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South Africans in rural communities report municipal neglect in service delivery after the elections (Bruce, 2014).
These findings suggest that the community’s participation in the elections yielded no tangible results for their community’s development. Instead, the community came to terms with the fact that the government used political party T-shirts as a replacement for service delivery. This neglect, as I show in the sections below, brings several other challenges for rural residents;
challenges that impact their livelihoods.
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assertion that “I feel like our health and lives are leaking out” demonstrates the state of despair and desperation by the participants. This is telling because it shows how marginalisation has impacted their daily lives and mental health. To suggest that their health and lives were leaking out was to lament the dire need for a remedy in their neglected community.
These findings affirm that local authorities neglect rural water infrastructure. However, the findings further speak to the neglect of people’s health and wellbeing. This sense of isolation and neglect was further expressed by 22-year-old Anitha, who lamented how "...as a community, it is like we have been neglected and left to fend for ourselves". Indeed, some of the participants experienced this neglect as a form of punishment. For example, Anitha further described this neglect as a form of being “sidelined and punished”. Moreover, she affirmed the conceptual framework about rural communities being neglected because of their geographic isolation (Bulled, 2017). She shared the following:
It feels like we are side-lined and punished just because we live far and aren't as rich as other places and are in rural areas (Anitha, 22 years, female, 9 October 2019).
Another participant, 34-year-old Zandile, concurred these sentiments by locating geographic isolation and neglect by local municipal councillors into her community’s struggle with access to safely managed water.
I just think we were very unlucky to live in a place so far where not even the councillors care what happens to us even when they experience it themselves. (Zandile, Female, 34 years, 9 October 2019).
The infrastructural and overall livelihood neglect experienced by the participants was not just at the state level. Still, the community continued to be ignored by its local leaders (i.e., the ward councillor and the local chief). The ignoring of the community’s needs is troubling for two reasons. First, the ward councillor is democratically elected by community members to provide leadership, foresee the successful delivery of services, and provide tailor-made socioeconomic interventions for the livelihood of the community (Vezi, 2016; Thornhill & Dlamini, 2012). In other words, the community had entrusted their lives and wellbeing to their ward councillor, who also acts as the governor for the community’s municipal budget. Second, it is noteworthy that the councillor lived in the community. Therefore, the neglect of the eMdubezweni community was not just happening on his watch, but he also witnessed it every day. These findings illustrate the nature, scope, and depth of government neglect, as suggested in the
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conceptual framework (See Chapter Two). Furthermore, as the entitlement theory suggests, the distribution of water resources in South Africa is not justified, since resource-poor rural communities, including eMdubezweni, remain marginalised, neglected, isolated, and ignored.
The participants also highlighted limited water resources. For example, they spoke about how several households were forced to share a single water tank. Regrettably, as shown above, these water infrastructure were often unkempt, making it very difficult for households to share water evenly. According to the participants, the water tanks were donated by local non-profit organisations, hoping that the local municipality would see to their maintenance and care.
However, this had not happened, and households were pushed into sharing an already limited resource. Nomathamsanqa, a 25-year-old woman, highlighted this plight by reporting that,
…its six households all collecting water from this one tank. We all have to run and collect the water in containers and buckets because if we don't, the water is going to leak excessively and be wasted. The households who don't have the small tanks that some households might have or don't have many containers to collect water in are badly affected. Especially because the borehole hand pump does not even work.
(Nomathamsanqa, female, 25 years, 9 October 2019).
Interestingly, Nomathamsanqa was the first participant to speak up about the two-borehole water pumps that were situated in eMdubezweni. These water pumps were installed by the municipality in 2018; however, they had never been maintained. At the time of data collection for this study, the water pumps were broken and did not produce water. Mbali, a 19-year-old participant, captured the only photo (Figure 5.3) that illustrated one of the community’s water- pumps; which the residents of eMdubezweni struggled to receive water from.
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that even the infrastructure (in the form of water pumps) provided to eMdubezweni was of low quality. The water pumps were broken within a few months after they were installed. This is concerning as it illustrates the little regard afforded to rural communities by the state and local government structures. My study is not the first to find that water infrastructure in rural areas stops functioning shortly after their installation. In Nigeria, Andres et al. (2018) report that up to 30% of water points installed failed within the first year after installation. These scholars further confirm that poor quality infrastructure is often installed in rural communities. They suggest that it is this poor quality that leads to the quick breakdown and failure of water infrastructure. Therefore, as the findings show, the operation and maintenance of water infrastructure in eMdubezweni were neglected and remained a great challenge for residents.
These findings affirm the theoretical framing of this study. For instance, the findings highlight gross inequality that manifests in the unjust neglect of rural communities (Manggat, Zain &
Jamaluddin, 2018).