,000 10,168,000 9,045,000 45,805,000 89,296,000

1998 32,519,000 15,218,000 17,931,000 69,132,000 139,864,000

1999 40,794,000 19,464,000 29,226,000 119,265,000 218,243,000

2000 54,788,000 28,292,000 47,562,000 156,123,000 295,195,000

% Increase in cost of production ( 1980 -2000 ) 10326.49% 12677.64% 9353.74% 11482.09% 10893.97% Table 5:3: Cost of production at BWB for the period 1980-2000 Source: Produced by author from BWB financial Reports (1980-2000).

192

As the previous section has shown, Blantyre Water Board heavily depends on importation of fixed assets such as machines and or the technical expertise necessary to put these to work. Therefore, external market dynamics greatly affect the cost of production at the institution. During the period 1980-2000, Blantyre

Water Board experienced unprecedented increases in the cost of production inputs.

A combination of macro and micro economic pressures such as the oil shock of

1979, recurrent droughts of 1980s and 90s, and the liberalisation of the local currency against major ones in mid 1990s, combined to unleashed inflationary increases in Malawi’s economy (Ndaferankhande and Ndhlovu 2006). For example, during this period, inflation went through spasmodic spikes of 17.7% in 1980, 33.8% in 1988 and 84.3% in 1995 from a single digit figure of 4.1% in 1977. To put this into context, it is important to note that Blantyre Water Board sells its water in local currency but transacts with foreign firms in foreign currency, especially US Dollars

(Blantyre Water Board 1980).Therefore, any inflationary pressures on the local economy, and the depreciation of the local currency, have over the years enormously affected the institution’s production costs. To understand this dynamic, an economic concept of cost-push inflation comes in handy. At its most basic level, this concept generally suggests that a fall in the value of local currency in foreign exchange markets causes a rise in the prices of raw materials, and hence production costs (Buckley and Desai 2011). This is particularly acute for countries or firms that depend heavily on imported raw materials such as Malawi. Therefore, to maintain its profit margins, it becomes necessary for such firms to raise the price of their products above inflation.

Blantyre Water Board has historically been faced with the cost-push dynamics along the lines described above. Due to inflationary pressures, Malawi

Government devalued its currency multiple times during this period. For instance, on 25 th April 1982 Malawi Kwacha was devalued against special Drawing rights by approximately 15%, followed by a further 12% devaluation in September 1983; there was a further devaluation of 20% in 1987, 7% in 1990, 15% and 22% in 1992

193

(Blantyre Water Board 1982; Ligomeka 2012). These frequent devaluations eroded

Blantyre Water Board’s purchasing power on foreign exchange markets. At the same time, global economic shocks such as the oil crisis necessitated a steady rise in the cost of critical production inputs BWB heavily depends on (See graph 5.1;African

Development Bank Group 1992). While the standard economic approach under these circumstances would be for the firm to push up prices of goods and services it produces, the awkward relationship between Blantyre Water Board and the state has imposed upon it some political constraints; it cannot sensitively respond to market dynamics. These constraints usurp Blantyre Water Board’s freedom to automatically adjust prices in tandem with inflationary pressures. In the subsection that follows, I shall examine the consequences of these constraints.

Comparison of Cost of Production (1980-2000)

450,000,000 Salaries & 400,000,000 Wages 350,000,000 Maintance & 300,000,000 Motor Vehicle

250,000,000 Administration 200,000,000

150,000,000 Electricity Amount (Malawi Kwacha) Amount(Malawi 100,000,000

50,000,000 Total Cost of 0 Production

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1994 1995 1997 1998 1999 2000 Duration (year)

Graph 5.1: Comparing different production costs at Blantyre Water Board (1980- 2000). Source: Produced by author from fixed assets valuation data in BWB Reports (1980- 2000)

194

5.3.1.1 Inability to respond to market forces and its long-term hydro-social

consequences

35.-(1) The Board shall make such charges as are approved, within a reasonable time, by the Minister for the supply of quantities of water measured by meter, for the rental of meters, or for the provision of other services. Such charges may differ in respect of different classes of consumers. (2) Such charges shall be levied and enforced in accordance with rules made by the Minister (Water Works Act 1995:13).

The relationship between Blantyre Water Board and the state thwarts its ability to respond to market pressures imposed on it by the structural relations with external capital and technological networks. This has in the long-term had two major implications, thus: (1) it has meant that Blantyre Water Board cannot generate enough revenue as state controls prevents it from raising water prices in direct reaction to market forces. Blantyre Water Board has therefore had to rely on external borrowing to meet its operational costs; (2) this has produced systemic problems within the water infrastructure such as chronic debt, infrastructure decay and the like. To stem these problems, Blantyre Water Board is periodically allowed by the state to hike its water prices, with debilitating consequences on the urban poor. This section shall examine these implications. It does so because, if understood within the general context of the discussion in the chapter, these reflect the structural difficulties that have historically worked against the possibility of producing water as a social good in Blantyre. It is partly the aim of this thesis to develop a critique of contemporary water politics in this city through an examination of how water has historically been tied to relations of exploitation within the capitalist urbanisation process. What this discussion shall show, therefore, is that despite the intervention of the post-colonial state in water pricing decisions, the market-induced contradictions within Blantyre Water Board outlined thus far, continue to reproduce water injustices within the city’s waterscape. Thus, under the post-colonial state

195 politics in Blantyre, it is here demonstrated, market forces in important ways continued to influence the production and distribution of water in such a way that the majority of poor residents of this city experience unprecedented water problems.

As demonstrated in chapter 1, neo-liberal critiques of state-society-water relations point to the various chronic contradictions within modern urban water infrastructure, as a justification for the need to purge state control and let free markets determine access to water (Swyngedouw 2004; Bakker 2002; McDonald

2005). To neo-liberals, such problems are framed as a reflection of the failure of the state to provide water as a public good. In doing so, the market is presented as a sanctified conciliator that can correct many of the socio-ecological injustices presided over by state governance. The market and the state are therefore presented as diametrically opposed, with the former vigorously promoted as the best alternative. In Blantyre, a critical examination of the effects of the structural relations of its water infrastructure to external capital and technology reveals the pervasiveness of market forces in shaping urban water politics within the context of state control. Thus, suggesting that systemic problems within its water infrastructure are, in a large measure, a reflection of distortions of market logics within the context of the post-colonial state. This section starts with a quote from

Malawi’s Water Works Act of 1995 because it generally captures the political context in which Blantyre Water Board operates. This institution might be described as a quasi-autonomous public firm. Thus, while the Water Works act guarantees to it sovereign powers over financial and or operational matters, the Malawi state through the Ministry of Water Development, and the Malawi Energy Regulatory

Authority (MERA), provides an overall regulatory framework. Through these mechanisms, the buck ultimately stops with the political leadership in terms of critical policy decisions. Water pricing is one of the critical areas in the operation of the institution where the state is seen to significantly intervene. Blantyre Water

Board has to seek ministerial approval before effecting changes to its water tariffs

196

(Mulwafu et al. 2002). In fact, the state ultimately sets what tariffs, where, when and to whom the Water Board can charge.

“For the Board to continue offering its services in a more efficient manner, we had to ask the government for a tariff increase because the operational costs have gone up significantly since the water tariffs were raised last year…” (BWB PRO cited in Anon 2013)

Government control over water pricing has had important implications on the operations of the Board. Faced with rising cost of production from the 1980s as highlighted earlier, the Board has time and again been seen to engage the political leadership to approve water tariffs. However, as Mulwafu notes, successive regimes in post-colonial Malawi have been reluctant to allow water firms to increase water prices. This reluctance was particularly acute during the dictatorship of Kamuzu

Banda (1964-mid 1990s). While Kamuzu’s economic philosophy was pro-capitalist, he pursued a populist political agenda (Williams 1978). This agenda saw Kamuzu’s government directly intervening in market prices. The urban population was politically a critical power base for the post-independence movement, and continues to be so in today’s Malawi politics. Urban political struggles in cities of Malawi, as is the case elsewhere (see for example Loftus 2005), have powerfully been mobilised around basic needs and services. Politicians, therefore, have had to tread carefully on thorny and politically sensitive matters such as prices of basis urban services.

Kamuzu’s administration, as have subsequent ones, had been careful not to allow Blantyre Water Board to increase water prices in direct response to market forces. Such increases could have implied a sustained rise in water tariffs; the political cost of this is something the political leadership had been careful about and tried avoid. As a result, Blantyre City did not witness any significant water tariff increases during the period of Kamuzu’s dictatorship. For example, graph 5.2, among other variables, captures average water tariffs in Blantyre for the period 1977 to 2000. It is apparent from this that water tariffs remained fairly unchanged during the period 1977-mid 90s (the sharp increase after this period shall be explained

197 later). The consistently low tariffs during this period reflect the firm control

Kamuzu’s government had on water pricing.

Comparison of Income , Tarrif increase and net Profits

1,200,000,000 300

1,000,000,000 250

Income 800,000,000 (water Sales) 200

600,000,000 Net Surplus 150

400,000,000

Average

Amount (MalawiKwacha) 100 Tariff (MK) 200,000,000

50 0

-200,000,000 0 Period (years)

Graph 5.2: Comparing income, tariff increase and net profit at BWB (1977-2000) Source: Plotted by author from BWB financial records 1977-2002

The rules of economics dictate that any firm faced with rising cost of inputs without finding ways to reduce its production cost, goes under. To survive, firms can tinker with their cost of production by, among other things, reducing the cost of its physical capital inputs or labour. For Blantyre Water Board, it has earlier been highlighted that the cost of fixed capital inputs far outweighs its labour costs.

Therefore, labour costs cannot have a greater affect in bringing production costs

198 down if the cost of fixed capital increases or remains the same. As such, it is only by reducing the cost of fixed capital that the firm can remain commercially viable. But, rising water demands obligates the firm to proportionally increase its production.

This supply-oriented logic poses a difficulty for the firm to reduce its capital expenditure. As graph 5.1 shows, Blantyre Water Board has over the year had to contend with sharp increases in its capital expenditure bill. What this means therefore is that without the option to increase water prices, Blantyre Water Board has had to find alternative means of financing its capital expenditure. Without financial support from government, this alternative source has come in a form of borrowing from local and global financial markets. To plug a hole in its capital budget, Blantyre Water Board has had to increasingly rely on external borrowing.

The extent of this dependency is reflected through a critical examination of the Board’s loan records from the early 1960 to 2005 (see graph 5.3 and table 5.4). It is evident from this data that to finance its capital projects, Blantyre Water Board, since its formative years, has depended much on external borrowing. At different moments in its life history, Blantyre Water Board has had to depend on one type of a lender or the other. For example, from the early 1960s to mid-1970s, the Colonial

Development Corporation (later changed to the Commonwealth Development

Corporation), and the Malawi Government, were the firm’s key financiers. From the mid-1970s onwards, there appears a proliferation of other international and local lending agents. Another curious thing from this data is the important role the

Malawi state has played as a lender. With a total contribution of over MK3.2 billion over this period (represents about 84% of the total borrowings), the state here has been a critical life line to the Board’s operations (see table 5.4).

199

Year Loan Interest Paid Loan Interest Paid Loan Interest Paid

International Lenders (Malawi Malawi Government (Malawi Local Private Lenders (Malawi Kwacha) Kwacha) Kwacha)

1962 – – 58,000 6.25% – –

1963 – – 60,000 6.75% – –

1964 – – 99,550 6.56% – –

1965 – – 160,000 5.63% – –

1966 – – 3,150 5.50% – –

1967 1,800,000 (CDC) 7.63% 403,000 6% – –

1969 – – 105,694 7.50% – –

1970 – – 163,181 7.50% – –

1971 – – 129,025 8% – –

1972 – – 306,801 8.00% – –

1973 – – 77,677 8.00% – –

1974 – – 149,829 8.00% 24,000 (NBS Bank) 14.25%

1975 – – 357,216 8.00% –

1976 – – 96,079 8.50% –

1977 1,588,562 (CDC) 8.50% 144,529 8.50% –

1978 3,435,888 8.50% 6,057,381 8.50% 24,000 (NBS Bank) 14.25%

1979 – – 2,200,106 8.50% 24,001 (NBS Bank) 14.25%

1980 3435888 (CDC) 8.50% 170,461 8.50% – –

1982 5007218 (CDC) – – – – –

1983 – – 14,676,993 8.50% 24000 (NBS Bank) 14.25%

1984 – – 19,797,085 – – – 200

1985 – – Not Agreed – – –

1986 – – – – – – 1987 – – 5792046 3.50% – –

1988 1,223,111 9.505 14,844,233 6% – –

1990 – – 380,648,000 14% – – 1998 23485000 (CDC) Not recorded 285,797,000 14% 3,970,000 (NB) 52%

1999 15,163000 CDC;IDA;EIB Not recorded 292,265,000 14% 69,554,000 (NB) 27.50%

2000 44,300,000 Not recorded 377,732,000 14% 86,607,000 (NB) 27.50% (IDA;CDC;EIB;ADB)

2003 60,351,000 (IDA;ADB;EIB) Not recorded 1,635,330,000 14% 36,677,000 (NB) 27.50% 2004 82,904,000 (IDA;ADB:EIB) Not recorded 2,790,000 14% 56,728,000 (NB) 27.50%

2005 – – 168,048,000 14% 97,000,000 (NB) 27.50%

Note: ADB-African Development Bank; CDC-Colonial Development Corporation (late 1960s)/Commonwealth Development Corporation (1969 onwards); EIB- European Investment Bank; IDA-International Development Agency; NB-National Bank of Malawi; NBS-New Building Society. Source: Created by author from BWB financial records (1962-2005).

Table 5:4: Captures project financiers, loan amounts and interest paid at BWB (1962-2005) Source: Produced by Author from BWB annual reports (1962-2005)

201

Proportion of Loan Contribution (1962-2005)

350,632,001, 9% 266178667, 7%

Malawi Government International Lenders Private Local Lenders

3,208,462,036, 84%

Graph 5.3: Approximate proportion of loan contribution of different lenders Source: Plotted by Author from BWB financial Records (1980-2000)

Whereas the state might generally be thought to pursue welfarist policies in which it subsidises water for the public good, the post-colonial state in Malawi has not proactively pursued such policies. Money the state loans to Blantyre Water Board is never a free ‘lunch’, so to speak. In fact, this is an economic transaction in which the state has sought to extract rent from BWB. It would borrow from the global financial markets and lend capital to Blantyre Water Board; this is often done at higher interest rates than the state pays on the global financial markets. The state then would pocket the difference. Examining BWB’s financial accounts for the year 1966 reveals the extent to which the Malawi State predominantly acted like a capitalist financier in the development of water supply services. Of the £2,230,970 BWB borrowed during this time, 36% was owed to the new Malawi Congress Party

202 administration; this was at an average interest rate of about 5% (Blantyre Water

Board 1966). Thus, the Malawi Government acts as an intermediary by borrowing from the global financial markets and lending on at a fee to Blantyre Water Board. It has been shown that the Malawi Government borrowed money at relatively reasonable rates (as low as 3%), from lending institutions such as CDC, World Bank and others (African Development Bank 1995); but as table 5.4 shows, Blantyre Water

Board borrowed this money at interest rates comparable to those it paid to international lenders. This therefore gets to show that the state’s capitalisation of the water institution has always come at a cost. The African Development Bank captures this funding relation and its implications for operations at Blantyre Water Board as follows:

One of the reasons why BWB incurs substantial interest expenses each year is the relatively high rates of interest the Government charges BWB. Generally, the loans obtained by the Government for the various phases of the expansion of the water system have been “soft loans” from lending institutions such as ADB or the World Bank. The Government relends (on-lends) the money to BWB at terms which are not notably soft (8% or more annual interest)….When BWB pays the Government 8% or more interest (or, in case of phase V, 3.5%) on funds which the Government obtains for an annual service charge of 0.75% and no interest as such, BWB is in effect contributing an annual “subsidy” to the Government (African Development Bank Group 1992:17)

Blantyre Water Board’s dependency on borrowed capital has imposed some operational challenges on the institution. In the long term, the institution has seen rising debt and cost of borrowing. As table 5.4 further shows, these loans did not come cheaply. With some commanding an interest of as high as 52%, the cost to

Blantyre Water Board has been significant. Graph 5.4 depicts levels of long-term debt and interests on loans at Blantyre Water Board. It is evident from this analysis that, even during the periods when Blantyre Water Board has not borrowed much, it has had to pay high borrowing costs on loans. Further considering table 5.4 reveals periods when BWB did not borrow at all (areas with dashes); but examining graph

5.4 shows that Blantyre Water Board has continuously paid interests on its loans,

203 and, as the last column of table 5.4 shows, the institution has continually grappled with the rising cost of borrowing. Periods when BWB did not borrow have neither been preceded by declining cost of borrowing nor falling interest rates. These, as graph 5.4 shows, have remained relatively constant or gone up. Such are curious trends and abound are few explanations below.

Scatter Plot of Long-term Loans and Interest on Loans

1,200,000,000

1,000,000,000

800,000,000

600,000,000 Long termLoans

400,000,000 Interest on Loans 200,000,000 Linear (Long termLoans) 0 Amount (MalawiKwacha) 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 -200,000,000

-400,000,000 Duration (Years)

Graph 5.4: Showing long-term debt and interest on loans at BWB Source: Produced by Author

Firstly, to make sense of the above trends on borrowing costs, one needs to know that capital is loaned to BWB on a long-term basis. Records from 1960s to 2000s show loans with an amortisation period of as high as 40years—with a minimum period of not less than 10yrs. Data shows an average repayment period of over

20yrs, with government loans tending to be payable over relatively longer periods than those from international and local private lending agents. The lengthy loan

204 repayment period means that BWB’s debt obligations run over longer periods of time. Even if the institution does not borrow, it still has to honour such obligations.

Secondly, it must be noted that interest repayments on a particular loan do not significantly decrease (graph 5.4). They have remained fairly constant over the years while progressively increasing from the 1990s. While long amortisation periods help

BWB spread out repayment obligations, and lessen the burden on it, this comes at a cost. The accrual of repayment charges over longer periods, at high interest rates, means more money is paid to the lender, and less money stays at the water institution. This fact will be elaborated on shortly. Thirdly, loans to BWB are denominated in foreign currency, especially the US Dollar, British Sterling and more recently the Euro (on reasons firms/governments in developing countries cannot borrow in own currency, See Eichengreen et al. 2003; Eichengreen and Hausmann

1999) . Debt anchored to foreign currency has exposed BWB to the volatility of financial markets. Blantyre Water Board generates its revenue through local currency. Any devaluation to the local currency has meant the inevitable loss of value of its earnings against major currencies. Combined with long amortisation periods of such foreign currency denominated loans, this has entailed that BWB has had to pay relatively higher amounts from its local reserves to service a particular loan even if interest rates remain the same.

The devaluation of the local currency on the Board’s finances has seen the water institution externalising a fair proportion of its income to service loans denominated in foreign currency. Graph 5.5 illustrates the effects of devaluation on the Board’s balance sheet. This shows foreign exchange losses at BWB as a result of devaluation of Malawi Kwacha. In years 1982, 1985 and 1997, the institution registered some minor gains due to the Malawi Kwacha gaining relative strength.

Representing only 4.0% of the total foreign exchange account, these gains have over the years been far outweighed by losses in foreign exchange earnings on loans.

From the year 1986, one sees a progressive degrees in exchange losses from foreign

205 denominated borrowings. With total exchange losses of MK38, 942,172 (96%) compared to gains of MK1, 637,835 for the period 1980-2000, BWB has over the years lost a sizable proportion of its revenue. Between mid-1980s and late 1990s,

Malawi Government devalued its currency multiple times (See Annual reports for the period 1982-1999). The perpetual depreciation of the local currency against major global currencies, and the rising borrowing costs, significantly affects

Blantyre Water Board’s profitability.

Foreign Exchange losses For the period (1980-2000)

4,000,000

2,000,000

-2,000,000

-4,000,000

-6,000,000

-8,000,000 Exchange losses -10,000,000 Amount (MalawiKwacha)

-12,000,000

-14,000,000

-16,000,000 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1994 1995 1997 1998 1999 2000

Duration (years)

Graph 5.5: Showing foreign exchange losses for the period 1980-2000 Source: Produced by Author

206

Comparison of Income, Expenditure (minus interest) and Profit (1980-2005)

1,400,000,000

1,200,000,000

1,000,000,000

Income 800,000,000 (water Sales)

600,000,000 Expenditure 400,000,000 (minus interest) 200,000,000

Amount (MalawiKwacha) Net Surplus 0

-200,000,000

-400,000,000 Period (Years)

Graph 5.6: Comparing income, expenditure (minus interest) and profit at BWB (1980-2005) . Source: Produced by Author

To understand this dynamic, one has to examine the relationship between external borrowing and BWB’s financial status. Financial data comparing income and expenditure for the period (1980-2005) generally indicate that BWB has had a relatively healthy Balance sheet, especially from the 80s to until around 2004 (See graph 5.6). For example, with an income from water sells of MK4, 314,424 in 1980, this increased significantly to MK912, 757,000 in 2005, thereby representing a marginal percentage increase of 21,055.94%. Comparing total expenditure minus interest on loans with total income from water sales shows a general tendency towards profitability. Although the income-expenditure margin appears

207 consistently at parity from 1980s to mid-1990s, this widens from mid 2000s; during this period, income begins to exceed expenditure suggesting a surplus.

Blantyre Water Board consistently registered profit in the majority of the years from 1980s to early 2000s. The sudden dip in profit between 2002 and 2004 is fairly consistent with rising expenditure during this period. This was due to a number of factors. For instance, between 2003 and 2004, the Board recorded a net revenue loss of MK258.8 million (Blantyre Water Board 2004). This was as a result of a combined effect of (1) high depreciation of fixed capital following a revaluation exercise in 2002; (2) over-accumulation and non-payment of water arrears; (3) Rising finance costs on borrowings. Nonetheless, save for these episodes of fiscal instability, data considered here points to a profitable water enterprise. Further inspection of BWB’s financial accounts shows the effect the cost of borrowing has had on the institution’s finances. Data shows a strong relationship between the cost of borrowing and the rate of surplus revenue at the institution. A scatter plot showing the relationship between profit and interest charges for the period 1970-

2010 shows some curious trends on BWB’s balance sheet (graph 5.7). The period of flattening interest charges on loans coincides with a relatively constant rate of profit

(1970-2000). Falling rates of profit generally parallels a spike in interest repayment

(from 2000 onwards). The profit linear plot indicates a general decrease on the rate of profit. Conversely, the interest on loans linear plot indicates general increase on loan interest payments. This suggests a negative correlation between loan interest and profit. Thus, it would seem that the higher the interest repayments on loans, the lower the amount of profit (see graph 5.8).

208

Scatter Plot Comparing Interest Charges on Loans and Profit 1970-2010 150,000,000

100,000,000

50,000,000

0 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Interest on -50,000,000 Loans -100,000,000 Net Surplus -150,000,000

Amount (MalawiKwacha) -200,000,000 Linear (Interest on -250,000,000 Loans) -300,000,000 Duration (year)

Graph 5.7: Comparing income and expenditure plus interest at BWB (1980-2005)

Graph 5.8: Sketch Plot capturing negative correlation between loan interest and profit

209

Income & Expenditure (plus interest) 1980-2005

1,400,000,000

1,200,000,000

1,000,000,000

800,000,000 Expenditure (plus Interest Charges 600,000,000

Amount(Malawi Kwacha) 400,000,000 Income (water Sales)

200,000,000

Duration (Years)

Graph 5.9: Comparing income and expenditure (plus interest on loans) at BWB (1980-2005) Source: Source: Plotted by author from BWB financial records 1970-2010

Therefore, loan interest charges have a significant bearing on the profitability of

Blantyre Water Board. While the institution has over time registered profit, this has been eroded by the rising charges on loans. The significance of this relationship becomes apparent when we add interest charges to expenditure, and compare this with income (see graph 5.9). While comparing expenditure minus interest with income from water sales (graph 5.6) shows an overall increase of income above expenditure, factoring in interest payment on loans into income-expenditure data for the same period 1980-2000 (see graph 5.9), show that the effect is the reversal of the earlier trend towards profitability. In graph 5.6, the marginal difference

(represented by area bound the two line graphs) between income and expenditure

210 seem to have progressively increased with time, particularly from late 90s to early

2000s. Nevertheless, factoring in interest charges on loads shows a drastic narrowing down of this margin (graph 5.9). Between the years 2000-2005, there are moments when expenditure exceeds income thus suggesting a deficit at Blantyre

Water Board.

From the forgoing therefore, the debilitating effects are apparent of the Board’s relationship with the state and its links with exploitative global-local financing networks. BWB has been tied to a vicious cycle of high borrowing costs such that the institution has over the years struggled to shake off the burden of chronic debt.

Despite current operations suggesting a propensity towards profitability, the institution has had to spend a fair proportion of its income on servicing external debt. In the section that follows, I examine the effect this has had on the production and distribution of water in the city. In so doing my intention is to begin moving the analysis towards interrogating how these dynamics have worked to reproduce conditions in which it has been difficult to ensure equitable access to water, and the extent to which economic considerations have become of primary importance as

Blantyre Water Board struggles to service its debt and balance its accounts.

5.3.2 Rising production costs at BWB and unaffordable water that hardly flows

Due to cash flow problems the Board was unable to carry out its planned maintenance and overhaul of pumping plant in order to improve efficiency. This resulted into supply and distribution problems as many areas continuously experienced prolonged waters shortages. Negotiations with World Bank under the National Water Development Program for upgrading, replacement and rehabilitation of existing pumping plants and distribution are at an advanced stage (Blantyre Water Board 2005:13)

A total of 606 pipe bursts were reported and repaired during the year as compared to 232 in the previous year representing an increase of 161%. This was due to disruptions of water supply in the distribution system and this represented a decrease of 20%. Plans to undertake the replacement of mains

211

with frequent bursts in the system network never materialized due to cash flow problems… (Blantyre Water Board 2007:16)

The difficult financial situation Blantyre Water Board finds itself in has had implications that reverberate beyond its balance sheet. At the end of the pipe, this has meant water that frequently stops flowing or has gotten increasingly expensive for the poor residents of the city. To its own admission in quotes above, the institution has increasingly found it difficult to invest in maintaining and upgrading its water infrastructure. The end result has been the dilapidation of the supply network, frequent pipe bursts, huge water losses and failure to cope with rising water demand. It is estimated that, in some cases, Blantyre Water Board loses nearly half of water it produces through leakages and illegal connections from residents frustrated with high water prices. For example in 2005, of the 30,593,210 (m3/a) annual water production, an estimated amount of about 14,378,809(m3/a) was classed as unaccounted for water, representing a loss of 47%; this figure increased to

49% in 2007 and 53% in 2010 (Blantyre Water Board 2005; 2007; 2010). As graph 5.10 shows, Blantyre Water Board has generally had to contend with a large number of faults in its supply network. While the institution has seen a decline in the number of faults between 2003 and 2007 due to major maintenance work carried around this period, fault maintenance remains one of the institution’s biggest financial burdens.

The institution has over the years spent over 30% of its capital on improving efficiency in its supply network. The bulk of this work involves replacing aging network components such as pipes (see photo 5.2). A water supply network strained to the limits, and these long-standing financial difficulties, have greatly undermined Blantyre Water Board’s capacity to meet water demand in the city. Of the 98,000 cubic meters required per day to satisfy the city’s water demand, Blantyre

Water Board is only able to supply 78,000 cubic meters (Chirombo 2013). A further loss of 4,000 cubic meters is incurred due to frequent pipe bursts and leakages. As

212 table 5.5 and graph 5.11 Show, over the years, the daily average peak water demand has consistently outstripped supply.

Photo 5.2: A pipe burst in Blantyreʹs water supply network Source: Blantyre Water Board (2010)

This situation has led to Blantyre Water Board adopting drastic water rationing measures. For the residents of Blantyre, water supply outages are the order of daily life. As the next chapter will show, these effects though are not experienced evenly.

Some parts of the city, often deprived, and certain classes of residents are affected more than others. Those with money get by through, among other things, having modern water reserve tanks installed at their houses or by investing in private water pumps. Costing well over a million Malawi Kwacha, not many in the city, where the majority are estimated to survive on less than a dollar a day (UN-Habitat 2011), can afford such technologies. In wealthy areas of the city, reserve water storage tanks perched up rooftops is a common sight. In deprived areas, coping with this difficult water situation has partly meant relying on polluted open water sources. The next

213 chapter provides a more nuanced analysis of these matters. Here though, beginning to emerge are the wider contemporary hydro-social implications of the Blantyre

Water Board’s historically complex relations with external finance and state politics.

This dynamic is among other things central to an understanding of how this waterscape continues to be reproduced as a commodified configuration during the

‘post-colonial’ period.

Number of Faults per Year at Blantyre Water Board

18,000

16,000

14,000

12,000

10,000

8,000 Faults/year 6,000 Number of Faults

4,000

2,000

0 1992/93 1993/94 1994/95 1995/96 1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00 2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05 2005/06 2006/07 Year

Graph 5.10: Number of faults in Blantyreʹs water supply network Source: Plotted by author from BWB annual data (1992-2006)

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Comparison of Annual Average Water Production and Peak Demand at Blantyre Water Board

100,000 90,000 80,000 70,000 Annual 60,000 Average production 50,000 (m3/day) 40,000

30,000 Peak Water in cubicmeters 20,000 Demand(m3 /day) 10,000 0

Year

Graph 5.11: Annual average water production and peak demand at BWB Source: Plotted by author from BWB annual reports (1889-2003)

Year Daily Average production Peak Demand( m3/day) (m3/day) 1988 46,562 59,459

1989/90 49,081 62,563

1990/91 50,799 60,667

1991/92 54,194 65,929

1992/93 56,742 67,331

1993/94 57,965 70,877

1994/95 62,396 75,347

1995/96 60,854 68,213

1996/97 62,986 70,028

1997/98 65,142 74,773

1998/99 68,758 82,776

1999/00 68,260 80,154

215

2000/01 70,291 81,540

2001/02 72,770 89,026

2002/03 74,260 87,697

2003/04 78,184 89,383

Table 5:5: Comparing annual water production and peak demand at Blantyre Water Board Source: Blantyre Water Board (2004)

A combination of financial difficulties and a dysfunctional water infrastructure has also led to increasing water tariffs in Blantyre. While tariff increases have politically been a highly sensitive issue, and the state has always been keen to regulate, in the long run, these problems have proved far too difficult to contend with. State regulation has therefore periodically had to give way to tariff increases. These increases offset any supposed benefits state intervention in water pricing is intended to bring to the poor resident of the city. Apparently, Blantyre Water Board uses a rising block tariff system (RBT). Designed in principle for the well-off to offset the cost of providing water at a low price to the poor, the operational challenges

Blantyre Water Board faces have in practice not often resulted in water being cheap to the poor resident of the city. At BWB, the general structure of the RBT has been defined by three classes of consumers—those in traditional housing areas served with standpipes, consumers served by kiosks, and consumers in low density areas.

The first and third class of consumers generally constitute of the majority of

Blantyre’s population living in high density areas. For consumers in traditional housing a minimum water price is charged to an initial unit abstracted. Above this threshold a set price is charged per m 3 of additional unit supplied. For consumers served by kiosks, all consumption is charged at a set price per determined units of water. Kiosk consumers pay a fixed unit price irrespective of rising water quantity used. In principle, the RBT tariff system is envisaged to get well-off consumers in

216 low density areas pay high water tariffs to offset the cost of providing water at a low cost to poor consumers in high density neighbourhoods. It can generally be seen in graph 5.13 that from the 1980s to the early 90s, consumers in low density areas paid higher water tariffs than consumers in high density areas.

Nevertheless, a further look at this data reveals the extent to which the persistent operational and financial problems have eventually made it impossible for BWB to continually provide water at a subsidised rate to its low income consumers. Such a relief has only been temporary as the Board has had to periodically externalise this cost on all consumers. Consider for example graph 5.13.

It is evident from this that, with time, water tariffs for consumers in traditional housing served by standpipes increased significantly. This is to the extent that, from the mid-90s, this category of consumers paid same price per unit of water as those living in low density areas of the city. Calculating the tariff difference between the two classes of consumers and plotting this on a linear graph reveals the pattern in graph 5.14. This shows that briefly from 1983-1985 there was a sizeable price difference between the two categories under consideration. The elongated flat line between 1985 and 1993 indicate no change in tariff differentials during this period.

The tariff difference drops significantly in 1993 and hits the zero mark where it flat- lines from 1994 to 2001. In general, this trend indicates that Blantyre Water Board significantly increased water charges for consumers in traditional housing while correspondingly increasing at a decreasing rate those of high end consumers in low density areas, industries, various institutions etc. The zero tariff difference signifies that relatively low income households have had to pay same prices for water as elites in low density gated communities.

217

Water Tariffs Among Different Consumers (1983-2001)

1000

Consumers in Traditional Housing 100

Other 10 Consumers e.g. Low Density Housing

1 Consumer served by

1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 Kiosks

0.1 Graph 5.12: Comparing tariffs among different consumers (1983-2001)

Tariff Diferrence-Traditional Housing and low Density Housing 0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4 Tariff 0.3 Diferrence 0.2

Amount(Malawi Kwacha) 0.1

0 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 Duration (years)

Graph 5.13: Showing tariff difference between consumers in high density and low density areas Source: Plotted by author from BWB’ financial records 1983-2001

218

Apparent from the forgoing discussion are the political ecological impacts of rising production costs. Blantyre Water Board is not only struggling to maintain and expand its water system to meet the city’s water needs. But also, these systemic contradictions in the city’s water supply network have meant increasing water prices for the consumer. State regulation has had very little effect in cushioning the poor consumer from these prices. If this is understood in the context of exploitative financial relations discussed earlier, here, the extent to which external capital extracts rent from a poor consumer is brought to light. In the absence of state financing, Blantyre Water Board is left with no choice but either borrow more externally or raise the price of water. The former also often means the institution has to raise more revenue through water sales to repay high interest loans. Ultimately, such a cost is externalised on the ordinary consumer. Recently, Blantyre Water

Board has also embarked on aggressive water disconnection campaigns aimed at forcing consumers to pay for their water. The point here is, in Blantyre, water produced under this configuration time and again has proved difficult to be provided for the greater public good. Beyond the mirage of post-colonial state politics, this section has continued to show that during this period of

‘decolonisation’, economic forces have been far great to contend with and state politics too ineffectual to ensure a socially just distribution of water.

5.4 Chapter Conclusion

As Malawi politically transitioned towards self-rule in 1964, this did not correspondingly lead to a radical reconfiguration of economic relations from the colonial past. In fact, the MCP regime, expanded the capitalist economic base, through deliberate policies, aimed at attracting large capital investments from abroad. The pro-growth economic policy of the post-colonial regime, largely ignored social concerns, and did little to change the underlying economic structure entrenched during colonial remaking of socio-natural relations. In post-colonial

Blantyre, a few continued to monopolise the means of production while the

219 majority had to rely on exchanging their labour for low wages to acquire basic necessities of life including water. Inspired by the geographically-situated post- colonial critique of capitalist urbanisation of nature, this chapter then had set out to explore how relations that came to mediate human -water relations in colonial

Blantyre, within this political economic context, further worked to alienate and commodify water after decolonisation. Decolonisation of state politics did not fundamentally change ties of dependency forged in the colonial period between

Blantyre’s modern water infrastructure and external capital/technologies. In fact the chapter has shown that post-colonisation brought Blantyre’s water even closer to global-local networks of capital financing and technological transfer. With the construction of a large-scale, capital intensive and technologically advanced Walkers

Ferry scheme, the post-colonial state sought a more substantive involvement of capital from abroad.

The hydro-social implications have been far-reaching. The chapter demonstrates that Blantyre’s water supplier has become overly dependent on imported technologies and external capital. While the institution generally has the potential to be profitable, a disproportionate amount of revenue from water sales goes into servicing debt and meeting rising costs of imported inputs. Blantyre Water Board is caught up in a vicious cycle of chronic debt. In turn it presides over a massive hole in its budget; it has to continually rely on more borrowing to meet its capital requirements. Persistent cash flow problems often mean that the institution cannot maintain or expand its water network to meet rising water demand in Blantyre. To an ordinary resident of Blantyre, this often means water that is frequently in short supply and is increasingly becoming expensive. Thus, to make up for its budget shortfalls, and meet loan obligations, Blantyre Water Board has had to hike its water tariffs. In the wake of these debilitating forces, state intervention to keep water prices in check have sooner or later given way to high tariff increases. Under the

220 watchful eye of the post-colonial state, water in Blantyre has increasingly become commodified.

Few salient points can be drawn from this chapter in terms of the overall argument this thesis makes. Firstly, despite the shifting political context, capitalist relations have persisted as a dominant force in mediating human -water relations in

Blantyre. While the city’s water supplier is politically controlled by the state, economic forces in a large measure shape the realpolitik of producing and distributing water in this city. Therefore, failure of the water supply network is largely a reflection of the crippling effects of capitalist remaking of society-water relations. To the neo-liberal ideologues, a suggestion is here then made that the very basis of many of the failings in the water network, to a significant extent, reflect inherent problems of the logic of capital itself than water being a free good.

Therefore recent attempts to neo-liberalise water should not be seen as new, but rather, as part of an ongoing historical process to modernise Blantyre along capitalistic lines. The many systematic challenges confronting Blantyre’s waterscape today are a manifestation of contradictions and failings of this modernisation project.

Literature analysing society-nature relations has instructively illustrated how capital seeks to create accumulation possibilities out of its own socio-ecological contradictions (Castree 2010; Harvey 2007; O’connor 1988; Strange 2000). Here also, recent neo-liberal attempts to further open up Blantyre’s waterscape ought to be generally understood in this context. Of course in Blantyre, calls to neo-liberalise water have largely coalesced around the failings and contradictions of the water modernisation project. Secondly, the chapter also suggests the historical embeddedness of the process of water commodification within this capitalist modernisation of socio-natural relations. By tracing these processes from the colonial through to the post-colonial urbanisation, the chapter demonstrates that the commodification of water in Blantyre has only intensified. This is to the extent that

221 as Blantyre matched on, from the colonial to the post-colonial, water remained and has increasingly become a good for monetary exchange. In Blantyre therefore, there has thus far never been such a thing as non-commodified` urbanised water. The remaining empirical chapters further explore what the legacy of these historical- geographical processes has entailed to water access dynamics in Blantyre today, and shall also critically consider what these complex dynamics can tell us about the nature of produced water in this city.

222

Chapter6: Complex Social-Geographies of Water Access in

Contemporary Blantyre

6.1 Introduction

In the first three empirical chapters, this thesis interrogates the structural forces that

have historically shaped Blantyre’s waterscape from British colonisation to the

period of decolonisation. Of particular interest therein had been to understand

political economic changes that occurred during this period and their implications

on hydro-social relations. It has been demonstrated in the previous chapters that the

colonial and post-colonial modernisation significantly redefined human-water

relations in this city. While water-getting in the pre-colonial era was a quotidian act

involving the direct inter-change between humans and water, in colonial/post-

colonial Blantyre, money, machines and the technical expert came to acquire

significant powers as important mediators of this relation. Demonstrated therein is

the importance of this historical geographical transformation in changing water

from being a direct means of subsistence to being an economic resource controlled

by a powerful few.

In this chapter, I wish to shift this analysis towards a more nuanced

understanding of what the legacy of these alienating processes has meant to

everyday life in the city. Such a shift from the structural to the quotidian allows me

to be sensitive and pay particular attention to the complex and varied ways in which

different individuals or social groups encounter these processes at present. Such an

analysis also makes evident the varied and complex ways these structural historical

geographical processes continue to shape daily water experiences, and reproduce

hydro-social injustices in contemporary Blantyre. I mobilise the concept of the

everyday as an entry point into this localised urban ecological politics (Loftus 2012).

Through the everydayness of water-getting, I explore complex and often not so

223 obvious ways through which water is further alienated in this city. I begin the chapter by suggesting a framework through which the everyday can be mobilised in interrogating urban water politics. Here I seek inspiration from Alex’s Loftus engagement with this concept as a foundation for revolutionary ecological politics.

Through this theoretical lens, I go on to examine the uneven and complex socio- geographies of water access in informal settlements of Bangwe and Manase. The two informal settlements usefully represent the complex power relations that mediate water access in Blantyre city. The two settlements are instructive because of their contrasting water situations. Bangwe faces more of a physical water scarcity problem, whereas for Manase, it is more a problem of the political economy of water production and distribution. By paying particular attention to the fluid dialectics that shape water misfortunes in these two settlements, it is hoped that complex and dynamic conditions that rework the contemporary waterscape of this city will be highlighted.

6.2 Reaffirming the “everyday” in urban water political ecology

Urban water political ecology has radically transformed ways of seeing urban waterscapes (Kooy and Bakker 2008b; Kooy and Bakker 2008a; Loftus and

McDonald 2001; Loftus 2007; McDonald 2005; Page 2005; Smith and Hanson 2003;

Swatuk 2008; Swyngedouw 2006b). By shifting our understanding from the technocentricity of traditional water science and technology towards a relational/political focus, this body of work calls our attention to the underlying forces that shape uneven access to water in urban environments. One of the central threads that generally tie most of this research work together has been an interest in how differential access to money and social power (re)produce uneven spaces of water access in cities of the developing world. For example, in some Latin American cities, Swyngedouw (2004), Loftus & Mcdonald (2005) have revealed how few residents in gated communities use a large share of water from the city’s network.

Majority poor are marginalised and pay higher costs to access water. In Asia, Kooy

224

& Bakker (2008) trace the fragmented nature of water distribution in the city of

Jarkata through an analysis of legacies of colonial separate urbanism. In South

Africa, Smith & Hanson (2003) and Loftus (2007) highlight how race, class, money and political power have in time and space combined to reproduce unequal access to water in cities of Durban and Cape Town respectively. No doubt, research in

‘Third World’ urban water political ecology has radically transformed ways we think about urban spaces and infrastructure networks. It has allowed us to view these as highly politicised socio-ecologies embedded in complex dynamics that in time and space (re)produce unequal access to basic services.

I argue that while this work has no doubt generated useful insights, there is still more that can be done to develop a richer understanding of how human beings experience alienation in urban waterscapes. I propose that such a critique is possible if political ecological analysis pays serious attention to the ‘everyday’ as a critical entry point into exploring urban water injustices. Such a focus has the potential to free critical inquiry from the trap of fixed binaries that limit our understanding of the real material effects of alienation of water in urban environments. I contend that analyses in some of this work (see for example Smith and Hanson 2003; Swatuk

2008) scarcely problematise the use of socio-spatial constructs such as race, class or neighbourhood/residential area. Often, these categories have been taken as ontologically given. Analyses of water access inequalities have therefore proceeded to examine who gets what water through fixed, spatialised, racialised or classified binaries such as black vs. white, rich vs. poor, upper class vs. middle class, low density neighbourhoods vs. high density neighbourhood. It is nevertheless here argued that reading urban water access inequalities through such pluralising binaries can be disabling. Portraying the underprivileged class or race as politically neutral and the collective victim of some external upper class, is unhelpful. It prevents a more complex understanding of the specific ways inequalities are reproduced in urban environments.

225

A focus on everyday experiences of those who work these waterscapes can enable a richer understanding that reflects the complex socio-geographies of water access in urban environments. In making this proposition, I take my cue from Loftus (2012) clarion call for the everyday to be taken seriously as an entry point into urban ecological politics. For Loftus, following Gramsci, Lukacs and Marx, the everyday quotidian act of work and play is a foundation of human consciousness—it holds nascent potential for democratic change. Through the everyday process of work and play, humans develop situated understandings of their situations. For example, through daily experiences of water shortages, contending with rising water bills, negotiating with water bailiffs or women walking long distances to fetch water, those involved in these daily acts become aware of water injustices, and develop the desire for change. Such a desire is for instance overtly expressed through feelings of anger and despondency towards those who control water. For Loftus therefore, the main challenge for urban political ecology is to explore possibilities through which this latent political potential can be captured and harnessed towards the creation of more democratic and just waterscapes.

While Loftus rightly sees the potential for radical change in the everyday, I further suggest that such daily lived experiences can also offer a window into the underlying forces that reproduce water injustices. For example, by paying attention to what water sources households or social groups use daily, why they use them, who controls these and by what criterion access is granted and the like, it becomes possible to capture, in a more nuanced way, the intricacies of socio-natural forces that shape urban water access inequalities. It also becomes possible to capture how different people experience these injustices. Such knowledge allows academic/political/practical projects to be sensitive to difference and complexity in proposing political strategies that can bring about meaningful change.

226

In the discussion that follows, I put to work this framework and explore how the everyday might be helpful in interrogating complex socio-geographies of water access in informal settlements of Bangwe and Manase. Through personal stories and daily water-getting experiences of residents of these townships, I show how contours of social power have shifted in more complex ways since the colonial period. In contemporary Blantyre, I argue that axes of social power are much more fluid and complicated; this is to the extent that the colonial binaries that came to define the town’s social-geography are in need of urgent revaluation. I further illustrate that such a shift has only worked to further alienate water in more complex and fluid ways. It is this complex and dynamic socio-geographic configuration, I argue, that has created various possibilities for further dispossession of water from a common man and woman of contemporary Blantyre.

6.2.1 Daily struggles for water in Contemporary Blantyre: a case of Bangwe and Manase Townships Chapter 3 & 4 have partly outlined colonial socio-geographies of water production and access in Blantyre. It has partly been shown that the alienation of water was dominantly defined through a racialised configuration. European colonisers commanded social power, money and technology, and therefore had monopoly control over water infrastructure the emerged to mediate human-water relations modern Blantyre. The distribution of water and sanitation services therefore was socio-spatially defined partly depending on the colour of one’s skin and where they lived. It was Europeans and the sanitised enclaves they sought to create that had better access to these services. Africans and the squalid environs they lived in were for the best part of the colonial period totally excluded from such services

(McCracken 1998). However, with decolonisation and ascendance of Black Africans into power, race and place as a basis for distributing water and sanitation services was made redundant. As the previous chapter highlights, the post-colonial administration made attempts, although largely futile, to promote water access to

227 the poor, through for example, controlling pricing mechanisms. In post-colonial era, the socio-spatial barriers imposed by racist colonial urbanism were weakened, and efforts were made to expand the water network to most areas of the city. The city’s water supplier has registered an increase in the number of water connections after decolonisation (Blantyre Water Board 2004). With most of the European minority gone after Malawi claimed her independence, no doubt majority of these new beneficiaries were Black Africans. Decolonisation then redefined the socio- geographies of water access in Blantyre.

Nevertheless, such a transformation was largely superficial. Decolonisation did not lead to the creation of a more equitable and less exploitative system. It has been shown in the previous chapter that post-colonial politics in Malawi did not radically reconfigure the underlying logics and contradictions of the colonial capitalist economy. Through an analysis of Blantyre’s water infrastructure after independence, it has been demonstrated that after decolonisation, monetary exchange and foreign technologies came to be ever more dominant as mediators of hydro-social relations. In this section, I argue and demonstrate—through lived experiences of residents of informal settlements of Manase and Bangwe—that the dominance of monetary exchange in the human interchange with water and each other has created more complex and fluid socio-geographies of water access. The contours of these socio-geographies are more complex than the place/class-specific racialised permutations of the colonial past. At present, the axes of power are much more fluid and complicated across space, within/between social classes and such. I nonetheless show that ultimately, these have further opened up many possibilities for commodifying water. Analysing these contemporary socio-geographies, through everyday experiences, reveals complex ways in which money and socio-power continue to determine access to water in post-colonial Blantyre. In uncovering these possibilities, this thesis further reaffirms that in this city, it has been difficult for water to exist outside the realm of commodities.

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The lived experiences of residents of informal urban spaces such as Bangwe and

Manase (see map 2.1, chapter 2) offer a fertile entry point through which one can begin to unpick the complexities of contemporary socio-geographies of water access in Blantyre, and understanding how these enable others to have water or make money from it, while others, often the poor, are excluded. On the surface of it, these settlements might seem to fit neatly into the definition of stereo-typical underprivileged neighbourhoods without water in developing world cities.

Generally populated with less fortunate residents of the city, lacking basic infrastructure, these settlements are often considered to be low class residents of the city. Parsing social commentaries on Blantyre, one is confronted with descriptors such as high density areas, slums, informal settlements and such like general terms that unequivocally seem to conform to and confirm the lowly status ascribed to these settlements (Chirwa and Junge 2007; (Chipeta 2013; Manda 2009; Maoulidi

2012).

Nonetheless, a critical examination of Manase and Bangwe townships, through experiences of those who live here, would appear to show that not everyone in these settlements experience these problems in the same manner. I argue that not everyone is unequal here in an equal way. All sorts of residents with different statuses reside in these townships. From Government bureaucrats, politicians, managers, school teachers, business operators to casual labours, informal traders, beggars and the unemployed, the two settlements are an admixture of persons of different classes. This social contrast for example, can be quickly captured from the private milieu of these differing individuals. Scouting through the off-beaten tracks and alleyways of these settlements, reveals habitations of all kinds. Home is not just shelter, it is a marker of social distinction, a symbolic gesticulation of one’s status (Bourne and Ley 1993). Perhaps nowhere is this concrete expression of one’s status through dwelling space more vivid than in informal settlement of Blantyre City. It is a city where only few are extraordinarily

229 well-off than others (Riley 2013). In Bangwe for instance, this extreme of being well- to-do and being abjectly poor is exemplified by two contrasting fortunes of two women—a wife of a successful entrepreneur and a wife of a casual labourer. Both encountered during field research. The former is a wife to a renowned business man in the area, also an aspiring member of parliament (Interview Bangwe2: 10 th March

2012). Her story is that of a comfortable living. Behind a razor-wired high-walled brick fence enclosing her dwelling space is a stunning multi-bedroom bungalow, a fleet of good family cars and such other luxuries. There are visible signs here of a much comfortable life than many in the township; but pacing few yards up the main road, one finds a community make-shift market. Here one meets a mother of 3 children selling vegetables. She is Maggie, a wife of a migrant casual labourer from the neighbouring district of Thyolo (Maggie: interview 10th t March 2012). Maggie’s vegetable stall is the only major source of income at this moment in time. Her husband has been struggling to find any meaningful work. Lodged in a tiny rented substandard makeshift shack just behind her vegetable stall, theirs is a daily struggle to raise enough money for rent and basic needs such as water. With rising rent and frequent defaults on payments, Maggie informed me at the time that eviction was imminent. The above social extremes in Bangwe are not exclusive to this place alone. Similarly, trawling through Manase one is confronted with such profoundly contrasting fortunes of its inhabitants. Occasional glimpses of brick- fenced, high-value properties are starkly contrasted with a miscellany of all manner of below average dilapidated mud houses—dwelling spaces for those less fortunate.

Ownership of these dwellings varies, and is itself complicated to figure out.

Privately-owned, rented, institutional owned, squatting, property guarding, temporary lodging are some of the occupancy type one finds here (Field Notes: 5 th

December 2010).

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Photo 6.1: Shows a small section of Bangwe Township Source: Taken by Author (20 th June 2012)

The lived experiences of residents such as captured her, begin to offer glimpses into the complex nature of social inequalities in these spaces. While these places are generally considered to be for the underprivileged, not everyone here is poor in the same way. Similarly, in speculating on slums, Desai and Loftus highlight the complexity of power relationships that structure access to urban services in global south cities. With specific interest in housing, they unequivocally object to totalising readings of informal settlements as a socio-spatial category, and calls for a more nuanced approach that pays attention to the varied processes that structure unequal access to urban services. Riley (2013) tacitly echoes similar sentiments through a systematic study of complex gendered geographies of food security in Blantyre.

Through daily stories of residents of Blantyre, Riley charts complex ways social power shape vulnerability in poor areas of the city. Similarly, while specifically theorising urban water infrastructure, Swyngedouw avers that urban water infrastructure, and the flow of water in the city, captures a myriad “socio-ecological processes of domination/subordination and exploitation/repression that feed the

231 capitalist urbanisation process (2004:10). Understanding who has access to what water, where, when, how and why, reveals the complex social dynamics that create opportunities for water access for some, and disadvantage for others. Just as the city they are designed to serve, Swyngedouw further reminds us that urban water networks are infused by relations of power that create differentiated urban environments. Borrowing insights from these powerful observations, to make sense of the hydro-social condition in informal settlements of Bangwe and Manase, displays the complexity, fluidity and the highly uneven nature of hydro-social dynamics that shape patterns of water distribution and access in these settlements.

In the sections that follow, I begin to consider these complex water socio- geographies through daily water getting experiences of residents of these two settlements.

6.2.1.1 Complex permutations of water access in Manase and Bangwe

We are not alone, majority of households in this area experience water shortages. It is so bad. We can go for weeks and or even months on end without water running through our taps. It is so desperate that we have been reduced to water beggars. We have to go to distant places to look for water (Bangwe10: Interview 16 th March 2012)

Isn’t it strange one has to pay for water they have never used? That is what has been happening to us. We go many days without water but this is not reflected in the bills. Even if we go for a month without water, we still get the same bill or in some cases even higher. It is day light robbery. I am seriously contemplating having this connection removed. There is no point. (Bangwe1: Interview 20 th January 2012)

Look just there, we have right next to us the main water pipe which goes all the way to the presidential palace. It is ironic that the water situation is so bad in this area. The problem is not being far from the network. It is money. You can’t get connected if you have no money. Even at public water points these days it’s all about money for water, isn’t it? (Manase1: Interview 1 st April 2012)

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The above quotes are a good starting point to begin constructing a narrative of the complex water socio-geographies of informal Blantyre. While these are only select experiences of residents of Bangwe and Manase, they highlight varied water experiences of residents of the two townships. In this and other sections that follow,

I therefore wish to consider what sentiments such as these can tell us about the human-water experience here, the various factors that shape it, and its political ecological implications in terms of access to water. I analyse how residents of

Manase and Bangwe Townships differently experience water supply problems affecting these settlements. Access to water here among other means depends on a variety of water sources—very few have own private connections into their homes and/or private wells, the majority depend on standpipes, communal pumps and unsafe open water sources. Generally, the type of water source used, although not always the case, reflects one’s social standing in society. While one’s abode is a symbol of class distinction, so too is the mode through which water is captured and delivered into one’s dwelling space. The relationships between domestication of water and the creation of a modern home is very well illustrated in urban political ecology (Gandy 2006; Gandy 2004; Kaika 2005; Kaika & Swyngedouw 2000;

Swyngedouw 1997). We learn from these studies that the urbanisation of water has not only made possible the creation of a modern home. It is also associated with exclusionary practices through which a classified watering of the city is produced.

Such exclusionary dynamics are also at play in informal settlements under consideration. In Manase and Bangwe, very few have piped connections into their homes. When asked to estimate number of people with multi-tap connections into their homes, participants in a focus group discussion mentioned no more than 1000 in Bangwe and 500 in Manase out of the total estimated population of over 30,000 and 6000 respectively (Bangwe FDG: 20 th January 2012; Manase FDG: 2 nd April

2012). While population estimates given by participants are closer to official estimates for the two settlements, thus 39000 and 6600 (Phiri 2004; Pereira 2011;

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UNHabitat 2011) , figures on water connections are difficult to verify in the absence of reliable statistics on these parameters. While these figures are largely guesses, they highlight a specific acknowledgment among residents of the rarity of those with tap water flowing into their homes. On the second tier in this social stratification according to water source type, are those with a single stand pipe at their doorstep. These are distinguishable from the former for only having a single tap outside the house. They also do not have amenities such as bathrooms and the like inside the house. Although slightly more than those with multiple tap connections, observations in the field and opinions from participants suggest that not many here have own standpipes either. At the bottom end of this simplistic mapping of the water source geography, are those without a water source of their own. This is the majority. They depend on water sources from elsewhere such as public kiosks, private sellers and a mixture of unprotected sources such as streams and hand-dug wells. Several commentators on Blantyre’s water socio-geography indicate that a significant proportion of households in many unplanned settlements of Blantyre have no connection of their own (Chirwa and Junge 2007; (Chipeta 2013;

Manda 2009; Maoulidi 2012). It is estimated that 28% of the city’s population has water connection into their home, 11.3% depend on improved wells and boreholes,

55% on standpipe away from home and 5.7% have no access to improved water source hence rely on unprotected sources.

Nevertheless, while this permutation begins to offer insights into the general contours of water access and inaccessibility in Blantyre city, specifically surveying

Bangwe and Manase settlements reveals a much more complex permutation. I argue that, it is through understanding these intricate hydro-social geographies that a richer understanding of the contemporary urban water condition in this city is made possible. While, for example, research in urban political ecology has generally established that those that command money and social power tend to monopolise water in urban environments, and the dispossessed poor suffer immensely,

234 inquiring into the water situation of the two settlements highlights a messier configuration than can be explained by this generalisation. Bangwe and Manase townships confront two unique water situations. These provide insights into the complex historical geographical processes that have shaped water access in these settlements. On the one hand, as the first quote above illustrates, Bangwe’s water access problems are largely characterised by the physical absence of water from the city’s water supply network. On the other, as second quote illustrates, Manase’s water access problems are not so much about the physical proximity to the network; rather they largely inhere in one’s inability to pay for water. Both these examples illustrate how ecology and politics have combined to produce particularly exclusionary socio-geographies of water access in Blantyre. Experiences of those connected to the water network in Bangwe, and those without own connection in

Manase, highlight the complexity and fluidity of this configuration, and how in turn, these present an advantage to some while proffering a disadvantage to others.

In the subsections that follow, I begin to unpack in detail these fluid hydro-social permutations. In doing so, I intend to draw attention to a particular way these combine to create a context in which it becomes impossible for water to be directly produced by residents of these settlements as a basic means for existence.

6.2.1.1.1 The irony of having a private water connection without water in Bangwe

A focus on daily experiences of those who live in Bangwe reveal a much more complex calculus of the manner money and social power shape access to water. In fact, in Bangwe Township, ecology and politics have historically combined in powerful ways to create a much more complicated water socio-geography. In this settlement, it is much more than just money and one’s social status that shape access to water. For example, spending time in this settlement revealed the presence of relatively better-off residents residing in gated houses equally suffering from debilitating water problems. For such residents, the problem is not so much lack of money but the physical scarcity of water from the city’s network. Consider for

235 example the stories of Joe and Mrs Molata (see below quotes) —two of the few owners of private connections encountered in the field.

We have lived in different parts of the city but we have never experienced water shortages of this frequency and magnitude before. It is worse here. We have been here for three months now but hardly have we seen water through our taps. This is a big house and we are a large family, we need a lot of water. We go for weeks without water, the situation is so bad. We have tried everything to get Blantyre Water Board to look into this problem. We have now given up. As it turns out, this is a common problem affecting this whole area. For now, like everyone else, we are relying on public sources. It is a huge inconvenience. In the long-term we will have to move. We have already made our landlord aware of our intentions to move. (Bangwe8: Interview 15 th March 2012).

My dad worked hard and paid a lot of money to get us connected to the water mains. We were among the very few people who got connected first. He thought our lives would change for the better. For a while it was ok, but the water situation has progressively gotten worse. We have no water most days. That means, we can’t hygienically use our water facilities in the house. We have had to construct a pit-latrine. I feel sorry for my wife and sisters; keeping this compound watered including our business premises is not easy. Often we have to rely on our workers to fetch water from public sources. We lose a lot of man hours with long queues at public water points. So, my wife and sisters are increasingly having to take a bigger responsibility themselves to ensure we have water. (Joe: Interview 12 th May 2012)

The economically privileged status of these residents, and the extent they equally suffer from water scarcity in Bangwe exemplify the complexity of socio-spatial dynamics that shape water access in this settlement. To some extent, these give pointers to the manner those we might consider better-off are equally being alienated from water. This is counter-intuitive. Often, political ecology speaks of alienation of water through experiences of the underprivileged of the city. Stories captured here though do suggest a much more fluid and complex dynamic that equally create disadvantage for those we might consider well-off in the city. In this township, it makes little difference whether you can afford a private water 236 connection or not. These households have all the trappings of what might be crudely described as a small minority of upper middle class one finds in the city.

Mrs Molata is a school teacher and a wife to a junior manager at a renowned local

Bank in Limbe Central Business district. Joe is a son of a prominent business man in the area. He recently inherited his deceased father’s estate which includes taxi operation, a beer hall and property leasing. The sheer size and decent nature of their dwellings surely set them apart from many of the underprivileged residing here.

While these households have private water connections with multiple taps in their dwelling space, and by their own admission, can afford to pay, water hardly runs through their taps. Like many residents of these settlements, the two households experience intermittent water supplies and shortages that can go on for days. These residents have had to rely on other means of watering their homes such as community pumps, private hand-dug wells, water vendors and the like. There is a growing detest among these residents for having to resort to lowly water sources when they have the means to afford own private water: Why should we have to go where everyone else goes to fetch their water. We have money to afford our own water”

(Bangwe1: Interview 20 th January 2012). The question for Bangwe then becomes how might we explain this conundrum of having money but without water?

Getting to grips with this dynamic requires a different way of reading water shortages. In this case, it requires casting Bangwe’s water supply problems within the wider logics and contradictions of capitalist urbanisation processes discussed in previous chapters. This requires starting from the premise that there is nothing natural about water supply problems in settlements such as this. In other words, it is the complex combination of ecology and politics that has historically produced this crisis, and created conditions in which even those with money do suffer from water shortages albeit in qualitatively different way. Understanding Bangwe’s water shortages within this context draws attention to the manner nature and ecology have been reproduced under capitalist urbanisation to give rise to the contemporary

237 uneven socio-geographies of water in Blantyre. Nevertheless, arguing that water scarcity is a socially produced phenomenon is not something new. In an attempt to deconstruct the dominant technocentric discourses that posts urban water crisis as the inevitability of nature, critical scholarship has convincingly highlighted the socially produced nature of urban water problems. Take for example, Kaika (2003) study of the water crisis of 1989 and 1991 in the city of Athens. Through her insistence on the socio-political to be taken seriously, Kaika cogently demonstrates how urban water crises can be led beyond the managerilism of dominant water discourses. Such an analysis has to move beyond the social vs nature binaries underlying these dominant discourses toward a more relational reading of waterscapes as produced socionatures.

Positing Bangwe’s water crisis as a socially-produced phenomenon therefore requires inquiring deeply into how nature and society have combined to produce this dynamic. Sat on the foot of Bangwe hills, with an average elevation of 4,967 feet above sea level (Mapcarta n.d.), the location of Bangwe township inherently poses a considerable geographic challenge for water conveyance from the Walkers Ferry reticulation system—over 20 miles away from the township. Bangwe is also naturally deprived of any reliable water source that can be usefully harnessed locally. Before urbanisation, local inhabitants relied on few natural springs and ephemeral rivulets for their water (Gogo Jailosi: Interview January 20 th 2012). Over the years, Bangwe has experienced a surge in the number of migrants; this has been mostly as a result of those seeking cheap land to construct own dwellings, as land and housing become scarce and expensive in designated residential neighbourhoods of Blantyre City. The driving forces behind this dynamic are complex to unpick and doing so is beyond the scope of this analysis. However, these changes are no doubt linked to the capitalist urbanisation process and its contradictions unleashed during the colonial period (discussed in the previous chapters). As the traditional mode of existence gave way to the new capitalist

238 economic order, and the socio-ecology of Blantyre was transformed according to this largely exploitative and exclusionary logic, spaces such as Bangwe unintendedly become sanctuaries for the modern urban subject dispossessed of his/her means of subsistence. In a race to survive in this modern economic context, those working the environs of Bangwe transformed the socio-ecology of this space.

The extent of this transformation is captured in oral accounts describing socio-ecological change that has taken place around one of the few remaining open water sources in this settlement. Somewhere near Banana area of Bangwe are found a series of springs along a shallow ravine within the catchment of Bangwe Hills. The importance of these springs to poor residents of Bangwe cannot be underestimated.

A longtime resident of the Township confided that these springs had been an important supply of water to the indigenous population that lived here before urbanisation. In the present period, these springs still offer a critical lifeline to poor residents of the township (Bangwe6: Interview 1 st July 2012). Field observations also revealed just how critical these springs are to those without water. At different times of the day I had been here—morning, afternoon or evening—I encountered people queuing up to fetch water from these springs. Random head counts on different days showed an average of 20 buckets at different times of the day for the 5 days of observing one of the springs ( Bangwe: Field Observation Notes 15 th -20 th June 2012).

Unfortunately, the tranquillity of water trickling slowly out of rock fissures masks a particularly debilitating human-ecological dynamic that has altered the nature of this hydro-social ecology. The longtime resident heretofore referred to, gave a vivid narrative of this change and its implications on the poorest of the poor in the township.

Whereas this water source has always remained free, the transformation of this community into an abode of predominantly wage-dependent urbanised population has changed the natural ecology of these springs, as well as the politics that govern access to them. When Bangwe was only a small hamlet, old residents of

239 the town claimed that these springs were perennial and supplied water of good quality all year round. It was a communal resource that belonged to inhabitants with strong family ties (Bangwe6: interview 1st July 2012) . Governing these springs was a communally-shared responsibility guided by local cultural norms and knowledge passed down from one generation to the next. It was an arrangement in which community custodians, such as village elders, wielded significant influence to ensure the sustenance of this critical water resource on which the survival of many depended on. Nonetheless, with time, the influx of city labourers in search for cheap housing and the rapid transformation of indigenous population into wage- seeking urban subjects, have eroded traditional norms, values and systems that once governed these sources: “when this place was just a village, it was so easy to manage these springs. We had a sense of ownership; everyone was related or knew each other. We were one big family. You have people from all over places nowadays. The community spirit is gone and no one really cares to take responsibility” (Bangwe6: Interview 1 st July 2012). While in the past, village elders mattered in the safeguarding of these sources for the community good, the rapid urbanisation of this place–the old residents informed– has significantly eroded these traditional structures. The influx of people from all walks of life has changed the cultural landscape of this place. The transformation of

Bangwe through capitalist urbanisation has entrenched individualism and a life largely focused on economic survival, as the majority seek opportunities to sell their labour to make ends meet. Everyday life for such individuals is largely driven by economic calculability than cultural/ecological/social considerations. This has in turn altered people’s relationship with water and each other. It becomes evident that Modernity and urbanity has delinked the individuals from the fetters of traditions that for generations bound them up to one another and their water ecology. There is a focus in the modern period on individual material freedoms such that economic considerations override any other concerns. Even though remnants of traditional chieftaincy structures still exist within the contemporary

240 urban fabric, it was observed that this is more symbolic than substantive. Those presently occupying such positions no longer wield significant power —“everyone minds their business, now no one cares about chiefs anymore. Even chiefs themselves they have to work to earn a living, they don’t have time for these things anymore” ( Bangwe6: interview 1st July 2012).

While these oral histories only offer partial accounts of the socio- ecological/historical transformation of these springs, they still provide important insights into the manner capitalist urbanisation has altered hydro-social interactions in these settlements. It reflects a specific way in which this socio-natural dynamic has socially produced this settlement as a water scarce space. The rapidity with which Bangwe has transformed into a modern urban space has, in time and space, diminished the existence of naturally occurring open water sources. Many of the natural water sources on which local inhabitants depended on can no longer sustain the growing urban population (Mayi Mainala: Interview 23 rd January 2012). The transformation of Bangwe into a modern urban space has therefore demanded a different way of watering space. This has required the use of technologically more advanced ways of capturing water from distant catchment areas and delivering it to this settlement. The distant location of this settlement from the city’s central reticulation system at Walkers Ferry, and the precipitous topography, has made the delivery of water to this settlement a physically daunting task for the city’s water engineers. Moreover, the rising dominance of economic considerations in the general political economic calculus of the city, and the general disregard, among those in positions of power and influence, of the plight of those who inhabit unplanned settlements such as these, have combined to produce a particularly difficult water situation in Bangwe.

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Situating Bangwe’s difficult water situation within the context of the debilitating structural forces (discussed in the previous chapter) bearing on the city’s water supplier–Blantyre Water Board–further highlights the specific manner this water crisis has been produced and its political ecological implications. As the previous chapter has shown, the city’s water supplier has historically been beset by chronic structural problems that prevent it from maintaining and expanding its water network. Informal settlements such as Bangwe have therefore received less priority from the water supplier. In practical terms, this official neglect has meant low levels of investment in water infrastructure in areas such as these. Suffice to acknowledge though that in the absence of area-specific infrastructure investment data at Blantyre

Water Board, it is difficult to ascertain how much capital has over the years been invested in improving water infrastructure in places such as Bangwe. Nevertheless, in surveying Bangwe’s socio-ecologies, signs of this underinvestment are not hard to see or hear about. Residents of this settlement pointed out that BWB has failed to expand the network’s carrying capacity. With rising demand for connections, water pressure during peak times is significantly affected depending on one’s location. It is precisely this problem that denies some residents of the township a water supply outside the official rationing hours (Mrs Jimu: Interview 5 th February 2012).

For others, water shortages result from the water supplier’s inability to maintain the water system. This has led to the frequent breaking down of the local supply network. Leaking pipes were a common sight in neighbourhoods of this settlement. Yet for some, being denied access to water when they can afford it is a result of the frequent water supply outages that occur as Blantyre Water Board struggle with various contradictions discussed in the previous chapter. Spending time in this settlement revealed the frequency with which residents here are without water. During my visit, water outages were a daily occurrence, and at times, these extended for days. In fact, comparing with other parts of the city I visited, it

242 becomes plausible to argue that Bangwe is among few places in Blantyre that are worst affected by water rationing measures.

A combination of these dynamics has created an interesting political ecological permutation. It is one, for example, in which money does not always necessarily guarantee one’s access to water; this is to such an extent that even those that have money also struggle for their water. Despite these individuals having private connections, intermittent supplies have rendered almost unusable water-dependent mod cons plumbed inside their houses—water closets, bathtubs, kitchen sinks and the like. There is regularly no water into such facilities. Coping with this water situation for many has meant a return to old methods of sanitation—washing up in a makeshift shelter erected outside the house and use of pit latrines. Persistent water shortages have also meant that families such as Joe’s and Mrs Molata’s have to increasingly rely on public water pumps. In cases where physical geography permits, others have had private water wells dug outside their homes. Mrs Molata for example, had at the time just had a well dug on her premises (Molata: Interview

9th May 2012). This is to illustrate that a combination of human-induced socio- ecological change with Bangwe’s difficult water ecology, has socially produced a water crisis in this settlement. In the next chapter, I explain how this crisis has opened up space for the commodification of water as those frustrated with this failed dream of becoming a modern subject seek alternative ways of watering their homes. In taking this analysis further, I wish to also consider these complex hydro- social dynamics from the vantage point of Manase Township. Manase’s slightly unique water situation adds an important dimension that further illuminates the present day water political ecology of Blantyre city.

6.2.1.1.2 Water that is never free in Manase Township

Manase’s water problems have a slightly unique twist vis-à-vis those experienced at

Bangwe. Understanding this situation further reveals complex ways money, political power and ecology have reproduced water access inequalities, and created

243 conditions for commodification of water in Blantyre. As the third quote in section

7.2.1.1shows, the problem in Manase is not so much the physical distance to the water network. Unlike Bangwe, Manase’s water access problems, as will be demonstrated, derive so much from an exclusionary ecological politics than physical absence of water from the network. This is not to suggest that Manase does not experience physical water shortages. Rather is to point to the manner the dominance of the money logic is excluding others from water even in those cases where water is actually present. While Bangwe has grown miles away on the outskirts of the city, Manase has sprawled right next to low-density gated neighbourhoods such as Sunnyside, Mt. Pleasant and others (See map 6.1).

Map 6:1: Map showing location of Manase in relation to Sunnyside and Chiwandila Stream in proximity to Mudi River Source: Produced by Nicholas Scarle (University of Manchester)

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Historically, low density areas such as Sunnyside have commanded better water network coverage than any other parts of the city. Due to this relative proximity to these well-watered spaces occupied by the city’s elites, Manase is one of the few informal settlements in the city with a relatively good physical proximity to the network. This township’s closeness to the network has led to the belief that this area has a good water access (see methodological section in chapter 2). However, everyday experiences of inhabitants of this settlement reveal a much more complicated situation; these further point to the dynamic ways inhabitants of this city are alienated from urbanised water. For example, despite the physical proximity of the township to the main water pipe, getting connected is an arduous and costly process, and is beyond the reach of many. The extent of this difficulty was highlighted countless times in interviews with those privileged enough to own standpipes (photo 6.2). For example, a gentleman recently connected informed of the lengthy process it took to get connected; waiting for over half a year and costing about MK40, 000 (figure not adjusted for inflation) for the connection to arrive, very few could afford a water connection of their own (Manase1: Interview 3 rd June 2012).

One learns from this gentleman that aside from the tortuous bureaucratic application procedures, Blantyre Water Board embraces a culture of impunity which only works to exclude the unfortunates. Partly because of the institution’s chronic financial and operational difficulties, it is increasingly asking those applying for a water connection to provide own material such like pipes etc. As a cost cutting measure, BWB is more and more seen to only cover connection costs from the mains to the water meter. The prospective customer is then expected to take liability for connection costs from the meter to one’s home. In principle, when a client’s application is successful, and the officially applicable connection fee is paid, BWB is obligated to cover almost all installation costs. This is never the case at present times. This has meant that connection costs increase significantly the further away one’s household is from the water main pipe. A minimum amount is chargeable up

245 to a certain threshold; over and above this threshold, the unit cost per connection increases significantly. As some of those interviewed acknowledged, this very complicated and expensive process is prohibitive to many poor residents.

Photo 6.2: A private standpipe in Manase Source: taken by author (20 th May 2012).

For the many residents of Manase, the viciousness of this discriminatory water political economy is experienced through daily struggles to get water from few sources available to them. For those that cannot afford own private connections, the only alternatives are public sources such as kiosks, private water traders and polluted open sources. Manase also has difficult underground geophysical

246 conditions. These are not favourable for ground water capture. Observations in the field indicated a general absence of water wells here than seen in Bangwe, for example. Some residents told of how various attempts to capture underground water here have so far yielded nothing (Manase 4: Interview 2 nd June 2012; Che

James: Interview 9 th June 2012). A water expert from a local non-governmental organisation observed that Manase’s poor geo-hydrology does not make it a perfect location for ground water development. In most locations, reaching the water table would require drilling to considerable depths; it is simply not economically feasible

(Kamwendo: Interview 25 th June 2012). Under these circumstances, Kiosks and private stand pipes are the only available options for delivering safe water to ordinary residents of the township.

Yes by bringing extra kiosks, the physical distance to water sources has been reduced, but the economic distance is increasing significantly. Water prices are increasing relentlessly. Our budgets cannot cope. The other alternative we have is private stand pipes but these are even more expensive. More and more of us, the poor, have to look for free water sources. But here we haven’t got much free choice really. Our streams are few; they do not flow throughout the year, and are heavily contaminated. We have to somehow find ways to buy water. This means cutting expenditure on other vital needs such as food. If we can’t find money, there is no choice, we have to scrounge for water in polluted puddles. (Manase5: Interview 14 th June 2012).

The limited number of water source options for residents of Manase, and the politics that shape access to these, create conditions through which the water crisis in urban space is further socially reproduced. As the above quote highlights, the absence of alternative water sources puts Manase’s residents directly at the mercy of the city’s water supplier. If you are a resident of Manase, access to safe water largely depends on your ability to get connected and or pay. It is this dynamic that primarily decides who accesses what water, where, when and how. Unfortunately for some, money is a problem; they cannot afford water from paying sources. Instead, they have to make do with heavily polluted sources such as Chiwandila stream (see map 6.1 &

247 photo 6.3). Manase is a place of hydro-social contrast. The presence of those fortunate enough to obtain clean water from kiosks and private standpipes is contradicted by the presence of individuals who rely heavily on polluted puddles in streams such as Chiwandila. To be sure, the money-water nexus in Manase is, to borrow from (Gandy 2004), a brutal delineator of social class. The everyday experiences of those who use heavily polluted sources such as Chiwandila stream further demonstrates complex ways social power and money shapes water access. A merely tiny, rugged and officially undocumented rivulet that empties into Mudi

River (see map 6.1), Chiwandila is an important life line to some poor residents of

Manase. In exploring this rivulet, one encounters scores of human bodies busily filling up buckets from puddles up stream, whereas others are washing up or bathing downstream. The sheer extent of filth choking up this stream (see photos 6.3

& 6.4) belies the remarkable ease with which humans appear to use this water source. The amount of solid waste of all sorts, raw sewage and such other filth exist in contradistinction with the large numbers of human bodies coming into contact with water from here.

Photo 6.3: A section of Chiwandila Stream in Manase turned into a rubbish dump

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This photo shows one of the few polluted puddles on Chiwandila stream. Also captured are buckets of some residents who use these polluted water sources

Photo 6.4: A polluted hand dug puddle on Chiwandila Stream Source: taken by Author (10 th June 2012)

Photo 6.5: A resident of Manase capturing water from a rock fissure in Chiwandila Stream Source: taken by Author (10 th June 2012)

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It became evident through interactions with the users of this stream that, a particularly dire socially produced water crisis, has forced some of these individuals to keep returning to this filthy water source. There are also in this community others that once depended on this free water source, but have had to leave for paid water sources. There are also those who now and then return to bath and wash here or momentarily go away only to return again later depending on different economic circumstances. In short, with its remarkably unpleasant waters, Chiwandila is the only hope for these inhabitants precariously surviving on the edge of this waterscape. What has put them in this situation becomes clear through their stories—few alternatives and rising water prices (see quote below):

People you see in the stream come from different parts of the neighbourhood. We see new faces all the time. This is the only stream in the immediate vicinity of the township; you can at least find some water for free here. It is filthy but there is nothing else we can do. Water at kiosks and private standpipes is expensive. We are poor, we can’t always buy water. We have to try and minimise our water bill. Washing up takes up a lot of water and the only way we can survive financially is come here to wash up. Some of the people you see only do the washing and bathing. They buy drinking water from kiosks or private standpipes. There are some though who entirely depend on this filth (Manase12: Interview 30 th May 2012).

Inquiring into the troubled socio-ecology of Chiwandila reveals an amalgam of dynamics that have in time and space created a particularly difficult water situation in this township. It is a situation which reflects complex socio-geographies of marginalisation, and the dehumanising effects of this exclusionary socio-ecological configuration. It became clear that the rapid disappearance of free water sources, and increasing water prices, significantly affect poor residents of the township.

Longtime residents informed that Chiwandila was once a perennial spring that provided free fresh water to the local community (Che James: Interview 9 th April

2012; Mrs James Interview 15 th April 2012). With rapid urbanisation of this place, this important water source has over time become more erratic. The occasional flash floods in rainy season are contrasted by complete diminution of flows in dry

250 months. Residents without alternatives have to search for water in dirty puddles

(see photo 6.4). Sometime they have to spend hours trying to capture trickles of water from rock fissures (photo 6.5). The scoured surface on the stream bed, where residue water stagnates, is also where rubbish piles up. Water that collects here is effectively non-usable. Residents therefore have to scour through the stream bed with bear hands to capture whatever water the underground might give up. This often does not yield enough, and they admitted that the situation gets worse in dry months. Those interviewed repeatedly mentioned that conflicts over Chiwandila free water are on the rise.

Through experiences of those who work these alternative water sources, it becomes possible to start linking this localised water crisis to wider historical geographical changes that have taken place in Blantyre since the colonial period.

Particularly instructive are stories of those who have lived here long enough to witness these changes. Consider for example what one of the few remaining longest residents of the township—Che James—had to say about socio-ecological changes that have taken place here (Che James: Interview 9 th April 2012). In his early 70s,

Che James has lived here all his life, and has witnessed this place transform. It is in these changes he attributes a dire water situation facing contemporary Manase.

According to Che James, Manase was just a small hamlet dependent on natural streams and springs for its water. As the place steadily sprawled into an urban slum, natural springs disappeared, and rivulets such as Chiwandila became more erratic and grossly polluted. He went on to describe how the damage to common pool water sources such as these is linked to wider economic changes that have taken place in Blantyre. His contextualisation of Manase’s socio-ecological changes in the wider economic transformation in many ways echoed scholarly commentaries on socio-ecological change in informal settlements of Blantyre. Those that have studied these spaces highlight the push-pull factors that have historically led to the explosion of informal settlements around Blantyre (Phiri 2004; Pereira 2011;

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UNHabitat 2011). Given Blantyre’s importance as a commercial hub in Malawi’s economy since the colonial period, this has in time and space attracted an influx of migrants from places near and distant. A significant proportion of them work as causal labourers in industrial centres and in the informal sector of the Blantyre city’s economy. Given their proximity to Blantyre central business district (CBD), places such as Manase have offered a cheap sanctuary to these lowly paid labourers. Che-

James, for example, recalled that, in the 1980s, when the first wave of migrant workers began to make inroads, land here could be had at ridiculously low prices than in developed parts of the city. There was a significant influx of low-skilled labourers in search of cheap land; with this came rapid urbanisation. For the old man, the proof of this change lay within the vicinity of his abode—a hamlet of a few mud houses. Over time, this has been dwarfed by a jumble of brick and tin-roofed dwellings. He informed that before the construction boom, his, as were others, was an isolated hamlet surrounded by thick forest. Rapid urbanisation steadily transformed the socio-ecology of Manase—natural forests made way for the concrete and iron urban jungle. To be sure, as geographic studies on production of nature do remind us, there is nothing unnatural about these urban environments

(Harvey 1993). In Manase, human activity spurred on by capitalist urbanisation, has significantly metabolised its socio-ecology; this is to such an extent that has affected traditional water sources such as Chiwandila. Walking along Chiwandila stream reveals the extent of the impact of this metabolic transformation. On either side of the stream’s bank, sit all manner of human habitats; the impact this has had on the health of these open water sources is evident in the amount of rubbish and such like urban effluent chocking up Chiwandila.

From these isolated and subjective stories such as Che Jame’s one of course cannot derive enough authority in explaining the complex socio-ecological history of a place such as Manase. This notwithstanding, such stories still offer some tentative perspectives on changes that have occurred here to reproduce the water

252 situation Manase finds herself in. These socio-ecological changes, and the effects they have had on free water sources such as Chiwandila, points to particular ways water continue to be alienated through socio-ecological externalities arising from the urbanisation process. While streams such as Chiwandila remain open sources, over-urbanisation has effectively put these sources beyond human use. Neglect and underinvestment in urban services infrastructure by city authorities further exacerbates this situation. For example, many parts of the township are not connected to the city’s water-borne sanitation. While low-density neighbourhoods within the proximity of Manase such as MT Pleasant and Sunnyside (see map 6.1 and 2.1) have a regular refuse collection service from Blantyre City Council, Manase has none. Chiwandila stream itself gives out signs of poor sanitation infrastructure here. It has become a rubbish tip and sewer collector for many of the households along the stream bank (see photo 6.3). Therefore, the rapid urbanisation of Manase, and the lack of proper sanitation infrastructure, has in time and space heavily affected open water sources. This is to extent that more and more residents who once depended on this stream have to increasingly depend on buying water.

In examining the complex socio-geographies of water in Bangwe and Manase townships, this chapter begins to develop insights into the present day water political ecology of Blantyre. These examples illustrate how various historical geographical processes have infused in more fluid and complex ways to produce a particularly exclusionary urban water politics. Blantyre today is a more complex urban configuration. For example, while the colonial hydro-social permutations were largely delineated along racial and spatial lines, the cases of Bangwe and

Manase herein considered clearly show that a more complex pattern has at present emerged. It is no longer simply about one race/class exploiting the other. This is a dialectically complex configuration in which the historical geographical fusion of social power, money and ecology has in myriad ways produced varied and dynamic socio-geographies of water access in these settlements. In exploring these hydro-

253 social permutations, my intention is to further point out various conditions through which water injustice has been further reproduced in post-colonial Blantyre. As the next chapter will illustrate, exploring this context is important to begin understanding the nature of produced water in Blantyre. It is one of the central contentions of this thesis that, under such circumstances, it is virtually impossible for water to be provided as a social good.

6.3 Chapter Conclusion

On the surface of it, contemporary Blantyre is socio-geographically a different city.

It is no longer a city characterised by the European minority exploiting the Black

African population. It is no longer a city where race and place strictly define access to basic services such as water, in a sense synonymous with colonial urbanism.

However, what this chapter begins to show is that Blantyre today remains a highly exclusionary and uneven waterscape. The post-colonial purging of the European oppressor, and rendering redundant his racially defined geographies of access to urban services, has done very little to reconfigure water injustices of the past. In

Blantyre today, access to water is a process very much defined by a myriad contours of exclusion and exploitation among and within different classes. Further building on the previous one, this chapter illustrates that this is the case precisely because the dominant logics and contradictions, within capitalist urbanisation of nature and space, continue to dictate people’s relationships with water and each other.

Monetary exchange, social power, modern technologies and their discontents continue to organise human-water experience in more powerful ways than seen before. What is remarkable though in today’s Blantyre is the fact that there has been a fundamental reconfiguration, of the axes of social power and contours of exclusion and exploitation, through which hydro-social relations are reconfigured. Through the everyday experiences of those who work informal waterscape of Manase and

Bangwe townships, this chapter has established that in Blantyre today, it is not as obvious as one class residing in a particular geographic location exploiting the

254 other. A more dialectic and dynamic configuration has emerged in which multiple possibilities define who gets access to what water, where, when and how.

Ultimately, these varied and dynamic socio-geographies of water access have only worked to further alienate humans from water. Blantyre today, it is therefore established, remains a highly alienated waterscape.

In exploring these complex hydro-social relations, and the manner they work to further distance humans from water in contemporary Blantyre, the main intention in the chapter was to begin identifying conditions that enable the commodification of water in this city beyond the mirage of formal water politics. In focusing on the informality and the everydayness of water-getting experiences of inhabitants, and how these reproduce alienation, this chapter further reaffirms the importance of viewing these processes as deeply welded in the material conditions within the capitalist urbanisation process. In the next chapter, I go on to examine how these conditions have created different possibilities for commodifying water in Blantyre.

Therefore, this chapter, if considered in the context of the previous and next ones, establishes that for Blantyre, the commodification of water has to read as part of on- going historical geographical attempts to grapple with realities of urbanising

Blantyre along capitalist lines.

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Chapter7: ‘Non-privatised’ Water as a Commodity in Contemporary

Blantyre

“The commodity is first an external object, a thing which satisfies through its qualities human needs of one kind or another. The nature of these needs is irrelevant….In the form of society which we are going to examine, they form the substantial bearers at the very same time of exchange value”

(Marx 1867:125)

“Originally, the commodity appeared to us as a two-sided entity, use-value and exchange value”

(Marx 1867:131)

7.1 Introduction

I wish to end the empirical analysis in this thesis by examining what the various

political ecological strands hitherto explored can tell us about the nature of

urbanised water in Blantyre. I wish to examine what these might suggest to the

question: is water not a commodity in Blantyre? One of the central aims of this

thesis has been to develop a historical geographical critique of neo-liberal

conceptions of commodification of water. Using José Esteban Castro’s treatise on

‘water is not yet a commodity’ (Castro 2013) as an example, I argued against reading

the commodity character of water through formal market rationality i.e. that water

is only a commodity when it fully conforms to capitalist principles of unfettered

markets. I declared my sympathies for a more historical geographical reading of

commodification of water (Page 2005; Swyngedouw 1995). Through this framework,

I started to give pointers in previous chapters that these processes in Blantyre

appear to be historically embedded within the wider capitalist remarking of nature

and space. In this chapter, I wish to go further and examine specific ways these

historical geographical dynamics have created conditions for commodification of

256 water within the current political economic context; it is a context in which water is not privatised (in a neo-liberal sense of the word) and is still largely subject to state control. It has been argued in this thesis that it is by stepping out of the formal market rationality iron curtain, and examining processes of alienation and commodification as inherently part of the wider capitalist urbanisation of the hydro-social, that critical literature can respond potently to the neo-liberal argument that espouses freeing up water to private capital. In therefore demonstrating that water not privatised in Blantyre is at present a commodity, this chapter helps to situate this argument and provide a counter-narrative to this neo-liberal argument.

The chapter first outlines a basic Marxian conceptual definition through which commodification will be understood. It then moves on to explore various ways water is commodified in Blantyre. At the end of the chapter, it is hoped that the thesis will have demonstrated that despite not being fully under the control of the free market rationality, water in Blantyre has always been a commodity.

7.2 Urbanised Water as a Commodity

One of the central arguments in this thesis is that water urbanised through capitalist relations cannot exist outside the realm of commodities. It has been insisted in the introductory chapter that the definition of the commodity realm need to be cast beyond the immediate point where water is sold. I suggested that commodification of water need to be contextualised within the wider historical geographies of capitalist urbanisation of nature and space. Through the case of Blantyre, the alienating effects of the capitalist urbanisation process have been brought to light.

From colonial to post-colonial modernisation, human-water relations in Blantyre have been significantly transformed, giving rise to highly uneven socio-geographies of water access. Before European colonised Blantyre, it has been demonstrated that the production of water was a use-value based endeavour involving the direct metabolic interchange between humans and nature, through organic work and play.

However, colonial and post-colonial capitalist modernisation inserted money,

257 technology and the water expert at the heart of this metabolic interchange. The direct relationship between humans and water has in time and space been severed; this is to such an extent that humans have to increasingly depend on money to meet their daily basic water needs. The question therefore, given these circumstances, becomes: is water in Blantyre not a commodity? Indeed asking whether water in

Blantyre is a commodity or not might on the surface of it sound prosaic. An attempt to answer such a question can usefully speak to current debates on neo- liberalisation of water. At the beginning of this thesis, I took issue with the narrow conceptualisation of commodification that view this as a new process within the global capitalist configuration. I also briefly demonstrated how attempts to formally privatise water through neo-liberal reforms in Blantyre have not fully materialised.

In Blantyre, water is not yet fully brought under the control of free-market rationality. For neo-liberal ideologues, and some critical scholars (Castro 2013,

McDonald 2005), water under these circumstances can be not be said to have been commodified. Nonetheless, in light of the various dynamics discussed throughout this thesis, what can we say about the nature of water in Blantyre? Is urbanised water in this city a commodity or not?

To answer the above question, I wish to consider the basic Marxian definition of a commodity. Such a definition offers a critical entry point into establishing what the various discussions in this thesis can tell us about the nature of urbanised water in Blantyre. Perhaps nowhere has the commodity been so central in framing a critique of capitalist production of human-nature interactions than in Karl Marx’s reading of political economy (Marx 1967). For Marx, a commodity is simply a thing that embodies both use value and exchange value. Whereas use value derives from the object’s inherent qualities that satisfy human needs, exchange value is a product of social relations. It is this two-pronged character that gives objects their commodity status. While Marx fully acknowledges that commodities are not exclusive to capitalist societies, he goes on to illustrate that, what is unique in this

258 case, is the pervasiveness of monetary exchange in capitalist commodity exchange.

In primitive societies, commodities were exchanged solely for their use value. In capitalist societies, money becomes of ultimate importance in exchange relations.

Money thus takes on “a fantastic form as a relation between things”(Marx 1976:72).

For Marx therefore, monetary exchange and the alienating effects this relation creates, is what give objects their commodity character in capitalist societies.

In light of this basic and yet powerful Marxian definition of the commodity relation, what then can we make of the various instances of water under the logics and contradictions of capitalist hydro-social relations in Blantyre? In the sections that follow I pull out few peculiar instances of urbanised water in informal settlements of Manase and Bangwe Township to illustrate that virtually no such water exist outside the commodity realm as Marx defines it. From water provided through public kiosks, charitable water pumps, open water sources, hand dug wells and such like, the discussion that follows will demonstrate that no such urbanised water exist outside the realm of monetary exchange. There are various and often subtle ways through which such water has always been subject to the commodity relation.

7.2.1 On the power of money and the commodification of free water sources in Bangwe The previous chapter has shown that in informal settlements of Blantyre, poor residents who cannot afford getting connected to the city’s water network heavily rely on few available open sources to meet their daily water needs. On the surface of it, the label ‘open water source’ might suggest availability of water that is commonly available and free for everyone to use. These water sources are not physically privatised; acquiring water from them does not involve a direct exchange of money among its users. However, inquiring deeply into the politics around these water sources reveals the pervasive nature of commodification processes, and how these open water sources are tied up in this configuration.

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One of the springs

passes here Bucket waiting to be filled

House located on the stream bank dumps rubbish here

Photo 7.1: The unsanitary state of a spring in Bangwe Source: Taken by Author (June 2012)

The manner economic calculations have permeated into the politics of water access

around open water sources in Bangwe reveals the commodified nature of urbanised

water in contemporary Blantyre. Instructive in this regard are water springs in

Banana area of this township described in the previous chapter (photo 7.1 partly

shows one of the springs). At present, these springs continue to offer a critical

lifeline to poor residents of the township who cannot afford water from the city’s

main water supplier (Bangwe6: Interview 1 st July 2012). However, in the previous

chapter, I have highlighted how the new urban order forged through capitalist

economic transformation has had far-reaching socio-ecological effects on this free

water. This transformation result from the weakening of traditional structures

because of the cultural and demographic change that has taken place here. One of

the important consequences of this is that it has created a free for all predatory

260 culture through which these water sources are monopolised by some for economic gains, while others are denied access. The extent to which these economic calculations have permeated these open water sources in Bangwe is reflected in tensions that have emerged between house builders and brick makers on the one hand, and those who depend on these water sources for domestic use, on the other.

Bangwe has in recent years seen a boom in construction activities to meet the growing demand for housing in this rapidly urbanising settlement. The housing construction industry thrives on large water quantities. Bricks are produced from soaking soil, moulding the mud, and sun-drying it. It is a water intensive activity; it is one though that ironically can only happen in dry months (end April and Early

October) when rains have stopped and there is plentiful of sun to dry the mud.

Coincidentally, these are also dry months when supply from the city’s water network is significantly affected (Blantyre Water Board 2004). Given the particularly difficult local water situation at Bangwe, open springs under consideration have been a critical lifeline to the informal brick construction industry (Bangwe15:

Interview 30 th June 2012). In dry months also, these springs experience rising water demand for domestic consumption. During this period, Bangwe’s chronic water shortages are exacerbated even further with dwindling supplies in the City’s network.

Spending time here between the months of May and July highlighted the extent of this problem. The never-ending water queues and tensions among residents jostling to fill up were a common experience at these springs. Brick making is an industry largely motivated by money and driven by tight deadlines and targets. At

50tambala (less than 1 cent) per brick at the time, it requires thousands of bricks for makers to derive any living out of this activity (Interview: Bangwe Brick Maker: 10 th

June 2012). To meet such targets as required to generate a decent income, takes up a lot of hard work and water. For local brick makers, therefore, free water sources such as these springs are the most plausible option if their ventures are to remain

261 commercially viable. They cannot rely on water from the city’s supply given its intermittency and the high water prices charged by the city’s main supplier.

Nevertheless, the large amount of water they require from this open water source has put them on a collision course with other water users. It was reported by some participants that certain brick makers have resorted to underhanded practices to ensure a supply of water to their ventures. Local lore has it that owners of this informal industry enlist gangs of roughnecks who go about water ponds intimidating other users and or jump queues, especially in dry months, when water is scarce. While these reports could not be independently verified, and brick makers spoken to neither confirmed nor denied these practices, the very fact that water from these springs play a role as a critical input in these economic ventures, highlights the extent economics underwrite politics of water distribution here.

In arguing that water is not yet a commodity, scholars such as Castro point to the existence of water that has not been fully brought under formal market rationality.

Such an argument is premised on the idea that water in certain contexts is not directly traded according to the principles of free markets. What the forgoing seems to suggest is that there are other non-obvious ways through which such water can be brought as a resource bundle into economic calculations. While the Bangwe springs remains an open source, the dominance of economic motivations has fundamentally re-shaped the politics of distribution and access of water from these springs. While others seek to extract rent through brick-making and trading, these water sources are by and large being transformed into spaces of accumulation.

There are of course several other examples through which Bangwe’s waterscape has been opened up for private accumulation. Consider, for example, as discussed next, the case of water well diggers commodifying indigenous methods of domesticating water.

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7.2.2 Of Broken dreams of a modern home and extracting rent from water in Bangwe Critical literature instructively reflects on how western modernisation obliterates traditional knowledge and value systems to produce technologically-dependent societies (Lefebvre 1995; Ellul 1954; Pippin 1991). This literature, among other things, critically illuminates the extent to which humans surrender the performance of even the most mundane of functions of life to money and machines. For example, in Technological Society, Ellul highlights how an obsession in modern society with techniques as an end in themselves breeds indifference and hollows out traditional human values. In modern capitalist societies, money and modern technology have achieved control of hegemonic proportions over the life of modern subjects. As the hegemony of technology and money spreads in time and space, less and less people, for example, are aware of how their food or water is produced, who produces it or where it is produced, where waste they produce ends up et cetera. The flow of water into our modern homes is often a taken for granted and naturalised experience. Many of us do not get involved in producing our water, water companies do. As long as we pay our bills, it becomes an inevitability that water must come through our taps. We do not critically think about the various socio- natural processes that go into this process. Our distancing from nature in a highly technologised world we live in has dispossessed us of the knowledge and skills required to provide for our own basic needs. It is hard to dispute the fact that in highly modernised societies of today, pretty much every aspect of providing for life needs is outsourced to technologies and those who own the means of production.

As critics of modernity have often demonstrated, it is when technologies fail, or forces of nature expose the fact that money cannot buy everything, that the limits of capitalist modernity are brought to light. It is often those occasional moments we wake up to dry taps and news on our TV about a water company struggling with drought conditions, for example, that we begin to formulate an awareness of what happens beyond our taps. In this section, I shall illustrate how this debasing of

263 traditional knowledge, values and the means for basic needs among urbanised subjects, has opened up space for the commodification of water in Bangwe

Township.

In Bangwe, the race towards a modern urban future and the indifference to traditional methods of domesticating water has created space for commodification of water. The return of modern home owners, documented in the previous chapter, to traditional methods of water and sanitation, has presented an opportunity for others to extract rent from water. For these home owners, the surrendering of their water and sanitation functions to modern water technologies has sullied their knowledge and ability to provide own water and sanitation through traditional means. With the modern water network not delivering, these home owners have come to increasingly depend on those still in possession of traditional expertise of domesticating water. Water shortages in Bangwe have created a ready market for traditional expertise of engineering water. There has emerged a cartel of traditional water engineers who provide their services at a fee to those desperate for water. For example, settlements such as Mtimaukanena and Baluti right on the edges of the sprawling township are in many ways a traditional settlement; its inhabitants still use traditional water and sanitation methods. They have therefore historically depended on digging the ground using traditional tools and methods or drawing from naturally-occurring surface sources for their water. Some residents of these settlements have formed a “company” (in their own words) that goes about town constructing wells the traditional way, for those desperate for water and can afford such a service (Bangwe well digger: Interview 25 th May 2012). Operating informally on the fringes of Blantyre’s water sector, the manner this informal water industry works does highlight the commodification of water outside the realm of formal water markets in Blantyre.

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I drill or drench wells to earn some income. It is my main source of livelihood under these economic circumstances. Times are hard here, there are no jobs. I learnt how to drill wells from my folks at a young age. We have been doing it for generations. Before this area sprawled into a shanty town and piped connection came, drilling wells was how we mostly got our water. With urbanisation and coming in of modern water technologies such as pumps and piped water, traditional well-drilling slowly disappeared. Only few know how to do it. This is a very risky and laborious job, not everyone can do it. With frequent water shortages in this township, those with money would rather have a private well. They don’t know how to do it. They now turn to us. We have become the well drilling experts. (Bangwe well digger: Interview 25 th May 2012)

An examination of the operations of traditional well diggers demonstrates specific ways Bangwe’s waterscape has been opened up for extracting rent from water. The above quote captures the experiences of a prominent traditional well digger I interacted with in Bangwe. In his early 40s, he is said to be one of the most experienced and sought after water well digger in this settlement (Chiye: informal chat 20 th Febraury 2012). Inquiring into this man’s well-drilling trade reveals how the broken dreams of those with modern homes without water have created an opportunity to extract rent for the water well drilling man. Drilling works by these local experts is a very sophisticated, painstaking and ritualised technique. It requires slowly notching through the surface with a chisel, hammer etc. It often requires at least two people taking turns. A single well might take few days to several weeks to complete, depending on surface conditions. Drilling wells this traditional way is a risky and difficult job that requires stamina and years of perfection. Only a selected group of individuals have the expertise to do such projects. Apart from the senior digger cited here, there were only two other known individuals doing this sort of job in Bangwe. The rarity of this expertise, and the increasing demand for this service, has pushed up its monetary value. Traditionally, such functions were performed free of charge to provide one’s household or community with water. In early moments of urbanisation of Bangwe in 1980s, households largely depended on public water kiosks, private connections,

265 government-supplied water pumps and such other modern methods of watering space. Traditional methods of water and sanitation were considered ‘backward’; it was only those still living a rural life on the fringes of the township that used these

(Bangwe Well Digger1: Interview 25 th May 2012; Bangwe Well Digger2: Interview

27 th May 2012; Bangwe Well Digger3: Interview 30 th May 2012). At present, the growing importance of these methods as inhabitants of Bangwe seek ways to cope with the dire water situation, has seen a monetary price being put on these indigenous ways of domesticating water. At the time, a price for each well ranged from a minimum of MK40, 000 (USD156.82) to over MK80,000 (USD313.66). At present exchange rates, this would translate to MK67,985.70 to MK135,980.70. In a city plagued with high unemployment and where many survive on less than a dollar a day (UNHabitat 2011), few can earn as much in a short period of time.

The counter-intuitive nature of relations of exploitation that have emerged out of this situation further provides interesting insights into the complexities of water commodification in this settlement. The fact that those in the lower social strata appear to extract rent from those with money but in desperate need of water shows the dynamic ways politics and ecology here have combined to produce advantage and disadvantage in more complex ways, but with the same end result— the deepening of the commodification process. A cartel of traditional water engineers consists of those that remained behind in a race to modern urban future; is them that still held on to these traditional methods of water and sanitation. In most cases, theorisation of commodification of water presupposes an asymmetrical relation; this is where the powerful monopolise the means of production and extract rent or profit from water at the expense of the poor. In alienated waterscapes, key to exploitation is the control of the means of production by a few while everyone else has to earn money to acquire material necessities of life (Loftus 2005). In orthodox

Marxian parlance therefore, it is often the bourgeois class with money that dispossesses the underclass and control the means of production (Glassman 2006).

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Rarely considered are other non-obvious ways through which those in lowly positions equally extract profit from water. Some literature on neo-liberalisation of water for example, often talks about the virulence of global capital and powerful multilateral institutions in dispossessing and commodifying water (Crane 1994;

Bakker 2007; Marvin and Laurie 1999; Smith 2004). However, the exploitation of owners of modern homes in Bangwe by the traditional water engineers from the lower societal strata, suggest that it might not necessarily be only those who command money and class power that always extract rent from water.

“The whole contract is a negotiated process and it is true we donʹt have fixed charges. What we charge depends on how easy or difficult it is to strike water. The harder it is the higher the cost to the client. That is why we insist charging when drilling is done. We also look at the person’s status. The more money we think they have the more we are going to charge them. Often we would pretend and play delaying tactics to give an impression it was a difficult job when it is not. We wouldn’t do that to someone we know doesn’t have too much money” (Bangwe well digger: Interview 25 th May 2012) These boys digging and drenching wells are so crooked. They are taking advantage of the water situation here. They know we have no choice but seek their services. They charge whatever they think. I paid MK60, 000 to have this well done. But the soil is so loose around here, siltation affect the quality and quantity of water. The well requires frequent drenching. Each time they come to drench, they charge not less MK6,000. If you think of it, I’m paying more to these boys than what used to be our monthly water bill at Blantyre Water Board (Bangwe20: Interview 27 th May 2012).

The manner in which traditional well diggers exploit the haves dispossessed of traditional skills, illustrates complex relations of exploitation through which water is commodified. It is not simply an asymmetrical power relationship in which the halves exploit the halve-nots. The nature of this exploitation though illustrates how economic calculations have permeated hydro-social relations in Bangwe. The dominance of this economic logic is further reflected in the nature of transactions between well diggers and their clientele. Consider for example two quotations above. These do capture sentiments of those who had solicited the services of traditional engineers. What becomes evident from these accounts is the manner in

267 which economic motives have come to dominate the transactions between these actors. While these services were initially performed as part of the common effort to provide water to the community, sentiments captured in the above quotes highlight the economistic nature of this relation in contemporary Bangwe. No longer are such services provided free of charge. In fact, to the well digging men, performing these services at a fee is solely motivated by the need to make money (Bangwe20:

Interview 27 th May 2012). Before their water engineering skills were sought after, all three well diggers earned their living as part casual workers in town and part subsistence farmers. Asked the reasons for getting into the well-digging business, this engineering trio spoke of the potential to make easy money as their primary reason. What partly emerged from these conversations is, therefore, that no longer are these activities performed in kind as part of communal effort to provide water. It is the desire to extract economic benefits that underwrites such hydro-social transactions.

The commodification of indigenous water knowledge cannot be seen in isolation from the historical transformation of economic life that has taken place here since colonial urbanisation. In Blantyre today, meeting one’s survival needs largely depends on earning money. While fringe settlements of Bangwe appear to have preserved their rural characteristics, economic life of its inhabitants has in time and space significantly transformed. For inhabitants such as traditional well diggers, meeting basic needs requires constantly finding opportunities to make money. To make ends meet, they have to find ways of selling their labour.

Urbanisation of nature and space has dispossessed many of these inhabitants of traditional means of subsistence such as agriculture land, forests and the like. It is this economic context that water shortages have presented an opportunity for the commodification of traditional ways of domesticating water. What is even remarkable in this hydro-social configuration is the extent to which water produced from wells constructed through this traditional expertise is also directly sold to

268 others by owners of private wells. This reflects how rent is directly extracted from what would hitherto have been open water sources (Bangwe13: Interview 19 th May

2012). With intermittent supplies from the city’s water network, there are a good number of residents who depend on those with private wells for their water. It is a reality in Bangwe that poor residents cannot afford the high prices charged by well constructors. Buying water from those with private wells is one of the disparate means such residents try to survive the dire water situation in this settlement

(Bangwe4: 5 th February 2012). Similarly, these transactions are largely motivated by the desire to make quick money. Most owners of private wells on average charge more for their water. While a bucket of water costs about MK3 at public standpipes, some owners of private wells could be seen charging as high as MK8 (Well Owner1:

Interview 20 th April 2012). Such high charges are hard to explain through any other reason than pure economic motivations. Apart from the initial construction cost and periodic expenditure on maintenance, these private wells are not capital intensive as is the case with modern water systems. Consisting of just a hole in the ground and the concrete structure that secures the top surface, these wells do not require use of expensive parts. This is to suggest that the low-cost nature of these technologies does not justify the high water prices charged. In fact, putting this observation to well owners interviewed, there was a general admittance that high water prices largely reflect their desire to make money (Well Owner2: Interview 23 th May 2012;

Well Owner3: Interview 22 nd May 2012).

What becomes evident from the foregoing discussion, therefore, is the fact that even the most indigenous forms of watering methods have been brought squarely into the money logic in Blantyre. While well digging was traditionally a communal endeavour, the urbanisation of Bangwe has seen the creeping in of a new water culture and ethic; traditional water expertise has become a means to economic ends for certain individuals. This further shows the virulent extent to which monetary exchange has permeated hydro-social relations in Blantyre. This raises doubt on

269 reading Blantyre as a non-commodified waterscape. Considering more examples of human -water interactions in this city further raises difficult questions about the nature of water in Blantyre. In the section that follows, I shall consider how water from public kiosks and charity water pumps is commodified in informal settlements of the city.

7.3 Water charity or water commodity: the commodification of kiosks and

communal water pumps in Manase and Bangwe

The case of water from kiosks and water pumps in Manase and Bangwe further makes for an interesting reading of the nature of water in Blantyre. Given the romanticised nature of political or social discourses that couch these interventions as acts of kindness, charity, donations etcetera, there is often a danger of taking these for granted as socially more just. In Chapter 5, for example, I highlighted the ideological representation of kiosks within post-colonial politics as a means for providing water on the cheap to the underprivileged masses. I began therein to deconstruct these discourses and reveal powerful economic forces that have militated against the state’s ability to deliver water justice. Similarly, modern water pumps have been considered a convenient way of delivering clean water to poor residents on the fringes of the modern water network in Malawi. Keying in search terms such as “water boreholes, Malawi” into an online search engine, reflects the importance attached to this technology by charitable international and local organisations working to improve access to clean water and sanitation in this context. The provision of water pumps to poor communities is uncritically considered as a social means of providing water for free. To grasp the extent of this discourse, one only need a quick glance at reports and such other information platforms of charitable organisations such as WaterAid Malawi, Water For People, just to mention a few. Using specific examples of these so called ‘charitable’ projects that have been implemented in informal settlements of Bangwe and Manase, I nonetheless aim to show here how these have only worked to further alienate and

270 commodify water in Blantyre. For example, critically analysing the politics and economics around a community project to provide water through kiosks by the

Malawi Government and later Water for People in Manase, and a water project run by a charitable organisation called Gift of the Givers in Bangwe, the discussion in this section shall further highlight ways water from these oft-considered social projects is not necessarily a social good.

7.3.1 Kiosks and commodification of water in Manase

Just as in many poor cities of the global south, water kiosks in Blantyre have for a long time been part of the city authorities’ strategy to supply water to poor urban residents of high density areas (Cammack 2012; Maoulidi 2012). A basic definition of a Kiosk is a booth with stand pipes where water is sold. In Blantyre, a water point does not necessarily conform to this definition. Here, it appears, it is the public nature of a water point that confers it a status of being a kiosk or not; it does not matter whether such a water point is enclosed in a booth or not (Compare for example photo 7.1 & 7.2). To those encountered in the field, all water selling standpipes in public spaces are referred to as kiosks regardless of their physical appearance. The term kiosk has also a particular symbolic connotation as a marker of social class. It is where everyone else without own connection goes. Kiosks in

Manase have a legacy extending as far back as 1980s. They came as a response to a particularly dire water situation highlighted in chapter 5. They symbolised the post- colonial state’s efforts to modernise Manase’s waterscape and make clean and safe water accessible to underprivileged residents of the town. Ideally, these oft- described low-cost technologies, would allow the state-owned Blantyre Water Board to provide water cheaply to low income areas; sanitised water would be made easily accessible to poor residents (Chirwa and Junge 2007). Being the very first modern water technologies to make inroads into the this settlmment, kiosks therefore epitomised a break away from the primitive and dangerous past of using ‘unsafe’ sources, towards a modern and secure water future for everyone. A close

271 examination of how kiosks have worked in practice in Manase reveals the extent water has through these technologies been alienated and commodified further.

Through kiosks, a new water culture has historically been entrenched; it is one in which money and water technology has become critical mediators of human-water relations in the township.

We had free water then, we didn’t have to pay. I now spend a lot on water than was the case before all these changes. When kiosks were run by Blantyre Water Board, a 20 litre bucket would cost Mk1.50 and 40 litres K2. Now we pay MK5 and K12 respectively. Even if you factor in inflation, these increases are ridiculously high” (Manase7: Interview 17 th June 2012).

“I have lived here all my life. I have seen this place change. Back then this was just a tiny hamlet with many parts of the river catchment area largely undisturbed. Even in driest of months, the river flow would dry out but there would be a few perennial springs to provide an ample water supply to the village” (Manase4: Interview 20 th May 2012).

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Photo 7.2: Depicting a mismanaged and dysfunctional water kiosk in Blantyre Source: Cammack (2012:10)

Photo 7.3: Shows a water kiosk run by Water Users Association in Blantyre Source: Water for People (2013)

Water kiosks have in some ways contributed towards the commodification of water in Blantyre. Contrary to official discourses, interacting with some residents of

Manase reveals the extent to which water in informal settlements of Blantyre has been transformed through these technologies into an economic good (see for example quote above). In chapter 5, I captured the difficult water situation of poor residents using unsafe open water sources as Chiwandila stream in Manase.

Spending time with these residents, it became evident that excessive prices at kiosks pushed them to using these dangerous sources. At present, water Kiosks in Manase are run by Water Users Associations. Through these, a raft of market-oriented measures has been implemented to encourage the delivery of water as an economic

273 good. Water User associations in Manase, and Blantyre in general, are a brain child of the Water for People project—an American-based non-governmental organization. One of Water for People’s goal is to encourage the application of business principles in the delivery of water and sanitation in peri-urban areas of major cities (Water For People n.d.). With funding from the European Union, World

Bank, DFID and other international funding bodies, Water for People has influenced the transfer of water kiosks in Manase from community committees to Mudi Water

User Association (WUA). The appropriation of kiosks by Mudi WUA in Manase has led to greater monetisation of hydro-social interactions. The Mudi WUA is designed on a business-oriented model. This model generally postulates revenue maximisation from water sells and reinvestment of surplus into developing new water sources (Mudi UWA Water Seller: Interview 11 th June 2012). To achieve this, the WUA operate rather like a corporate business entity. Within its ranks, are board of trustees, the secretariat consisting of a manager and accounts personnel, and an army of field staff consisting of water sellers and inspectors. It is largely an impersonal organisation—those that work here are salaried employs and are formally recruited depending on their skills and experience. Emphasis is clearly on revenue generation (see photo 2.8), and this is significantly altering people’s relationship with water in Manase. Mudi UWA water sellers have a very explicit mandate—to provide water to those willing to pay. In all Kiosks visited, there was an overt focus on making sure one gets the exact quantity they have paid for.

“There are specific times we have water supplies. When kiosks were run by the community, opening routines were very flexible. Operators lived nearby and didn’t mind when to open. In dry months, when water is scarce, and shortages more frequent we would get up as early as 3am or whatever time supplies are restored” (Manase10: Interview 21 st June 2012). We had our own people running the kiosk. We knew them, it was a community project. Money went to charity; this helped those in dire need. CDC people were very flexible. They would let you have a bit of water to wash your bucket for free. You could get water on credit and pay later.”

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Photo 7.4: A Billboard showing Mudi Water Users Association financial summary report Source: Water for People (2013)

The transactional nature of the relationship between water sellers and buyers at water kiosks further speaks to the increasing dominance of monetary exchange in hydro-social relations in Manase. The transactional emphasis of this hydro-social exchange became apparent through my observations of the social dynamics at few kiosks. The intention of such an exercise was to capture, in the most non-intrusive way possible, the interactions between water sellers and their customers. One of the intriguing aspects of these observed dynamics was the nature of interactions between water sellers and buyers around water pricing. The relationship between these actors was largely driven by monetary exchange. By this, I mean, it was largely the case of money changing hands for water without much else going on in such an exchange. This contrasted the seemingly more sociable interactions

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(described to me by some residents of Manase) that defined human interactions at kiosks prior to their takeover by WUAs. Prior to kiosks being taken over by Mudi

WUA, they were managed as a community project under a committee elected by residents. One of the key themes emerging from discussions with some inhabitants was an emphasis on the socially-organic nature in which kiosks were managed under these community committees (see quotes above). This is not to romanticise such community projects. In fact, misappropriation of funds and over-accumulated arrears are some of the problems that marred this community-based water management model (Manase4: Interview 20 th May 2012; Manase19: Focus Group

Discussion 27 th May 2012; John: Interview 17 th May 2012).

What I wish to capture from these sentiments and my own observations of the nature of the new management model, is a particular change in human interactions that has occurred here with greater monetisation of water kiosks. Kiosk water sellers have to operate within the framework of their company rules, and have to meet certain water sell targets. This has changed hydro-social dynamics at kiosks.

Residents have over time witnessed greater rationalisation such as the introduction of standard water measurements and set fixed water prices. For some, as second quote above illustrates, it is no longer possible to socially negotiate alternate payment outside these rules driven by the desire by the Water Users Associations to make money. Under this new rationality, access to water from Kiosks has become to solely depend on one having money in their pockets. Since the change of ownership to WUAs, inhabitants of Manse have also witnessed multiple-fold increases in water prices. While a bucket of water under community committees cost MK3 in 2010, by

2011 when WUAs took over this was increased three-fold to MK9 (Focus Group

Discussion 27 th May 2012). The main priority for Mudi WUAs is economic efficiency; as such it operates to maximise revenue generation and minimise losses or water debt. For the consumer, this has meant the cost of operating the water systems is directly externalised onto them. Under WUAs therefore, the logic of the

276 market has been given prominence in hydro-social interactions in Manase

Township. This therefore reflecting how even under these supposedly charitable interventions, economic pressures have been far great and thwart the possibility of provisioning water as a social good.

7.3.2 Water pumps and the commodification of water in Bangwe

Our pump has been vandalised many times. Some people steal vital parts and sell them on. These are sold on a black market to hardware vendors and or owners of private pumps. It is becoming very expensive to maintain water pumps. This has created demand for cheap stolen hardware. Many of those with private pumps would be tempted to buy cheap spare-parts being offered, without inquiring too much about where those things are coming from. Many will know any way that these are stolen goods. It is all about money these days—no one cares about the consequences of their actions on others (Bangwe9: Interview 7 th April 2012).

The political economy of water pumps in Bangwe further reaffirms how water is commodified within what we might consider to be socially-oriented water projects.

Bangwe water woes have attracted the attention of some charitable organisation working on water issues. These have sought to provide water through drilling and installation of water pumps. In the area studied, local charitable organisation called

Gift of the Givers constructed a water borehole to alleviate the water plight of poor residents of the township. However, as the above quote illustrates, the logic of money has equally not spared such apparent charitable water causes. It became evident from speaking with managers and users of the water pump that, such projects are equally dominated by the logic of monetary exchange. This has made it difficult for water to be provided for free as ideologues of this project had intended.

For example, the large amounts of users, frequent break-downs, and rising cost of spare-parts have militated against the possibility of making the water pump accessible to everyone (Bangwe7. Interview 10th April 2012; Bangwe 12: Focus

Group Discussion 10th April 2012). A monthly charge of MK100 is levied on every

277 user to raise funds for routine maintenance. In cases of a major breakdown, every user is required to make a one off substantial contribution of MK500. With frequent breakdowns, this has meant users being frequently asked to dig deep into their pockets. Everyone that does not pay for whatever reason is not allowed access to the pump. For poorest residents who cannot afford, the emphasis on the economic side of the project has necessitated their marginalization from what was ideally intended to be a free water source for everyone. Such unfortunate souls have to depend on polluted water sources. Others have attempted to deploy weapons of the weak

(Scott 1987) by stealing water at night and vandalising the water infrastructure. In response, the water point management committee was forced to set up night perambulations as well as invested in a locking mechanism to secure the water point.

Photo 7.5: Shows one of vandalised and dysfunctional water pumps in Bangwe Source: taken by author (7 th April 2012)

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It has been difficult for water supplied by these modern pumps to be provided for free. This is precisely because of the various economic relations that go into the production of these pumps. The vital components of these pumps are not manufactured through local knowledge and materials. They are manufactured by those who monopolise the skills, knowledge and capital necessary in producing these water technologies. Tracing various inputs that goes into manufacturing these pumps would reveal myriad global-local networks of exploitative economic relations that radiate in multiple directions beyond the local area these pumps are used. For example, maintaining the modern water pump in Bangwe is heavily dependent on suppliers of hardware in central business district of Limbe (Bangwe9:

Interview 7 th April 2012). Further inquiries revealed that part of the vital hardware is not manufactured locally (Arbubarkar: Interview 20 th April 2012). Malawians of

Indian descent dominate the hardware business in Blantyre. Hardware that is not manufactured locally is imported into Blantyre from as far away as China or India.

In fact inscribed on the outer casing of the Bangwe water pump was a caption

“made in China”.

The local-global production networks in which the Bangwe water pump is immersed have made it difficult for these pumps to be accessible for free. While Gift of the Givers did off-set the initial costs as a donation to the Bangwe community, the cost of maintenance has squarely been placed on water users. As previously highlighted, save for the period of routine maintenance, the water pump has been suffering frequent break downs requiring major replacement of vital pumping mechanisms. It was estimated that major breakdowns occur pretty much every 2 months (Bangwe9: Interview 7 th April 2012). As a matter of fact, during the time of this research, the pump was awaiting yet another costly maintenance after a recent major break down. The high cost of maintenance has made it increasingly difficult for the water management committee to let anyone have water on any other terms than paying for it.

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The attribution of major breakdowns to theft and vandalism motivated by money further reveals how this charitable pump has been caught up in the logic of Money.

Community pump custodians informed that, a gang of men desperate for quick cash go about town at night, dismantling public water infrastructure, in order to steal vital parts for resell to those with private pumps and or hardware dealers in town (see quote above). This problem was partly attributed to increasing demand for private pumps in Blantyre Town as water shortages affect many parts of the city.

This has created demand for cheap second-hand pump hardware as those aspiring to own private pumps seek to minimise high cost outlays required in procuring and maintaining this technology. Demand for this technology has created a ready market for unscrupulous men who steal and sell parts. Community water projects such as these have become an easy picking for these thieving men. One resident attributed this to the prevailing perception that such community property belongs to no one (Bangwe 14: Interview 20 th June 2012). For a poor resident of Bangwe, the frequent theft of vital parts has meant regular payments towards maintenance costs.

Here also, the extent to which the logic of money has indirectly permeated what is in all intents meant to be charitable water is revealed.

The examples of kiosks in Manase and the Bangwe water pumps heretofore discussed highlight the need for inquiring deeply into the actual material conditions through which water is produced and distributed. Examining the realpolitik of these supposedly benevolent water projects reveals the extent to which water is commodified. These projects are caught up in various hydro-social relations largely mediated through the economic logic. Such relations have made it difficult for water to be provided for free. These examples raise further questions about the status of such seemingly charitable water in a city dominated by capitalist economic relations.

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7.4 Chapter Conclusion

As an off-shoot of the previous one, this chapter sought to examine the implications of the troubled water socio-geographies of water access in Blantyre. I insisted that these are a product of historical geographies of capitalist urbanisation of nature and space. While chapter 6 explores the dynamics and complexities of these socio- geographies, in this chapter, I took this discussion further by arguing that these have created conditions for further commodification of water in Blantyre. In locating alienation and commodification within the ambit of uneven socio- geographies of capitalist urbanisation, my intention was to identify various nascent possibilities through which water is commodified outside the realm of the neo- liberal market. Here I set out to take issue with readings of commodification that narrowly defines this process within the constricted formal market rationality. In this chapter, I demonstrate that despite urbanised water in Blantyre not being privatised (see McDonald 2005; Swyngedouw 2005) it has in time and space always been a commodity.

Through examples from informal settlements of Bangwe and Manase

Township, the chapter has generally established that it is difficult for water in

Blantyre to exist outside the realm of commodities. This emanates from the dominance of monetary exchange and modern techniques in mediating hydro-social relations in this city. Through various examples, the analysis in this chapter has demonstrated the extent to which monetary exchange has permeated all manner of hydro-social relations in this context. Despite water in these settlements not fully under the control of private capital, monetary exchange has become so pervasive in determining who gets what water. In this case, the ecological politics around open springs in Bangwe has been a curious one. Despite these sources apparently being free and open to everyone, the wider socio-economic dynamics have overtime transformed these into becoming an arena for contestation and exploitation among poor users. Save for the outright attempts by brick-making or construction workers

281 to monopolise this free resources for economic gains, also highlighted in this example is the extent to which the focus on money to earn a living is threatening these free water sources. As these sources are slowly disappearing or get entangled into these messy ecological politics, more and more people have to depend on buying water. Similarly, the relations between home owners desperate for water, and traditional well diggers, further confirm the pervasiveness of commodification in these settlements. Even more intriguing is the manner in which the have-nots seem to exploit the haves. Monopoly to indigenous methods of domesticating water has allowed these poor well diggers to extract rent from providing a water service to those with modern homes but without water. Counterintuitive to orthodox political ecological readings of commodification, this example suggest a more complex dynamic through which rent is extracted from water. In highlighting this fact, I also tacitly wanted here, following Loftus, to point out the nascent potential for democratic change that inherently lies within these unequal and exploitative hydro- social spaces. It is not merely the case of the well-off exploiting the poor. These troubled hydro-social geographies are imbued with countervailing socio-natural forces within which lies the potential for change.

The forgoing notwithstanding, the example of kiosks and charity pumps in the two informal settlements under consideration has shown that the commodification of water in Blantyre largely disadvantage the poor. Despite such means of delivering water discursively purported to deliver water justice to the underprivileged, this is at best illusory. Water from these technologies remains a highly alienated commodity. This is precisely because these technologies are inextricably tied to economic logics. Users of water kiosks in Manase, and that of a charity water pump in Bangwe, have to both contend with various economic forces that militate against supplying water as a social good. Water from these supposedly benevolent sources has over time become hard to access without money changing hands.

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Many of examples considered in this chapter mainly capture water outside the city’s main water supply market. What these examples therefore show is that such water has not escaped the reach of the money logic. It would appear, from these examples, that every nuke and cranny of hydro-social relations is deeply welded in the commodity relation. But as I acknowledged in the opening chapter, this is not to suggest that other indigenous and non-monetary forms of water exchange are totally wiped out. In this settlement, as is the case in other African contexts (see Zug and Graefe 2014) there still exist vestiges of sharing water as a social good.

Nevertheless, the examples considered herein highlight the pervasiveness of the commodity relation within spaces urbanised through modern capitalism. In light of these examples, it becomes more and more difficult to argue that water in Blantyre exist as anything but a commodity. By escaping the neo-liberal trap and reading commodification through a historical geographical materialist framework, this chapter has continued to demonstrate that there is never such a thing as non- commodified water in Blantyre city. This is a historical geographical processes deeply rooted in logics, contradictions and uneven socio-geographies of capitalist urbanisation of nature and space.

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Chapter8: Conclusion

Entering the city posits the city as a flow, a flux and a movement, and suggests social, material and symbolic transformation and permutations. It also puts focus on the process of commodification. Indeed, commodification, understood fundamentally as a social and cultural process of inserting socially metabolised goods into commodity or market relations, becomes in the modern city the form and medium through which ‘nature’ is turned into urbanity and the production of urban environment (Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000)

With the growing currency of neo-liberal free-market environmentalism, there is a

danger for critical scholarship to be caught up in sterile debates that can all too

easily pander to neo-liberal ideologies on society-nature relations. This can for

instance be seen in critiques of neo-liberal privatisation that scarcely problematise

the role of the state in mediating human -nature relations. In taking issue with neo-

liberalisation of nature, questions have hardly been asked about the historical

geographical processes that reproduce conditions for alienation and

commodification of water within public modes of water governance. And yet one of

the suggestions emerging from this thesis is that despite water historically being

under state control, the level of water injustices inflicted upon residents of Blantyre

city is immense. Such failings are indefensible, and perhaps, unsurprisingly, they

have provided a powerful narrative to the pro-water neo-liberalisation contrivance.

To therefore attempt countering such a well-choreographed and potent neo-liberal

narrative by solely focusing on the flaws within free-market approaches, without

equally taking a critical view of the so called public/state water infrastructure, is

unhelpful. There is a real risk critical scholarship might be seen to defend such

public modes as benign and socially more just.

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I therefore strongly advocated in this thesis for the need to critically look at the underlying forces that reproduce injustices within public modes of water governance. Such a critique, I suggested can be developed through a more holistic and historical geographical critique of capitalist urbanisation. This helps situate injustices within public water institutions as an outcome of the highly alienated and commodified nature of waterscapes produced through capitalist urbanisation.

Positing these injustices within this context provides a powerful counter-argument that points to failings within the so called public water institutions in cities of the global south as symptomatic of the unravelling of capitalist remaking of human - water relations; it is not necessarily the failure of non-commodified means of producing water as neo-liberal discourse has long insisted. Aside from challenging the dominant neo-liberal narrative that touts the commercialisation of water as a panacea to global injustices, this critique also espouses a rethink in existing ways urban waterscapes are governed, and suggests the need for more socially-just alternatives.

I had set out to develop the above critique through a historical geographical reading of the process of alienation and commodification in modern urbanisation of socio-nature relations. As Kaika and Swyngedouw equally insist in the opening quotation to this chapter, the process of commodification is so critical to modernist urbanisation of socionature. Under this configuration, the relationship between humans and nature is fundamentally reconfigured through the commodification of labour, and the insertion of monetary exchange and modern techniques at the heart of the human interchange with nature. Whereas in traditional societies production is a use-value undertaking, under capitalist urbanisation this is largely mediated through monetary exchange. I insisted that it is this fundamental change that dictates that all manner of socio-nature are tied through a myriad, and often, non- obvious ways in capitalist relations of commodity exchange. I argued that for post- colonial cities such as Blantyre, the critical moment in the reconfiguration of human-

285 nature/water relations lies in capitalist urbanisation of nature and space. I suggested that understanding colonial remaking of socio-nature relations provides a powerful entry point into making sense of the difficult water condition confronting many of these cities long after colonisation. Taking the colonial seriously does not only reveal the historical geographical nature of alienation and commodification of water; this also helps explain how the legacy of this dynamic continues to reproduce water injustices at present. In this chapter therefore, I wish to conclude by drawing together key issues that have emerged from the thesis, and consider how these can speak to the broader questions relating to the nature of the hydro-social condition in global south cities.

8.1 Colonial/capitalist urbanisation as a critical moment in the production of

alienated and commodified waterscapes

In developing a critique of neo-liberal reading of commodification, and public water networks in the global south, this thesis, as have few other scholars (Alex Loftus,

Ben Page, Erik Swyngedouw and others), has argued for a historical geographical materialist reading of urban waterscapes. Derived through Marxian critique of political economy, and neo-Marxist understandings of capitalist production of nature, this approach, I insisted, requires looking at waterscapes as historically and socially metabolised social-natural ecologies (Swyngedouw 2009). Through work and play, humans and nature have always been welded in a differentiated metabolic interchange. Through this process, as Marx recognised ages ago, humans do not only transform nature but also transform themselves. What is remarkable in capitalist societies is that this metabolic interchange is largely mediated through the production and exchange of commodities. I therefore argued that it is this shift from pre-capitalist to capitalist production that marks a critical moment in the alienation and commodification of socio-natural relations. When I vouched for this conceptualisation of waterscapes, I intended to cast penetrating light into a contemporary water problem affecting poor developing world cities such as

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Blantyre. In Blantyre, as is the case in many other cities in a similar situation, the state controls public water institutions, and has invested considerable resources to bring water to the poor. Despite such efforts, institutions intended to deliver this vision have largely failed, and a multitude of poor urban residents have no access to water, and pay a higher price to get it. In recent times, there has been growing calls to free water from the state, and bring in the hands of private capital. Such neo- liberal calls are premised on a hardinian “tragedy of the commons” argument–that attribute current failing to the notion that water is a free for all resource, and the sanctification of free-markets as a magic bullet to the global water problems. In suggesting a historical geographical reading of waterscapes, I hoped to problematise this neo-liberal argument, and contribute towards developing an alternative understanding of the contemporary water condition through a critique of capitalist urbanisation of hydro-social relations.

In order to make this argument, I looked at how Blantyre has historical- geographically been remade as a modern waterscape. In doing so, I aimed to show that this city was produced as a highly unjust waterscape through capitalist urbanisation of socio-nature. I argued that it is this transformation that has entrenched various structural contradictions within the city’s waterscape and continue to reproduce unjust socio-geographies of water access at present. For

Blantyre, a crucial moment in the production of this configuration lies in colonial production of nature and space. British colonisation, regardless of its ideological imperatives, was a modernist project fulfilled through introduction of a particular form of capitalist economic relations. While pre-colonial African tribes generally subsisted directly through working up their natural environment, British colonisation introduced wage labour, commerce, modern industry and such other western capitalist modes of (re)production. For British colonisers, modernising the

African required divorcing him/her from what was bigotedly seen as a lowly existence, and bringing them closer to a modern European life. Fulfilling this

287 mission required and resulted in a particular transformation of indigenous socio- nature in which an African and their environment were discursively and materially separated from each other. An African had to be transformed into an urbanised modern citizen dependent on selling their labour to earn a living, while their environment, was largely viewed as free for the European taking—a resource bundle to be harnessed into a modern capitalist economy. In examining this colonial transformation, I established that this cemented a particular water ethic, and produced different social-geographies of water access and governance institutions that came to mediate this hydro-social relation. I exemplify this change through the manner modern techniques of capturing and domesticating water enabled the redefinition of water from being a common means of subsistence to a resource that can be privately appropriated and exchanged through money. Colonial modernisation also created unequal socio-geographies of water access mediated through relations of race, class and social power; these were dominated by a few who controlled the means of producing and distributing water.

Among others, examining the socio-ecological dynamics and institutions that transformed and mediated hydro-social relations in Blantyre, within the context of colonial capitalist urbanisation of nature and space, presents two important implications. Firstly, it strongly indicates that the genesis of structural problems affecting equitable distribution of water in Blantyre lies in the historical social production of the city’s waterscape. Secondly, that state governance institutions that came to mediate this modern hydro-social configuration and its contradictions were inherently exclusionary and could not work to equitably deliver water to all; this has been the case in so far as money and social power have historically remained the dominant forces shaping access to water in urbanised Blantyre. After all, I further demonstrated, through colonial-state capital relations, that such institutions were deeply imbricated in the capitalist urbanisation process. The historical geographical analysis of Blantyre’s waterscape therefore strongly show that the failings in urban

288 water infrastructure, and the limitations of state institutions to ensure water justice, are inextricably rooted in historical capitalist relations through which the city’s waterscape has been reproduced. An examination of post-colonial water politics as the thesis progressed further highlighted how such dynamics permeate contemporary urban politics. These implications challenges critical literature (for example, Bakker 2009; Castree 2010; Heynen 2007; Harrison 2008; Glassman 2007;

Mansfield 2008; McAfee 2003; McCarthy 2004; McDonald 2005; Prudman2004;

Robison 2006) that engages with the processes of commodification of socio-nature within current neoliberal debates, to equally think critically about the nature of produced water under state controlled institutions. This thesis has demonstrated that theoretically, such a critique can be developed through a historical geographical materialist approach that critically prises open the actual nature of state-capital relations and its implications for socio-nature relations, in a predominantly capitalist world we live in. This requires moving debates on neo-liberalisation beyond an obsession with responding to a particular neo-liberal narrative that attributes socio-ecological injustices to state failure, and demonstrating, through theoretically informed and empirically evidenced analyses, that these injustices are symptomatic of the unravelling of the capitalist means of producing and provisioning the material things for human existence. I show in this thesis how this can be done through Marxian historical geographical theoretical expositions.

However this is not in any way to suggest that this is the only way such a critique can be mounted. As the varied field of political ecology has demonstrated, there are many other lively ways such a critique can be developed by exploring other avenues of radical thinking. I would argue that, with its focus on the fundamental relation between humans and nature as a basis for understanding societal change, the historical geographical materialist approach remains a critical entry point for developing a critique of the contemporary socio-ecological condition. In support of other scholars that adopt this approach in their political ecological analysis (Erik

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Swyngedouw, Alex Loftus and others), this thesis has further demonstrated how this approach can be fruitfully mobilised to interrogate these dynamics in a developing world urban context.

8.2 On commodification of water being a historical geographical phenomenon

In relation to the above, this thesis sought to problematise neo-liberal readings of waterscapes by demonstrating the historical geographical nature of the process of commodification. A claim was made that water commodification in Blantyre is not a new phenomenon, rather it is a historical geographical process deeply rooted in capitalist urbanisation processes. In making such a claim, I intended to take issue with a particular neo-liberal claim (for example, Castro 2013) that water untouched by unfettered free-markets is not yet a commodity. Therefore in claiming that water commodification is not new, my intention was to counter this claim and show that this process in Blantyre is inherently rooted in the legacies of capitalist urbanisation.

Through the historical analysis in the thesis, I give pointers to the historical geographical nature of the process of water commodification beyond neo-liberal reforms in early 90s. For example, the exclusive ownership of modern techniques and the capital intensive nature of water infrastructure did not only create conditions for enclosure and individuation of water during the colonial period, but also inserted monetary exchange at the heart of hydro-social relations. Critical research has long demonstrated that the alienation and individuation of socio- nature are inherently part of the process of commodification (Castree 2003).

Commodified waterscapes are characterised by those who own and control the means of water production extracting rent/profit from selling water (Swyngedouw

2005). The historical analysis in this thesis has shown that private capitalist owners of early modern water systems did not only extract direct rent through selling water, they also used such systems to reproduce labour power needed in their private capitalist enterprises. This is seen, for example, not only in the manner private commercial enterprises such as the African Lakes Corporation appropriated

290 water to sustain the expatriate skilled work force necessary to its venture in the

1890s, but also how it directly profited from selling bottled water and associated technologies. Relatedly, one of the assumptions in existing discussions on neo- liberalisation is that rent/profit is extracted or made by subjecting water to the free market rationality. For critics of neo-liberalisation, for example, the disdain for the entry of private capital and free-markets into water, is partly informed by the general understanding that such a neo-liberal approach is unjust because it allows the extraction of rent from water by a few who privately control capital. I however show that historically, it has not only been possible for rent to be extracted from water through private modes of watering Blantyre but also through water institutions controlled by the state. This is in agreement with other critical scholars

(in mind here are the likes of Erik Swyngedouw and Ben Page) that have taken a historical geographical purview in their analyses of water commodification.

Meaning that it is a little dangerous to assume that hydro-social relations under such modes are non-economical and/or are predominantly social. State water infrastructure in Blantyre has been historically embedded in capitalist relations of exploitation. Not only did private settler interests dictate the centralisation of water governance and the creation of public institutions to mediate this configuration as part of attempts to offload socio-ecological externalities onto society and revitalise

Blantyre’s economic space; also, this shift further created conditions for commodification of water. Due to the difficult financial situation of the colonial state

(from late 1890s-early 1960s) in the Shire Highland region, developing centralised water infrastructure came to depend on borrowed capital. This tied emerging water institutions to global networks of capital circulation and accumulation, and allowed rent to be extracted from water, especially through high interest loans. This has historically made it impossible for water to be provided as a social good; instead, this basic necessity of life has increasingly become an economic good. Not only rent was extracted from those who had access to water, but also those without. I

291 demonstrated that the majority of Black African population had no access to the modern water network, and yet such a system was maintained through punitive city rates and taxes equally levied on black African inhabitants of the city. I began here to highlight indirect ways in which modern water network allowed surplus value to be extracted from poor majority in order to serve minority interests.

Whereas in post-independence Malawi, these racialized socio-geographies of alienation and commodification of water have been fundamentally reconfigured, one’s skin colour no longer determines access, monetary exchange has remained a primary axis of social power that shapes access to water. Entrenched during this critical moment of colonial remaking of Blantyre’s waterscape, this logic, and the dynamic class divisions it reproduces, shapes water access today in profoundly different ways.

In shifting from colonial to post-colonial state politics, I also show how rent was extracted from water within the context of the post-colonial state. Changing state politics fell short to reconfigure capitalist relations of exploitation through which surplus value was extracted from the majority to few who controlled the means of water production. From exploitative relations between Blantyre’s post- colonial water infrastructure and global-local networks of capital financing through a water pricing mechanisms that only worked to further exploit poor water consumers, this analysis has shown the extent water in this context has always been tied to the commodity exchange relations. In showing how rent/profit has historically been extracted from water in general and public state institutions in particular, this analysis has therefore challenged conceptions that conflates and confines this process within neo-liberal discussions, and or those on the right of the academic/policy/political spectrum that attribute contemporary water injustices as a problem of the non-commodified nature of waterscape. In fact this analysis shows that such injustices have arisen due to the unjust nature of modern waterscapes.

Here also, this thesis challenges critical inquiry to take seriously the historical

292 geographical nature of the processes of commodifying socio-nature under capitalist economic relations.

8.3 On complex socio-geographies of water access and there being no such a thing

as non-commodified water in contemporary Blantyre

One of the fundamental aims of this research has been to illuminate on and derive an alternative understanding of the contemporary water condition in poor global south cities through a hitherto unexplored case study of Blantyre. The historical geographical examination of capitalist production of Blantyre’s waterscape was undertaken with this purpose in mind. Here I also specifically sought to further develop a critique of neo-liberal conceptualisations of alienation and commodification by considering how the legacy of historical-geographical capitalist urbanisation of socio-nature continue to reproduce conditions for commodification of water despite water not privatised in contemporary Blantyre. I argued and demonstrated, through everyday lived experiences of those who work informal waterscapes of Blantyre, that a complex interplay of dynamic relations, triggered through historical geographical remaking of socio-nature, under capitalist relations, continue to restructure socio-geographies of water access in Blantyre in more fluid and complex ways. These create multiple possibilities through which others derive advantage as some are disadvantaged. In excavating these complex socio- geographies, my main intention had been to bring to light how these reproduce conditions through which water continue to be welded in relations of commodity exchange. I made what might have seemed a bizarre claim in the introductory chapter to this thesis, that there is no such a thing as non-commodified water in

Blantyre. Such a claim might have seemed even more bizarre considering that the city’s water infrastructure is not privatised, and of course there exist in Blantyre other water sources that might seem open and free. For neo-liberal ideologues, and some critical scholars I have taken issue of in this thesis (e.g. Castro 2003), such water might be seen as not yet commodified. I disagreed, and sought to

293 demonstrate that, given the pervasive nature of these processes in capitalist urbanisation of socio-nature, it is virtually impossible that any water in this contemporary city can ever exist outside the realm of commodities.

In mounting this challenge, I critically examined various empirical examples of human-water exchanges in informal settlements of Blantyre. It has become clear that even for what might on the surface be seen as free water sources, these are in many ways second socionatures metabolised through capitalist commodity relations. Various instances have been given of how such seemingly free for all sources have been alienated and commodified in time and space through capitalist metabolisation of hydro-social environments. Not only do the free sources provide free sinks for the socio-ecological bads generated from capitalist urbanisation of space; but also, over the years, these have supported the reproduction of labour power through provision its free water provisions. Understood in the context of the historical analysis in the thesis, it has become evident that high density settlements in Blantyre have historically been an important supplier of cheap labour to the city’s capitalist economy. It has historically been convenient for private capital to be less concerned with providing the reproductive social conditions such as urban service infrastructure. Free water sources in these spaces of cheap labour have therefore been critical in partly performing these reproductive functions on behalf of capital.

Following feminist standpoint theories (Hartsock 1983), the dependency of the capitalist process of accumulation on reproductive functions outside the realm of production, brings the later squarely into commodity exchange and surplus value extraction . It is likewise evident that although not directly sold for profit, free water sources in Blantyre have historically been beholden to these capitalist production relations.

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In examining how free water sources are indirectly caught up in relations of commodity production and exchange, I sought to highlight the difficulty of any such water in Blantyre existing outside the realm of commodities. I nevertheless further reaffirmed such a difficulty by examining other instances through which water is directly exchanged for money. I argued that given the prominence of modern technologies and economic calculations in mediating hydro-social relations in this city, it is impossible for urbanised water to be provided as a non-commodity.

Through various water projects including those ideologically intended to provide water as a social good, the thesis has shown that money, technology and humans have combined in potent ways to harness such water through modern, capitalistic techniques, and in the process commodifying it. In demonstrating through this nuanced analysis how contemporary troubled socio-geographies of water reproduce these conditions in a city whose water is not privatised, this thesis further exposes the lie behind narratives that attributes the present water condition as a problem of water being a non-commodified commons. This, in fact, proves that the problem inherently lies in the dominance of modern rationalities and capitalist exchange relations within capitalist urbanisation of water.

8.4 Implications of the findings and key contributions

This thesis asked three key questions: (1) How has Blantyre’s waterscape historically been produced as a modern waterscape and with what implications to human -water relations? (2) How might the legacy of these historical geographical processes help explain the contemporary water condition in this city? (3) Is produced water in contemporary Blantyre a commodity? In asking these questions, the fundamental aim had been to engage critically with current debates on neo- liberalisation of water, and attempt to engender an alternative perspective to dominant ways failings in public water institutions are currently framed. Of particular interest was to add to critical academic voices that take issues with recent attempts to commodify all manner of nature including water (For example Bakker

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2002; Castree 2008b; Graefe 2011; Heynen 2007; Holifield 2004; Mansfield 2008;

Marvin and Laurie 1999; McCarthy and Prudham 2004; Peck 2001; Swyngedouw

2005). Specially focusing on some critical literature on water commodification/neo- liberalisation (Castro 2013; McDonald 2005; Loftus and McDonald 2001; Marvin and

Laurie 1999; Bakker 2007), I critiqued failure is some of this literature to engage more powerfully with neo-liberal narratives that attributes current global water access problems to failure of providing water as a common good for human existence. I insisted that such a failure inhere in this literature’s restricted analysis of water commodification in neo-liberal environmentalism, and failure to equally pay critical attention to the nature of the so called public water institutions in global south cities. In engaging with these issues through a historical geographical empirical analysis of the capitalist reproduction of Blantyre city’s waterscape, there are some important contributions this thesis makes to these debates. In this section, I highlight these key additions.

One of the problematic aspects I highlighted is the tendency in both pro and anti-neoliberalisation camps to suggest that water only becomes a commodity when fully amenable to capitalist free-markets. I argued that such a conceptualisation begins from an abstract notion of what a capitalist free market ought to look like and then the commodity nature of things is evaluated according to how they conform to this ideal notion of a commodity. This thesis though has espoused a materialist conception of the process of commodification that gives ontological priority to the actual material conditions, and the socionature relations through which things are constituted. It has submitted that understanding the process of commodification requires penetrating beyond the thing itself to inquire deeply into various capitalist socionatural relations through which things are commodified.

Using this ontological perspective, this thesis has shown that water does not necessarily need to be fully subjected to free-market principles to be a commodity.

In Blantyre, it has been established that the process of privatising water has not been

296 fully materialised. In fact, it has been argued that water here is deeply welded to state politics and other pre-capitalist socionatural relations. Through various concrete examples then, the thesis has demonstrated that water in Blantyre in its various forms is a second nature metabolised through capitalist relations of commodity production and exchange. It has been demonstrated that, there is no such a thing as non-commodified water in Blantyre. These findings have implications on political ecological readings of the process of commodification. It points to the need for an expanded reading of water commodification processes beyond the realm of neo-liberal free markets. A suggestion has been made and demonstrated on how such an expanded definition might proceed. Such an approach requires exploring the process of commodification within the general context of capitalist urbanisation of nature and space. Therefore, this thesis, arguably in a way not robustly done before in literature herein critically reviewed , has attempted to mobilise and bring into dialogue radical theory on production of nature and space (Harvey 1973; Lefebvre 1991; Smith 1990), and capitalist urbanism and urbanisation of injustice (Heynen et al. 2006; Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000;

Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003), in order to understand the process of water commodification beyond neo-liberal definitions that considers this as exclusive to free-market environmentalism.

Relatedly, in a way not rigorously pursued before in these studies, this thesis has mounted a challenge to a particularly debilitating narrative on water commodification that has powerfully been deployed to legitimise the neo- liberalisation of water in the global south. Neo-liberal ideologues (see for example,

Dugan and Andrew Fisher n.d; Farrell 2012; McDonnell 2004; (Solanes and

Gonzalez-Villarreal 1999) often couch their arguments—for freeing up nature/water from the fetters of the state to the dictatorship of free market—through the discursive framing of failings of the state. These failings are often taken to imply that they reflect inherent difficulties in providing water as a free good, and yet at the

297 same time, water under the control of the state is represented as not commodified.

The discursive equating of state failure to the failure of water socialism, is well acknowledged in critical scholarship on water neo-liberalisation (See Bakker 2007).

As I have hinted earlier in suggesting how this thesis has responded to this conundrum within critical literature, this neo-liberal claim has not been robustly subjected to critical scrutiny despite that it has provided a potent basis on which the neo-liberal agenda has pushed for the greater economisation of water and such other socionatures. I indicated in the opening section of this chapter that critical research has been caught up in these debates to the extent that, in attacking private capital’s interests to dispossess water, state welfarism is often tacitly defended. I argued that falling into this trap is unhelpful. This is more so considering the unprecedented levels of water injustices underprivileged residents of cities such as

Blantyre have suffered under state controlled water institutions. This thesis therefore has sought to problematise the nature of state water institutions by examining the actual socionatural relations and material conditions constituting such water politics.

In fact, this thesis has demonstrated that state water institutions in Blantyre, in their current form, distinctly operate according to the logic of capital. This therefore implies that the failings of state water politics reflect the failings and contradictions of this capitalist logic. While tearing apart this neo-liberal critique, this thesis also calls upon critical research to abandon the private vs. public water trap in which current debates on water commodification are played out. The thesis has demonstrated that being a bourgeois institution, the modern state in its current form cannot promote water equity and justice; thus, no such a thing as non- commodified common pool water can exist under water politics of the modern state.

The implications of this suggestion are radical. It calls for critical research on nature neo-liberalisation to strive to transcend the blinding effects of these bourgeois state

298 ideologies and envisage alternative water politics that is truly democratic and liberating outside the remit of the modern state.

Furthermore, in taking issue with literature on water neo- liberalisation/commodification, I called for a historical geographical reading of the process of commodification. This further builds on other distinct critical voices that have made such calls before. For instance, Page (2005) made similar calls through his geographical approach to the study of water commodification in Cameroon.

Equally, one of the arguments in Page’s study is that the process of water commodification is not new. I nevertheless take this histo-geographic reading of water commodification further by suggesting that this process is far more pervasive than Page suggests. Through biographical reading of water as a commodity, Page traces various moments in which water enters and exits the realm of commodities.

His analysis is however based on a constricted definition of the commodity market as constituted at the point and moment in which water is exchanged for money between the producer and consumer. I argued and demonstrated in this thesis that if an expanded definition of the realm of commodities that encompass the totality of capitalist socionatural relations and material conditions is considered, it is virtually impossible for things to exist outside the realm of capitalist commodification. By tracing the extent all nature of hydro-social permutations are deeply and often indirectly interwoven in the realm of capitalist commodity production and exchange in Blantyre, this thesis has called for a nuanced and relational understanding of the process of commodification beyond the exact point and time water is exchanged for money. This is a clarion call for critical scholarship to consider critically the hidden possibilities through which water and such like socionature is commodified beyond the neo-liberal definition of a capitalist market as spatio-temporally fixed.

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In underlining the complexity of the processes of social power and class exploitation behind the commodity veil, this thesis also sounds caution to critical research concerned with critiquing the fetishisation of human-nature relations under capitalist commodification (For example, Castree 2001; Fridell 2007; Kosoy and

Corbera 2010; Mansfield 2008). Although this work has ably concerned itself with penetrating beyond the mirage of commodities and thus exposing exploitative socio-ecological relations in capitalist production and exchange obscured therein, I would argue that more needs to be done to account for the complexity of these relations of social exploitation. This thesis has called particular attention to the dynamic nature of these processes of exploitation beyond the dichotomous view of a powerful class pitted against the weaker class. I highlighted the intra-class nature of exploitation as well as the possibilities in which the underprivileged exploit those in a class above them. Thus, for example, indigenous well diggers in Bangwe exploiting modern home owners desperate for water (chapter 7). This in a way was intended to challenge future research and practical water interventions, to pay closer attention to the complexity and dynamism of historically produced spaces of water access inequalities in the global south –through a more nuanced, relational, historical geographical materialist reading of urban waterscapes.

Last but not least, the strength of political ecology lies in a wide array of geographically-situated insights derived from multiplicity of case studies from different parts of the world. I lamented in the opening chapter, of the limited amount, within this emerging field, of serious academic work in interrogating and generating alternative understanding of the urban water condition in African cities.

Through an unexplored case study of Blantyre, this thesis goes some way to contribute towards filling this gap. It must be acknowledged though that even though the case study of Malawi more generally, and Blantyre in particular, has something to offer to this important debate, there is more that can be learnt from other historical-geographical contexts of Africa. For example, I have insisted in this

300 thesis that taking seriously the colonial urbanisation of human-nature relations within critical Geographical literature (represented for example by scholars such as

Becky Mansfield, Karen Bakker, Noel Castree, Mathew Gandy, Nick Heynen, Maria

Kaika, Alex Loftus, Scott Prudham, Erik Swyngedouw and many others), holds the potential for expanding both empirically and theoretically our understanding of the contemporary impetus to put a price tag on every aspect of socio-nature.

Nevertheless, while this and few other studies that foreground the colonial/historical in their analyses of these processes (For example, Willems-Braun,

Cole Harris and Ben Page), have shown how these historical-geographical perspectives can help expand the political ecological understanding of this configuration, there is more that can still be done. For instance, in the case of Africa, this study has focused on a particular context within the Anglophone colonial history. The colonisation of Africa, however, was much more expansive, and involved a mix of imperial powers with divergent and competing ideologies, motives and practices. A significant part of the African territory, for example, was colonised by France whose ideologies and approaches to colonial matters in many ways differed from that of Britain (see for example Baumgart 1982). Not only does the case study I have used in this project fail to speak to the realities of this

Francophone colonial experience, and its implications on human-nature relations, but also, there is an apparent lack of cross fertilisation between literature (mostly produced within Anglo-American academic/historical context) I have engaged with, and that of contemporary scholars doing political ecology in third world

Francophone countries. This is to suggest that, while this and other studies go some distance to contribute towards empirically and theoretically expanding political ecology through a systematic analysis of specific case studies, learning from these other historical-geographical/colonial experiences is equally crucial in advancing this understanding.

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8.5 Final Word

One of the questions that has intrigued me over the years is why do water problems in major cities of Malawi appear to get worse amidst persistent rhetoric from the political class to end the woes and multilateral institutions such as World Bank and others pumping in a lot of capital to ease the situation? As my curiosity in water politics grew and got more interested in scholarship around these issues, it become evident that these problems are not unique to Malawi alone. I came to realise that in many cities of the developing world water infrastructure is teetering on the edge with disastrous consequences to the wellbeing of many poor residents of these cities. My curiosity to inquire into the hows and whys of this debilitating water situation set me onto this research path. I wondered if at all there could be an alternative and more useful way this situation could be understood beyond the business as usual overly techno-centric ways in which these problems have been inquired into and solutions prescribed within dominant discourse. This then has been an attempt at a critical inquiry into the urban water problem that has mesmerised me over the years. Admittedly, mine is not the only attempt of this sort.

Also, research in urban political ecology has grappled with these questions way before I converted and became a disciple of this scholarship. However, I hope through my attempt to challenge discussions on neo-liberalisation of water, this thesis has something to contribute to these debates, not least through a different case study.

I hope to have somewhat engendered the need for a rethink in the manner critical scholarship grapples with neo-liberal ideologies on commodification of socionature. In highlighting that there is no such a thing as non-commodified water in Blantyre, I hope to have redirected attention away from an obsession with neo- liberal capitalist forms towards a more broad-based critical analysis of the capitalist processes through which nature is commodified. In arguing and demonstrating that commodification of water is a histo-geographic process I hope to have made a

302 case for critical scholarship to move beyond the sterilising and blinding fixities of neo-liberal ideologies on commodification of nature and inquire deeply into the myriad socionatural relations through which socionature is commodified in a predominantly capitalist societies we live in. I can also only hope that in problematising the capitalist role of state institutions in the production of nature and space, this thesis has mounted a challenge to neo-liberal ideologies that have often tended to conveniently conflate failings in current state-controlled water systems as failure of socially-open modes of governing waterscapes.

Personally, this thesis has opened up more nagging questions than those it hoped to answer. Through this research, it has become apparent that it is a far- fetched dream to envisage water justice within current modes of urban water governance in the global south. Insofar as this thesis has argued that at the heart of all these injustices are a particularly debilitating capitalist logic and its contradictions, it has become evident that radical change is necessary to fundamentally reconfigure this basic logic through which urban water infrastructure operates. It is only when such a logic is challenged and changed to socio-ecologically just alternatives that a truly benign waterscape can be established.

This nevertheless is where this thesis, or many of the studies of a similar kind, stops.

This thesis thus goes no further to suggest how such radical change could be achieved. This is unsettling. More so because aside from exposing the nature of this problem, this thesis offers no concrete hope in the way of solutions to the plight of many poor residents suffering from water injustices in Blantyre and beyond. This sense of frustration has been accentuated even more realising that this thesis offers no immediate respite to the immediate concerns I captured from the many desperate residents I encountered in the field. Time and again, these unfortunate residents inquired what use/or difference this research would make to their daily water struggle. Often my answers were of practical insignificance to these immediate concerns—“this is an academic research that only aimed to critically

303 understand the nature of water problem. Hopefully through a better understanding of such problems, such knowledge might be used to inform and change water policy and practice”; this is hopeless. For those working these waterscapes, theirs are real daily concerns which work such as this does not immediately speak to.

However, in highlighting these inherent inadequacies, I as much suggest a future agenda as I intend to call upon critical research to begin taking seriously what alternative water projects might we engage in beyond the ivory towers of the academy. For me, the future challenge beyond this thesis in more vivid ways becomes how best to channel the frustrations directed at the water establishment herein towards a struggle for a truly democratic political agenda. What path urban water political ecology takes and my contributions in pursuance of this agenda only time will tell.

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