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Land Tenure, Tenancy and Water Services Delivery in South Africa

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Land Tenure, Tenancy and Water Services Delivery in South Africa LAND TENURE, TENANCY AND WATER SERVICES DELIVERY IN SOUTH AFRICA Report to the WATER RESEARCH COMMISSION by Prof Lisa Thompson and Barbara Tapela PLAAS University of the Western Cape WRC Report No 2358/1/18 ISBN 978-0-6392-0087-3 March 2019 Obtainable from Water Research Commission Private Bag X03 GEZINA, 0031 [email protected] or download from www.wrc.org.za DISCLAIMER This report has been reviewed by the Water Research Commission (WRC) and approved for publication. Approval does not signify that the contents necessarily reflect the views and policies of the WRC nor does mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation for use. © Water Research Commission EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In urban areas, the removal of apartheid era influx control has meant that Black South Africans are no longer residents but citizens who ostensibly have rights to the city and greater degrees of freedom to establish their own homesteads within or outside of the ambit of the state and the residential property market. The consequence of this has been a reduction to the average household size, increase in number of households and a hyper-growth of the demand for housing and social services relative to the slower pace of the state-led delivery. The net effect has been an increase in backlogs of historically disadvantaged individuals (for this report HDIs) trapped on waiting lists or databases and/or dependent on informal rental and tenure markets (although for some informality is a choice rather than an entrapment). Between 2001 and 2011, formal dwellings increased from 68% to 78% and informal dwellings decreased only slightly from 16% to 14%. These figures mask the prevalence towards informality in urban areas due to rapid urbanization. Bore-Saladin and Turok point out that 1 in 5 households in metros live in shacks, and Cape Metro had the biggest increase (53%) followed by Johannesburg metro (17%). There has also been an increase in the number of household residing in backyard shacks. While metros show the greatest increase in informality of tenure, findings show this urbanization trend is spreading to non-metropolitan cities and towns and smaller towns across South Africa. Against this backdrop of rapid urbanization, critical leverage for “moving up the ladder” include access to housing, informal settlement upgrades, tenure security, formalization of tenancy and other mechanisms. For residents living in informal tenure and tenancy, the option of infrastructure upgrade requires close examination. Such upgrades entail an incremental approach to housing delivery rather than the delivery of a finished product or house. Given fiscal limitations, the incremental approach ensures a wider spread of financial resources to the benefit of a greater number of shelter deprived households. There also seem to be more plausible opportunities to link housing upgrades with the water and sanitation sector’s incremental approach to ensuring the progressive realization of the human rights of secure access to water and sanitation services. There seems a valid case for considering upgrade options for households living with insecure access to services, particularly those in informal tenure and tenancy settings, however the complexity of these forms of tenure have yet to be fully understood and characterized. Increases in informal tenancy in both formal and informal setting have been less visible and policy options for improved security of access to water and sanitation services even less clearly understood. This is because the livelihoods of many of these residents involve mobility, often straddling the divides or rural-urban areas, formal-informal economies as well as administrative and political boundaries. Tenants living in rural settings seem to be even less visible than those found in urban areas. Against this background, the project sought to identify key questions that will help to develop policy tools to enable key stakeholders to deal with water and sanitation service iii delivery challenges emerging from the scenario of rapid urbanization and de-agrarianisation of the post 1994 South African socio-economic landscape. These tools may help to address the challenges presented by differing formal and informal land tenure and tenancy arrangements. The study builds on the findings of a previous WRC study undertaken by Dr. Barbara Tapela on Social Protest and Water Services delivery in South Africa’ (see chapter 1 and Appendix 1). It examined the policy stress of rising demands for social services and the citizenry’s dissatisfaction with unmet expectations. Social protest and other coping strategies and/or peaceful engagement with municipalities formed a key focus. The study found that correlations between protest and dissatisfaction were not that simple. Discrepancies with regard to grievance resolution became somewhat clearer at ward- rather than municipal- or provincial level. From the ward-level vantage point, it was confirmed that grievances over water and sanitation services tended to revolve around quality of access. These grievances are amplified by a host of other variables including the politics of civil society engagement, the role of the social media, and the timing of elections. While these findings were useful in themselves, the analysis fell short of providing the nuance required to develop effective policy interventions. This study was premised upon the view that any useful analysis of the post-apartheid water and sanitation services delivery challenge necessarily has to move beyond the singular lens on social protest to include a more complex overlay of lenses that include focusing on the micro- level of the plot within urban and rural low- and middle-income residential areas. As key analytical concepts, land tenure and tenancy help to transcend the singularity of the social protest lens. The 9 key questions this study sought to address can be summarized as follows: 1. What are the challenges presented by formal and informal land tenure and tenancy arrangements in terms of equitable access to water and sanitation for the urban and rural poor, marginalised and vulnerable groups in South Africa? 2. What is the characterization of the mix of land tenure and tenancy arrangements that fall within and/or outside of the ambit of the formal land registry system in selected low- and middle-income areas? 3. What are the patterns of access to water and sanitation services within the mix of formal and informal tenure and tenancy arrangements in these areas? 4. Related to question 3, what is the relationship between tenure security, tenancy and investment in water and sanitation services in these areas? 5. What are the gender and livelihood issues associated with challenges of access to water and sanitation services in the mix of tenure and tenancy arrangements described in the first deliverable report? 6. What could be the appropriate water and sanitation service models for different tenure and tenancy profiles? 7. What are the possible options for reinforcing the strategic capacity of the municipality and service providers? iv 8. What are the possible options for incentivizing investments by landlords in water and sanitation services? 9. What practical framework can be used to address identified challenges presented by land tenure and tenancy in water and sanitation in the areas described above? This study anchored in the conceptual framework which locates the relationship between land tenure, tenancy and sanitation services delivery in a rapidly urbanizing and de-agrarianising political economy in terms of an adapted ‘hydro-social contract’ that exists between the State, Society and Markets. This term refers to the pervading values and often implicit agreements between communities, governments and business on how water should be managed. This study extended Lundqvuist’s depoliticized construct to include 3 key points of departure. The first point is that the South African hydro-contract has not been shaped by the dominant cultural perspective and historically embedded water values but has been molded by a racially based historical political economy governing resource allocation. Given this political history, the complexity of water resource management should not be sanitized and/or under-estimated. The second conceptual point of departure in understanding the triadic hydro-social contract is that it is neither equal in terms of power relations and exercise of rights and responsibilities, nor value free, in terms of ethics, principles, ideologies, interests and motivations. Public statements about the common interest or public partnerships do not necessarily resolve the vulnerability of the hydro-social contract to the perversions of the otherwise well-intended collaborations between States and Markets. As previous research highlights, perceptions of market capture, the collapse of invited spaces and weaknesses in governance and regulatory frameworks strongly explain the increase in civil society mobilisations since 2009, as well as the increased role of media and social protests by citizenry (Tapela et al., 2015). The third point of departure is that the hydro-social contract is transacted through the socio-ecological fabric of space through time. Space, in this study, refers to the physical embodiment of the linkage between land, housing, water resources, water and sanitation infrastructure and social constructs, particularly property rights that the state, markets and society craft. Without security of tenure or tenancy, investment
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