Lesley Green is a Professor of Anthropology and the director of Environmental Humanities South at the University of Cape Town.
The City of Cape Town seems to have finally realised after 15 years of grassroots organising against the dreaded water management device (WMD) that the system needs to go. However, the proposal merely offers fresh strategies in the form of “new” technological instruments that will deprive people of adequate supplies of water and does so amid a public health crisis.
The approach is consistent with the city’s long history of punishing people who cannot pay for water and violates their right to water under Chapter 2 of the Constitution, as legislated by the Water Services Act 108 of 1997.