The Critique of Everyday Drought: A Feminist Decolonial Analysis of Hydro-Climate Policies in Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract

This dissertation offers a feminist decolonial analysis of the power dynamics shaping urban hydro-climate policies in the context of a growing push by the World Bank and other powerful actors to create new opportunities for water-related private investments in the global South. Drawing from the emblematic case of Cape Town, South Africa, this research demonstrates the ways in which finance-driven reforms aimed at making the urban water system more resilient to climate change are intensifying the exploitation of historically marginalized populations – in this case black women living in precarious housing conditions in townships and informal settlements. My investigation into Cape Town’s deepening entanglements with global finance through climate/water resilience strategies foregrounds the experiences of women organizing for water justice in the underserviced margins of the city. To do so, I adopted a collaborative feminist approach combining qualitative field research with critical policy analysis. I conducted 43 semi-structured interviews with women organizers and participated in meetings and events organized by grassroots networks over the course of two visits to Cape Town in 2018 and 2019. The findings of this ethnographic research then shaped the parameters of a critical policy analysis in which 21 documents (technical reports, strategic plans, etc. produced by the City of Cape Town and various public-private policy institutions) were examined with the day-to-day experiences, acts of resistance and aspirations of frontline women in mind. Building theory from ‘situated solidarities’ and through the prism of ‘a black sense of place’, I argue that water/climate resilience policies claiming to modernize or “future-proof” the City have further entrenched apartheid geographies of social reproduction in Cape Town. By centering marginalized perspectives, this study contributes to feminist efforts towards the heterogenization of urban political ecology.