On Wednesday March 1st, Steven Robins gave a SASA lunch talk titled, “Shit Politics in the Post-Apartheid Postcolony: Sanitation Activism and Insurgent Citizenship in Cape Town.” Dr. Robins is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Dr. Robins previously worked for years on AIDS activism and relies heavily on these same skills as he has transitioned to sanitation activism.
Dr. Robins opened the talk describing the events that followed the flinging of excrement on the Rhodes statue at the University of Cape Town on March 12th, 2015. This event, which had been planned as a performance art intervention to avoid arrest, then sparked the Rhodes Must Fall and Fees Must Fall protests on university campuses. These protests, Robins argues, are directly related to the issues of sanitation and the shit that residents have to smell in the shanty towns. Once dubbed ‘the city of stinks’, Cape Town has had major issues with sewage running into the streets and the public health concerns were confirmed with cases of the Bubonic Plague began to occur.
Sanitation deficiencies are related to feelings of shame and humiliation. Further, sanitation issues intersect with daily violence as residents in the settlements, and particularly women and children, faced increased levels of danger when they went out at night to relieve themselves. In some instances, young girls had negotiated sexual contracts with local gangs to gain protection from the everyday violence. The activism that has arisen to combat these issues takes many forms. First, there is the issue of creating awareness about the constitutionally protected rights to clean water and sanitation (within South Africa’s constitution). Women and others have begun to give testimonies about their attacks when they went out to relieve themselves at sanitation meetings. Toilet cues, where dozens line up to use an unclean public toilet, are another form of protest which draws media attention. Activist efforts are drawing attention to these infrastructural inequalities and residents are increasingly demanding their right to clean sanitation.