Teddy Gounden
eThekwini Water and Sanitation, Durban, South Africa

"We couldn’t look to the past even if we had wanted to. The processes were different, as were the challenges. Several hundred informal settlements had sprung up, essentially communities in transition. One million people living in shacks. As an interim solution we had to put in shipping containers with showers and toilets. This was a unique solution for a unique situation.

Durban has hills and valleys with a sparse population. Neighbours lived some 500 metres from one another. There were no roads. Part of our challenge was to build roads to bring the vehicles in. There were no water or sewer networks. We had to dig reservoirs in rough terrain and maintain water pressure far from the city.

Fortunately the entire team were hugely motivated by the challenge. Our leadership has been fantastic. We’re given a lot of creative space to try new solutions and fail without fear of censure. Today, when we work with others from elsewhere in Africa and overseas, we give them this space to empower them. And we are always learning from them, we certainly don’t have all the answers.

Prior to 1994 the city was under the apartheid system. The central areas had first world infrastructure while those in peri-urban and rural areas had no access to water and sanitation at all. It was a mammoth task. We knew we would learn and adapt as we went. We had to ask ourselves just what could be achieved with the community resources. It was very exciting! It was a totally different way of working, suddenly we were allowed to engage and make decisions. We had the opportunity to explore new technologies to meet challenges we’d never faced before. We weren’t just putting in pipes. We had to think outside of the box, engage communities, educate people. Our solutions had to be innovative and sustainable.

Our objectives were to provide safe water and sanitation and minimize risks from contamination. The rural communities had been getting their water from rivers and streams. They were very poor, so we had to provide a limited service for free. EThekwini was the first municipality to have free water. After we introduced this, it has become national government policy. Initially we offered people 6 kl of water per month but people tended to live in large families and because there were people suffering with AIDS we quickly realized this wasn’t enough; so we provided 9 kl. The water was piped to an external ground tank and we had to educate people to store the 300 litres that was piped in each day. The fact that we provided water and sanitation as a package helped people see how things would work.

We have a research agreement with a university to supply focused and applied research, both technological and social. So our work has always been supported by research. The communities have always guided our policy, they have this channel to tell us how things are going, how we can improve, what is useful.

Our project has created a new economy for them. Now they have roads and people are building bigger houses. When they contact us now it is to ask to have water piped directly into their homes, because today they can afford this. Their quality of life has improved enormously. If you see aerial photos of these communities from 2003 to now a significant densification has taken place.

Through interviews, we’ve found people are very happy with the changes to their lifestyle. Some have found new employment as a direct result of our project. For example, the toilets are built on blocks, so we established block yards to build them within the communities. So people have established small businesses which make blocks.

There is no more open defecation, so family health is better. In South Africa, we had a culture of looking after the first world people. We had to change our mindset to focus on poor communities, and to engage and talk with them. We took responsible risks to create what people really needed – through a formal process of dialogue we did things that had not been done before. Once we identified what was needed we created innovative technology to bring services to the poor."

The initiative ‘A Participatory and Learning Based Approach to Raising Awareness on Water and Sanitation’ in Durban, eThekwini Municipality, South Africa, was awarded with the Category 2 'Best participatory, communication, awareness-raising and education practices' Water for Life UN-Water Best Practices Award in 2011.

>> More information about the initiative ‘A Participatory and Learning Based Approach to Raising Awareness on Water and Sanitation’, Durban