Research Paper
Assessing equity: a way to improve sanitation service
delivery in South African informal settlements
S. M. Pan, N. P. Armitage and M. B. van Ryneveld
ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the need to incorporate equity assessment into the planning and monitoring of
sanitation service delivery to South African informal settlements. Equity assessment criteria were
drawn from literature and a study of sanitation service delivery to informal settlements in three South
African municipalities (Cape Town, Johannesburg and eThekwini) over the period 2012–2015. Three key
dimensions of equity – resource allocation, access and stakeholder perceptions – were identified.
These had eight associated criteria: (1) funds allocated for basic sanitation, (2) number of staff allocated
to informal settlements, (3) disparities in access, (4) proportion of functioning sanitation facilities,
(5) menstrual hygiene management (MHM) inclusion, (6) access to information, (7) meets users’ notions
of dignity, and (8) integration of the perspectives of key stakeholders. Key findings of the study indicate
that the current focus on reducing service backlogs largely ignores equity and there is a need to better
address this through the incorporation of: equity assessments, improving access to information, and
the inclusion of marginalised communities in the planning of sanitation services.
S. M. Pan (corresponding author)
N. P. Armitage
M. B. van Ryneveld
Department of Civil Engineering,
University of Cape Town,
Rondebosch 7700,
South Africa
E-mail: sphpan@gmail.com
Key words | equity, informal settlements, sanitation, South Africa
INTRODUCTION
The aim to achieve universal sanitation access in South
Africa provides a unique opportunity to set positive regional
precedents in sub-Saharan Africa. As one of the wealthiest
countries in sub-Saharan Africa (Briceño-garmendia et al.
; World Bank ) it has an advantage over many
neighbouring countries. The country, however, also faces
major challenges as it is one of the world’s most unequal
in terms of income distribution (van der Berg ;
UN-HABITAT ) and access to services.
This paper describes the outcome of a study into how to
incorporate equity assessment into sanitation service deliv-
ery to South African informal settlements and provides an
example of potential applications to improve sanitation
services. The working definition of equity used here refers
to the ethical concepts relating to notions of social justice,
fairness and human rights based on need as a foundation
for the distribution of resources (Scott et al. ) and
power (Oden ).
The South African government is committed to provid-
ing a baseline level of ‘free basic services’ (water,
sanitation, refuse removal and electricity) to all indigent
households (DME ; DWAF ; Muller ), a sub-
stantial proportion of whom live in informal settlements.
Sanitation as a way of promoting dignity, which has been
connected to concepts of urban citizenship, and modernity
(Morales et al. : p. 2816; Robins ) has been used
to advocate a ‘rights-based’ argument for government-
funded sanitation service improvements in informal settle-
ments using the logic that having to use ‘unhygienic,
inadequate toilet facilities impairs dignity’ (Tissington ).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY 4.0), which permits copying,
adaptation and redistribution, provided the original work is properly cited
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
429 Research Paper © 2018 The Authors Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development | 08.3 | 2018
doi: 10.2166/washdev.2018.166
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