Research, part of a special feature on The Next Wave in Water Governance

INTRODUCTION

Water scarcity profoundly shapes the lived experiences of low-income women of color from the peripheral neighborhoods of Cape Town, South Africa. When participants were asked what water means to them, all responded: “water is life.” Water scarcity presents a serious threat to human lives and livelihoods, one that cities in Africa must increasingly contend with (Trisos et al. 2022).

Water scarcity is a problem of global magnitude, and it represents a key challenge for urban governance (Rodina and Harris 2016, Rodina 2019). In cities, climate-induced rising temperatures and droughts meet (often unrestrained) development, land use transformations, and changing water procurement and consumption patterns leading to exacerbated conditions of water stress and shortages (Dodman et al. 2023). The observed impacts of water scarcity in African cities range from reduced water supply and hydroelectric power generation to cascading adverse effects on food, health, tourism, and economies, coupled with increased inequality of water access (Chitonge 2020, Trisos et al. 2022). Water struggles are already one of the main concerns of climate change adaptation worldwide (Solecki et al. 2024). It is expected that 350 million additional urban dwellers will face severe water shortages with 1.5 °C of global warming (Liu et al. 2018), while reduced water availability is expected to hit southern and north Africa particularly hard (Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2016).

The urgent need for climate-sensitive water governance has become perhaps most palpable after the last Cape Town water crisis. Water shortages experienced in the city between 2015–2018 represented one of the most severe urban droughts documented in modern history (Fallon 2018). In response to the crisis, and in the lead-up to a potential Day Zero, the municipal government extended existing regulations and introduced new measures including water restrictions, water management devices, and novel communication strategies (Parks et al. 2019). The city’s reaction to the severe water scarcity scenario at the municipal level also helped to create the momentum to rapidly decrease citizens’ water use within communities and households (Fallon 2018). Although Cape Town is not the only nor the first major city to face a serious water crisis, it has become “a global symbol for cities facing escalating water shortages, attracting attention from all over the world” (Swatuk et al. 2021:7) on how to address compounding urban and environmental challenges, and govern water threats. However, despite significant public and private investments in water security since the crises, 25% of Cape Town’s population remains under persistent water stress (Dodman et al. 2023). With my research, I shed light on how these issues shape the lived experiences of those situated in the aforementioned group.

The literature is clear: water struggles do not affect everyone equally (see Sultana and Loftus 2013, Sultana 2018). Water scarcity has long been proven to generate uneven effects across different population groups, severely affecting populations with fewer or marginal resources (Hlahla 2022). Feminist political ecology holds that gender is a crucial variable that intersects with other dimensions of life such as class and color to shape one’s access, control, and knowledge over natural resources (Sundberg 2016), including water. Although scholarship (Bisht 2005, Truelove 2011, Herrero 2015, Sehring et al. 2022) and policy documents and official reports (City of Cape Town 2019a, Ziervogel 2019, Swatuk et al. 2021) highlight some of the major socio-environmental threats engendered by water scarcity, further research is required to unravel how multiple axes of social differentiation intersect across scales to shape everyday experiences with and without water. Before moving on, it is important to clarify that by scales of governance I understand the spatial and institutional levels in which power relations, knowledge, and resource decisions are negotiated, shaped by intersecting inequalities such as gender, class, and color.

Drawing on feminist political ecology, this research employs a scalar and intersectional approach to examine how water scarcity impacts the lived experiences of low-income women of color in Cape Town’s peripheral informal settlements. The reason for this choice lies on the shared suspicion that low-income women of color are the most affected community members by water shortages (Hlahla 2022). In this research, I sought to adopt the distinctions articulated by my interviewees in Cape Town to remain attentive to their own ways of making sense of their realities. It is important to acknowledge that in South Africa, Black typically refers specifically to people classified under the apartheid as African (and sometimes, in broader usage, also includes Colored and Indian people), while “colored” generally refer to those who are not white but are not Black African, such as the Koi and Indian communities (Posel 2001). Hence, I will refer to “people of color” for all the non-white, low-income women I interviewed. By applying the intersecting lenses of gender, color, and income, this study aims to examine the effects of persistent water scarcity on the daily lives and well-being of impoverished communities.

This research draws on data collected between January and March 2023 by the author through 28 semi-structured interviews with low-income women of color residing in Cape Town’s peripherical informal settlements (townships) and with technical experts in water governance, water activism, and policy analysis. The sample was divided into two main groups to distinguish between lived experience and professional or academic perspectives. Fourteen from diverse townships, ages, and family situations were selected, alongside experts working in politics, activism, academia, and practice. Snowball sampling was used with the first group, complemented by contacts through Mother City Kitchen and Uthando, two NGOs supporting low-income women of color in Khayelitsha, one of the townships of the city. For technical expert interviews, initial outreach to colleagues at the Future Water Institute facilitated further connections with relevant stakeholders in the city.

CAPE TOWN’S UNEQUAL WATERSCAPE

Cape Town is one of the three capital cities in South Africa and is currently the legislative capital of the country. It is a coastal city in the southwestern part of the Western Cape province. The city is the second metropolis by population size in South Africa (Swatuk et al. 2021) with 4.4 million people, the majority of whom are Black (43%) and Colored (40%; City of Cape Town 2019b). Cape Town’s society is also highly unequal; it is estimated that over two million people, or 45.9% of all people of color, are living in poverty, and a total of 61.4% of this group are Black African people (City of Cape Town 2019b). One of the key struggles of the city is its informal settlements, popularly known as townships. Cape Town has over two million inhabitants who are living in these peripheral areas of the city, where basic services are unreliable and access to essential resources like water compounds the many daily challenges they navigate, including, among others, caregiving, employment, housing, or personal safety.

Regarding water access, while 80% of the inhabitants of the city have piped water inside their houses, there are still 20% who do not have access to water in their households (City of Cape Town 2019b), and this number is expected to be higher given the fact that many households remain unaccounted for in official surveys.

The 2015–2018 drought

Between 2015 and 2018, Cape Town experienced one of its longest droughts, leading to severe water shortages and the Day Zero crisis. The impact of water scarcity was uneven: although wealthier neighborhoods experienced a more pronounced reduction from previously abundant water supply, poorer communities continued to endure harsher conditions due to longstanding inadequate infrastructure and limited access, resulting in greater overall hardship. In response, Cape Town implemented strict water rationing, public awareness campaigns, and invested in desalination, groundwater extraction, and water recycling. Although water rationing and public awareness campaigns were formally applied citywide, their implementation and impacts differed drastically across neighborhoods and socioeconomic areas, especially because wealthier neighborhoods could mitigate restrictions through private infrastructure. Following the crisis, the city reviewed and updated its water governance policies, producing key documents such as the revised Cape Town Water Strategy (City of Cape Town 2019a), Unpacking the Cape Town Drought: Lessons Learned (Ziervogel 2019), and Towards the Blue-Green City: Building Urban Water Resilience (Swatuk et al. 2021).

Although climate change significantly stressed Cape Town’s water availability (IPCC 2022), the crisis also stemmed from broader political and institutional issues. Taylor (2016) highlighted Cape Town’s multiple governance problems, including poor inter-departmental connections and the lack of a holistic city strategy. These challenges are compounded by inadequate communication across government levels and departments, impacting water management and social services (Millington and Sheba 2021). The literature often addresses the broad implications of the 50 liter daily water restriction but frequently neglects its effects on essential caregiving and the emotional burden of managing water resources (Schuster et al. 2020, Romans i Torrent 2023, Rosinger 2023). These restrictions strain practical arrangements and affect mental health, aspects often missing from empirical data. A comprehensive perspective that integrates systemic injustices and oppressions is essential for understanding and addressing the full impact of water scarcity on marginalized communities, ensuring policies address both tangible and intangible effects.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Contributions from political ecologists have long called attention to the ways water flows and access are unevenly distributed across space, reproducing and solidifying unequal urban geographies (see Kaika 2003, Swyngedouw 2004, Ranganathan and Balazs 2015). This literature challenges strictly technical approaches to water provision by tracing the complex ways political, cultural, and historical conditions entwine to produce socio-technical water strategies. Generally, such networks follow socioeconomic and income lines, with little or no provision for those situated at the margins of development (i.e., the urban periphery; Scheba et al. 2021). In these spaces, procuring water becomes yet another service citizens must compensate for themselves, in ways that are often bounded by how different individuals are positioned within society.

As feminist political ecologists contend, water scarcity is a gendered issue (Bisht 2005, Truelove 2011, 2019, Tandon et al. 2024). Numerous studies have demonstrated how urban water insecurity and inequality disproportionately impact women in economically vulnerable settings (Davis 1982, Truelove 2011, 2019, Elmhirst 2015, Herrero 2015, Sundberg 2016, Bauhardt and Harcourt 2018, Livingston 2021, Hlahla 2022, Denny 2023). In many countries in the Majority World, particularly among the poorest populations, the responsibility for procuring water is unevenly distributed along gender lines, largely due to its strong association with caregiving duties (Harris et al. 2017, Denny 2023). Moreover, women’s participation in water governance structures, such as users’ associations or irrigation projects, does not necessarily lead to empowerment or tangible improvements in their lives. Even when women attend meetings by mandate, gender roles often persist, with women serving food to men and taking on more care work (Caretta et al. 2015 as cited in Dickin and Caretta 2022). Additionally, the gendered nature of water stress/management is very present in the Minority World too (Radonic and Jacob 2021).

Water scarcity is also an intertwined issue (Harrington et al. 2023, Savelli 2023, David and Hughes 2024, Milligan et al. 2024). Crenshaw (1989) is the creator of the theory of intersectionality, a theoretical framework premised on the idea of overlapping forms of discrimination, which are not often recognized by legal or institutional structures. This lens, for instance, highlights how low-income women of color face compounded discrimination due to both color and gender, as well as how other women face it due to their age, abilities, country of origin, socioeconomic background, or sexual orientation (Collins and Bilge 2020). Cape Town’s urban landscape and social structures remain profoundly shaped by the path dependencies of apartheid policies (Kaziboni 2024), resulting in systemic exclusion and marginalization of Black and Colored people, which has produced deeply racialized disparities in access to water resources within the townships. The additional struggles, added to a lack of basic services provision as mentioned earlier, add up the way water shapes what I describe as a “bounded existence,” meaning a lived reality constrained by socioeconomic and environmental conditions that severely limit an individuals’ agency, autonomy, and capacity to make choices or escape adverse circumstances (Ziervogel 2019, Millington and Scheba 2021, Swatuk et al. 2021).

However, inequalities based on income, gender, and color are not experienced in isolation. Feminist political ecologists call attention to how gender intersects with class and color in shaping access to natural resources (Sundberg 2016), foregrounding interlocking systems of differentiation and oppression that impinge on marginalized groups’ everyday realities (Mohanty 1984, Collins 2015, Sultana 2020). Together, these contributions emphasize the importance of an intersectional lens for understanding situated urban water struggles. Income intersects with gender but also color, disability, age, and sexual orientation (Collins 2015, Harrington et al. 2023) to shape individual and collective experiences of living with and without water. Social identities are constituted in and through relations with nature and everyday material practices and “an important ethical concern is to understand how different kinds of inequality intersect with one another” (Harrington et al. 2023:333). An intersectional approach can help us better understand the multi-dimensional experiences of individuals and communities facing water insecurity by revealing overlapping structures of inequality, exclusion, and discrimination (Harrington et al. 2023). By doing so, it ensures more holistic policy responses that specifically target these multiple layers of exclusion, especially those concerning factors like color and ethnicity that are often overlooked in conventional discussions on water security (Henrique and Tschakert 2021, Tschakert et al. 2023, Geagea et al. 2024, Wilson et al. 2024).

By foregrounding situated lived experiences of water struggles, a feminist political ecology approach invites a more nuanced understanding of environmental crises that go beyond quantitative measurements and instead attends to how these crises are lived, felt, and navigated through embodied, gendered experiences. As Truelove wrote:

Feminist political ecology focuses attention on the bodily scale of water-related inequalities, demonstrating how wider political, discursive, and material factors that co-produce urban water are situated and unevenly embodied. (Truelove 2011:3)

Crucially, this work links multiple scales of governance, explaining how decisions taken at the municipal and other higher levels of governance affect marginalized groups’ needs and ability to procure resources in the spaces of the everyday (Truelove 2011, Henrique and Tschakert 2019). However, less attention has been paid thus far to how people’s specific and intersecting positioning in society is shaped by and influence their own decision making at multiple scales, from their bodies to their households and communities at large.

To elucidate the various degrees of water scarcity experienced by low-income women of color on the periphery of the city, I have outlined the different scales to be analyzed in Figure 1.

METHODOLOGY

This research combined semi-structured interviews with two key groups: subject-matter experts and low-income women of color from diverse townships in Cape Town, South Africa, along with a review of official documents and policy papers addressing the city’s drought. Given the intertwined reality of this issue, intersectionality was perceived as the most fitting framework to pair with feminist political ecology. Participants were recruited through purposive and snowball sampling, drawing on established community contacts. One important clarification was that only women were considered for the sample and male perspectives were not considered for this research. Although acknowledging the value of comparative analysis and the importance of engaging with masculinities and male lived experiences, this research centers the gendered realities of low-income women of color, whose voices remain systematically marginalized in water governance and policy frameworks. This focus reflects both the historical underrepresentation of these groups and the methodological choices shaped by the study’s scope and resource constraints. As such, interviews and data collection were deliberately designed to foreground women’s experiences in line with a feminist political ecology approach that prioritizes the embodied, everyday impacts of water scarcity on those most burdened by caregiving responsibilities. Nonetheless, this does not preclude the significance of men’s experiences, particularly because they too are shaped by intersecting structures of race, class, and place. Future research would benefit from examining these dynamics more closely because doing so would contribute to a more holistic understanding of how water insecurity is lived and negotiated across diverse social positions.

Ethical clearance was obtained both from the author’s Master’s program and the affiliated institution in Cape Town, under the supervision of researchers at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and the Future Water Institute (FWI). To protect anonymity, all low-income women of color participants selected pseudonyms, and experts are quoted only with their initials. Only one of them, activist Faeza Meyer, accepted to be cited with attribution. In line with principles of accountability and ethical engagement, the final draft of the research was shared with participants before submission, and revisions were incorporated where requested. Findings were also shared with local organizations and support was offered to help disseminate or present the results in the future, for example, sharing a report with activist Faeza Meyer and the African Water Commons Collective or the interviewed policymakers from the South African Parliament. This process underscored the practical complexities of working with marginalized communities, demonstrating that ethical and participatory research often depends less on formal protocols than on cultivating trust and relational accountability.

ANALYSIS

The semi-structured interviews with the low-income women of color were collected during the fieldwork stay in Cape Town. The findings draw on 14 interviews and informal conversations to explain how access to water, and the lack thereof, is experienced by its citizens, with a special focus on their gendered embodied experiences from their body to their families to the township communities. Before delving into the significance of water and its absence in the daily experiences of a community, it is important to reflect on the meaning that this common good holds for its members. When conducting the interviews and inquiring about the meaning of water to them, the most recurrent response was “water is life.” “What is a life without water? You can die of dehydration. Water is life, is the fountain of life,” claimed one of the participants at the beginning of the interview (Nkosazana, interview 21/02/2023). This sentiment was echoed among all low-income women of color interviewed, indicating that it is either a shared belief, a cultural approach to the resource, or a general assumption that was stressed during the water crisis. As Kaya added:

... we need water... without water, we can’t live. We can be hungry, but I still need water... we need to drink, to wash, especially the ladies when we have our monthly [period] and we need to wash more, we cannot be dehydrated because then we get bad... We need water every day (Kaya, interview 21/02/2023).

Therefore, water holds significance not only in its practical applications in everyday life but also as a resource and an existential concept. This will be crucial for the further scalable understanding of how the resource shapes the daily experiences of low-income women of color in the bounded periphery of Cape Town. For instance, the embodied experiences of fear, anxiety, frustration, and defeat among women navigating conditions of daily scarcity.

The body: experiences at the core of a bounded existence

Low-income women of color’s bodies are the starting point of this complex conflict. Water, as an embodied experience, is key for understanding this primary level of impact.

350 liters of water per day for a single household is not always enough. Washing takes 70 litres of water, how much is going to be to use the toilet, to drink, to prepare kinder food? (Kaya, interview 21/02/2023).

Most of the participants claimed that their families do not have enough water for living. Responsibilities over procuring water are unevenly distributed along gendered lines. Therefore, this research posits that water constitutes a fundamental aspect of caregiving responsibilities. In interviews, a significant number of participants reported that within their households, the responsibility for fetching water typically fell upon women (often daughters or grandmothers) who are generally not employed and perceived to have the available time for this task.

The availability of water in these communities varies significantly. Some participants benefit from free but restricted access to water, typically provided through South Africa’s universal basic water allowance policy, which entitles households to a minimum of six kiloliters of free water per month (https://www.gov.za/faq/government-services/how-do-i-access-free-basic-municipal-services). However, this policy is unevenly implemented, and in practice, the volume and regularity of supply differ across municipalities and neighborhoods. For many, this free access is conditional on the household being registered as indigent. The limit is quickly reached, leading to disconnection or extra charges. Conversely, participants with paid access often face substantial water bills, which contribute to financial strain and water-related stress in the household. A minority of participants do not have piped water to their homes at all and rely instead on shared infrastructure, such as communal standpipes or “jojo” tanks, both during and outside of periods of acute scarcity.

When queried about their actions during periods of insufficient water availability at home, the majority responded that they accessed water from communal pipes or natural springs. However, this solution incurred significant costs in terms of time and finances. Participants often needed to travel by car or shared transport to these water sources, and at times, they had to purchase bottled water, which posed a financial burden given their low incomes. Moreover, Mandisa stressed that “it was too many people and some people who cannot walk” (Mandisa, interview 02/03/2023), emphasizing the fact that sometimes there was not enough water available for everyone and that those people who suffer from a disability or who could not make the journey to fetch water were the most affected. Furthermore, these conditions affected not only women but also the specific intersectionalities (Crenshaw 1989) unique to everyone. These conditions can create additional barriers to water collection, such as reliance on the solidarity of other community members, increased difficulties in gathering water due to ill or elder bodies. One of the people with who I conversed was Nono, the principal of a kindergarten in her forties, who also lived in Khayelitsha, one of the townships of Cape Town. During our conversation, she explained:

I remember when we needed to use water for breakfast and sometimes, we couldn’t get a bucket to help us to go and carry a lot of water. Me and my sister as well, working as a team, a family team. And then I used to carry a big bucket, which is 20 liters or 25 litres of weight, I think two kilometers away from where we are now to get some water for breakfast. And we had to go. We just drop the water and go back, and go to drop the water and go back, which was very, very painful... because it’s far. And when you come back, the water is heavy. Sometimes the sun is very, very hot. Oh, it was very, very, very bad (Nono, interview 23/02/2023).

In testimonials such as Nono’s we can observe how embodied experiences of water scarcity unfold through physical exhaustion, burden of family duties, and emotional distress. Her voice illustrated the compounded strain that women face due to the gendered distribution of water-related responsibilities, particularly when infrastructure is absent or unreliable. The repetition of physically demanding tasks, such as carrying heavy buckets over long distances in enduring conditions reveals a deeply gendered burden that is often overlooked in policy discourse.

Although the information above suggests that water scarcity affects women differently than men, opinions among participants varied. Some women did not believe there was a significant gender difference in the impact of water shortages, arguing that both men and women face challenges, albeit in different ways. However, there was one point on which all women agreed: women need more water, and women need to wash more than men, particularly related to menstruation and female hygiene:

Especially when it comes to when we have our period every month, right? You know, it was hard for me as a woman because whenever I change, I want to wash... It might not be a full bath or a shower, but... In your hand you want to put on some water to wash yourself out (Malaika, interview 21/02/2023).

Consequently, low-income women of color encounter compounded difficulties due to limited water availability. This situation not only disrupts their daily routines and tasks but also imposes a precarious existence characterized by scarcity and unreliability.

The household: the burden of care duties on low-income women of color

The second scale at which this research directs its attention is the household. Existing literature suggests that women often experience distinct impacts from water scarcity (Sultana 2020, Radonic and Jacob 2021), particularly in contexts in which caregiving and domestic responsibilities are primarily assigned to them. Within such settings, the household can also be considered a relevant unit of analysis because water-related challenges tend to influence family dynamics and the distribution of resources (Shah et al. 2023). In many cases, women hold a dual role, contributing significantly to water management while also facing specific vulnerabilities related to water shortages, especially when it comes to feminine healthcare. However, the degree and nature of this burden may vary depending on socio-cultural, economical, and geographical contexts.

As I stressed earlier, hygiene and health are recurrent concerns (Schuster et al. 2019, McCue 2020). Most interviewees expressed concern about ensuring their families had sufficient water for bathing, cooking, and maintaining a clean environment, with particular emphasis on the needs of vulnerable members such as children and the elderly. For instance, Zola articulated that her primary concern was contracting an infection or disease due to poor water quality. Similarly, Aziza emphasized the frequent occurrences of dehydration resulting from water scarcity and expressed fear that one of her family members might suffer from it. Children being infected by bacteria was also a significant concern, especially among the mothers: “If there is no water there will be more germs in the kids and they will get sick” (Zola, interview 02/03/2023). The difficult conditions that characterize informal settlements are a problem for the well-being of most of the inhabitants of these peripheral areas, but in terms of water, the concern raises. Thandiwe, an activist from Khayelitsha, stressed her main concern regarding women and children:

Most of the people that are living in informal settlements are people that have health issues. Some of them are living with tuberculosis. Some of them are living with HIV. Some of them are living with diabetes. Some of them are living with many, many, many, many, many illnesses (Thandiwe, interview 23/02/2023).

This quote underscores how intersectionality manifests in informal settlements, where health conditions such as HIV, tuberculosis, and diabetes intersect with spatial and economic marginalization, producing layered and mutually reinforcing vulnerabilities (Ntwana 2021, Shannon et al. 2022, Nqadala 2024). Another fundamental factor in understanding the perception of water scarcity is how, when discussing their personal experiences within their families and households, the conversation becomes more emotional and personal. Safety is usually the issue that worries mothers and heads of families the most:

Everything worries me, I can keep my children inside, inside and they cannot go out and not in the gang violence, everything. If I would. But unfortunately, you need to make them wise, expressed Malaika (Malaika, interview 21/02/2023).

The sense of insecurity arises from various factors, with water contamination, illnesses, or scarcity adding to the concerns women harbor for their domestic unit. However, safety is comprehended in its widest sense, encompassing fluctuations in water availability as integral to this experience of insecurity.

Another significant preoccupation is water quality:

Why is sometimes the water brown? claimed Nobantu (Nobantu, interview 02/03/2023), adding We don’t want the children to drink the water because we don’t know what the problem is.

In some households, the water from the tap comes in a brownish color. Interviewed experts attribute the coloration of the water to the presence of natural tannins originating from plant material in the springs and waterfalls of Table Mountain. They emphasize that while these tannins impart a distinct tint, they bear no direct implications for the overall quality of the water. However, other experts, such as A. A., declared that it is understandable that a lot of people do not trust the reliability of bad-looking water due to their mistrust of the authorities (A. A., interview 14/03/2023). The volatility and inconsistency inherent in their lived experiences have instilled a profound distrust and cultivated a propensity toward cautiousness in acknowledging unequivocal assertions.

We live in a country where everything is unexpected, claims Thandiwe, and hence, I’m saying for you to access anything here in Cape Town, here in the country, you have to have money (Thandiwe, interview 23/02/2023).

Despite the scarcity and the different prices charged for water users, there were some places where water could be fetched for free. One of those was the springs of the Table Mountain, and I could visit it during my fieldwork stay. Although “some spring water was not entirely pure, there was a perception that because it comes from the ground, it is clean” (J. M., interview 29/04/2023). Many individuals placed greater trust in the springs of Table Mountain than in the brown-tinted water flowing from their taps. The perception of unlimited water availability at these springs resulted in substantial queues as people sought to collect water from this source.

Even today, people still queue at Newlands, because that is free, they rather drive for petrol out for the water, to get free water, than to come to the shops and pay (Malaika, interview 21/02/2023).

During the big drought of 2015–2018, lots of people used these springs, but most of these fetchers were women. After that, the springs were used less, only by very impoverished communities, and most fetchers were still women.

During this period, Nono served as the principal of a kindergarten that opted to continue its operations despite the water shortages. She explained how challenging it was for her to have to not only take care of the children she had under her responsibility but also teach and give love to her students.

Although you are so tired, they don’t know what’s going on. And you must try to solve the problem, because they need their water as much as they need their classes and their love (Nono, interview 23/02/2023).

This was one of the most poignant things that all the participants remembered: while water remains an indispensable resource, it is crucial to acknowledge that life must continue unabated.

The community: where individual stories become collective narratives

The family is the primary social unit affected, but the community represents the collective consciousness that enables a shared existence. In the townships of Cape Town, water scarcity becomes a communal issue, impacting different family units and disproportionately affecting low-income women of color, and extends to the entire urban community sharing these conditions.

However, scarcity can be a double-edged sword. Although it increases awareness and leads to stricter management, it also creates significant stress for families. For instance, mothers often face exhaustion from being highly demanding about water use by children, stemming from the stress and lack of understanding of the situation. “I don’t like the children playing with water,” claimed one of the interviewees, explaining that they need to understand from a young age that it is a scarce good and not a toy. Women frequently experience stress, guilt, and confusion when navigating their relationship to water within a community context. This can lead to both internal and external conflicts that shape their behaviors and responses to water-related issues. Consequently, whether considering water as a survival necessity or as a source of belief, religion, spirituality, joy, or happiness, they consistently reported difficulties in clearly defining this connection:

Looking at how South Africa is, especially with the historical context, it’s very difficult to have like a personal relationship with water as a black woman growing up in a township, because again, you’re always told, don’t play with water, don’t do this, don’t do that (Mpho, interview 22/03/2023).

On the other hand, there is a sense of community among those who suffer from the same scarcity that arises, i.e., a sense of solidarity among the households of the townships. Activist Faeza Meyer recounted narratives of women collectively walking to fetch water, providing mutual protection, and described how neighbors organized efforts to supply water to individuals who were ill or disabled and unable to undertake the journey independently (Faeza Meyer, interview 09/03/2023). These township initiatives would further formalize in the African Water Commons Collective. Additionally, the community leader shared personal accounts of women coordinating to perform care tasks, such as escorting children to school and engaging in collective cleaning activities, to ensure that they could efficiently manage and complete their individual responsibilities.

Although vigilance and solidarity serve as effective coping mechanisms, they are insufficient to transform the precarious existence of low-income women of color into lives with assured well-being. The reality is that numerous social and communal issues intersect in their lives. Among the biggest worries during the drought was the uncertainty and unreliability of guaranteed water. As Malaika stressed:

You were always afraid, because ... is there going to be water tomorrow? That was just a constant thought. Is there going to be water tomorrow? (Malaika, interview 21/02/2023).

But not all stresses and worries come from survival issues. Some concerns also had to do with more mundane everyday needs that had little or nothing to do with the essential goal of sustaining life.

One of the moments that made the extent to which water permeates all areas of life visible was when I asked one of the younger participants what her biggest concern was if one day she had no water. Far from the survivalist answers given by other participants, she confessed, between smiles and a sense of shame, that she was worried about her hair. The concern for aesthetics and the will to continue maintaining one’s own identity do not disappear even if the water is missing. That was the first time I came across the concept of “water dignity,” i.e., that feeling good, feeling clean, and being able to take care of oneself is also a social need that water governance should not disregard (Groenfeldt 2021, Romans i Torrent 2024). In this similar direction, other women were worried about social stigma, about not being able to clean their children properly or, otherwise, “people like to talk when you smell” (Mandisa, interview 02/03/2023).

Interviews revealed that water stress translates into life stress, affirming Savelli’s (2023) view that “emotions are not hardwired reactions of the brain but a product of subjectivities and the power dynamics they internalize.” Participants expressed a range of emotions, including frustration and anxiety, regarding how water struggles impacted their daily lives. Many worried about managing daily chores like cleaning and cooking. Water stress, closely linked to caregiving responsibilities, can exacerbate gender oppression. Some women described a sense of workload inequality, feeling hopeless rather than pointing to structural discrimination. A major source of stress is the uncertainty of paying water bills, with participants like Zola noting careful water use to manage costs and expressing frustration over high bills, as seen in her comment:

I mean we don’t even have a pool in the yard (Zola, interview 02/03/2023).

Additionally, stress arises from the fear of service disconnection due to unpaid bills, as noted by Nono:

If you’re not keeping on your arrangements and then they cut your service (Nono, interview 23/02/2023).

The city: governing water in a structurally unjust setting

Cape Town is a city crossed not only by water scarcity, but also by deep-seated socio-spatial and racialized inequalities that determine who carries the burden of water stress and who is shielded from it. Although the Day Zero campaign during the 2015–2018 drought was globally praised for its innovative, adaptative governance (Fallon 2018, Swatuk et al. 2021), its underlying politics of responsibilitzation masked the stark unevenness of water access and infrastructure in the city (Millington and Scheba 2021, Swatuk et al. 2021). Although wealthy predominantly white areas, whose residences often have private boreholes, large storage tanks, and advanced plumbing, faced a great difference of water availability compared to their current access before the crisis (Swatuk et al. 2021), township residents, particularly the most marginalized and impoverished, experienced water scarcity as a constant, embodied stressor, rather than a temporary emergency, not that different from their already bounded experience of water (Millington and Scheba 2021). Water stress in the township areas is not only about availability but about unpredictability, cost, quality, and the cumulative emotional and physical toll of living in a system designed without them in mind. Meanwhile, in more affluent areas, water scarcity becomes a matter of lifestyle adaptation rather than survival; a distinction that water governance discourse often fails to acknowledge (Fallon 2018).

Cape Town’s governance approach has reinforced this urban injustice (Zwarteveen et al. 2017). As some scholars have pointed out (Ziervogel 2019), the city’s response relied heavily on technocratic tools, such as smart meters, pressure regulation, and demand-side campaigns, rooted in managerial and neoliberal logics. These strategies assumed a universal capacity to comply with conservation norms and pay for services, ignoring structural constraints faced by the urban poor. The Free Basic Water policy (Szabo 2015), though progressive in principle, is inconsistently applied and dependent on registration processes that exclude many. When supply is cut or bills remain unpaid, disconnections follow, turning water into a mechanism of punishment. In effect, Cape Town’s water governance continues to reflect and reproduce colonial and apartheid legacies (Rodina and Harris 2016, Millington and Scheba 2021): it privileges efficiency over equity, treats water as a commodity rather than a common good, and erases the differentiated lived experiences of urban residents. For many low-income women of color in the townships, water is not just a utility but a source of chronic anxiety, labor, and injustice; while for wealthier citizens, it remains a managed inconvenience. Recognizing these asymmetries is fundamental if the city is to move toward a governance model that centers care, redistribution, and justice (Zwarteveen et al. 2017).

DISCUSSION

This research contributes to a long-standing consensus in the academic field: Cape Town’s water scarcity is not simply a technical or environmental issue, but rather a condition produced by intersecting histories of racial, gendered, class-based, and spatial inequalities. Drawing from feminist political ecology and intersectionality, these findings demonstrate that access to water and experiences of insecurity are deeply embodied and uneven for low-income women of color living in the townships. Moreover, they are disproportionately affected due to the gendered roles that society gives them in the studied interconnected scales: their bodies, their households, their communities, and their city. Together they constitute a bounded existence in which water insecurity becomes a daily struggle.

The interviews reveal that water is not only a material necessity but is also central to human dignity, spirituality, identity, and emotional well-being. The effects of scarcity include stress, shame, and exhaustion, often tied with other interconnected struggles such as menstrual poverty, child insecurity, the inability to maintain personal hygiene, and fears of illness (Cawood and Rabby 2022). These experiences are, at the same time, shaped by inadequate infrastructure, unreliable access to energy, inconsistent water quality, and financial insecurity. Although the reaction to the 2015–2018 water drought was praised globally, it did little to improve conditions in the townships. Many participants noted that their lives remained largely unchanged because they had already been living with scarcity long before the drought gained public attention.

Despite these hardships, forms of collective solidarity have emerged. Women often organize to collect water together, share caregiving duties, and support vulnerable neighbors (Faeza Meyer, 09/03/2023 interview; Truelove 2011, Sultana 2020). These networks of mutual aid offer resilience, but they cannot replace the need for structural reform. A meaningful response to water insecurity requires policies that are centered around redistribution, lived experience, and justice. Empirical knowledge from below must be acknowledged as valid and actionable. To ensure that water security is more than a temporary fix, governance must move beyond efficiency models and instead prioritize care, dignity, and equity. Building a system that protects both basic needs and social bonds is essential for transforming precarious survival into assured well-being (Enqvist and Ziervogel 2019, Swatuk et al. 2021).

CONCLUSION

This research contributes to feminist political ecology by demonstrating how water scarcity in Cape Town is shaped not only by physical availability but by entrenched systems of inequality. Low-income women of color experience water precarity through their bodies, emotions, and daily labor. Their stories reflect a crisis produced by racialized urban planning, gendered caregiving roles, and technocratic governance that fails to engage with the lived realities of those most affected. Rather than neutral or apolitical, as it is usually comprehended, water governance reproduces hierarchies of power and exclusion (Elmhirst 2011, Sultana 2020).

Formal inclusion of low-income women of color in decision-making forums is frequently celebrated in policy circles. However, this inclusion often lacks the redistribution of resources and authority that would make it meaningful. Feminist political ecologists have long warned that participation alone is insufficient when underlying systems of domination remain intact. Addressing water injustice demands confronting the political economies, colonial legacies, and institutional silences that shape who is heard, who decides, and who carries the cost (Truelove 2011). The concept of bounded existence introduced in this study offers a way to understand how intersecting oppressions constrain women’s autonomy while also highlighting the forms of resistance and care they enact. Low-income women of color’s practices, often small, relational, and grounded, point to other ways of managing and imagining water, beyond dominant paradigms.

Cape Town’s water crisis cannot be reduced neither to climate change effects nor to infrastructural deficits (Ziervogel 2019, Swatuk et al. 2021, Wilson et al. 2024). It is, above all, a manifestation of structural injustices that persist across urban space and institutional governance. Rethinking how water is valued, how it is managed, and who is included in decision-making processes are urgent and necessary. Future research must engage with grounded, embodied experiences (Truelove 2019, Sultana 2020, Radonic and Jacob 2021) and attend to the collective forms of organization already in operation from the social margins. Despite the many material and political constraints, there are real possibilities for transformation. A more just and care-centered water politics begins with the recognition that those most affected by scarcity are not merely victims, but agents holding situated knowledge and meaningful strategies for building equitable and sustainable future governance.

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