Africa Is a Country

Freedom's in the Toilet

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Freedom's in the Toilet

By
Sean Jacobs

Ahead of local government elections in South Africa–scheduled for May–the Democratic Alliance, which governs Cape Town and the Western Cape, spins about its “service delivery successes.” Of course they’re taking of downtown Cape Town and its surrounding, historically white, suburbs, but tell that to the country’s mainstream media. The truth is the DA’s electoral successes are more a mix of the ANC’s excesses and blunders, racial pandering and good PR.

For most of Cape Town’s inhabitants, life is still one of substandard, overcrowded housing, forced evictions, non-existent primary health care, bad schools and, crucially, no access to proper sanitation facilities. We’ve detailed the city’s policies on AIAC, here and here.

Anyway, to show up the DA’s empty spin, the Social Justice Coalition–an organization we like here at AIAC–are planning “toilet queues” this month–to coincide with the 17th anniversary of South Africa’s first democratic elections.  Research shows that 10,5 million people don’t have access to a toilet countrywide. Half of a million of these in Cape Town. The Social Justice Coalition’s “build-up event” will take place in Khayelitsha this coming Saturday 16 April. The “main event” is scheduled on Freedom Day, 27 April. They plan to hold an inter-faith service at the historical St. George’s Cathedral. Protesters will then march on the city council’s offices “where a symbolic queue for toilets will be held.” If you’re in Cape Town, get in the queue.

Details

Further Reading

Leapfrogging literacy?

In outsourcing the act of writing to machines trained on Western language and thought, we risk reinforcing the very hierarchies that decolonization sought to undo.

Repoliticizing a generation

Thirty-eight years after Thomas Sankara’s assassination, the struggle for justice and self-determination endures—from stalled archives and unfulfilled verdicts to new calls for pan-African renewal and a 21st-century anti-imperialist front.

Drip is temporary

The apparel brand Drip was meant to prove that South Africa’s townships could inspire global style. Instead, it revealed how easily black success stories are consumed and undone by the contradictions of neoliberal aspiration.

Energy for whom?

Behind the fanfare of the Africa Climate Summit, the East African Crude Oil Pipeline shows how neocolonial extraction still drives Africa’s energy future.