Water-society relations in the city: environmental governance in the Zandvlei Estuary

Abstract

In the last decades, the Zandvlei Estuary near Muizenberg in Cape Town has undergone alarming levels of pollution and water quality degradation. Sewage spills and dumping up stream have attracted media attention as some of the major contributors to the poor health status of the estuary. Local communities have expressed growing concern with regards to these issues, with environmental governance by the local authority being labelled as inadequate, resulting in calls for the employment of more effective control measures. Water-society relations and related environmental governance questions in a space such as this constitute a highly contested terrain, with competing constructions of the problem playing out in the public space. This dissertation draws on insights from urban political ecology to identify and discuss narrative constructions of the environmental problems at the Zandvlei estuary and the implications for governance. As the estuary is a public space within a large city, the research identified a range of state and non-state actors involved in the space. Through the use of semistructured interviews, observation and attention to social media narratives, the findings identify different perceptions and ideological framings amongst different factors which influence behaviours and narratives about the health of the space and its management. Questions of care, a sense of ownership (or lack thereof), and resulting behaviours towards the space, are also considered, in addition to widely varying opinions among stakeholders regarding management priorities and the key issues that require attention. Several government departments are involved in determining policy and implementing measures to manage the space. A common narrative amongst local communities is the view that more collaborative approaches need to be developed in the governance of the estuary. This may be the challenge for environmental governance in the case of contested water bodies within large cities such Cape Town, where authorities with limited resources and many competing priorities can only do so much.