• Overview
• Rural water supply
• Training
• Sanitation
• Civil Society and Community Participation
• Water Quality
• Rainwater Harvesting and Livelihoods
  • SA National Climate Change Adaptation network
  • Rainwater Harvesting for food security (2004-2007)
  • Rainwater Harvesting for livelihoods
  • Gwebindlala
  • Links
• Informal Settlements
• Disaster Management
• Integrated Rural Development
• Supporting Local Government

Informal Settlements

Informal settlements are a new area of attention for The Mvula Trust. Mvula’s Policy Unit has undertaken various activities recently to deepen the organisation’s understanding of the challenges and opportunities for Mvula’s involvement in this arena

The emerging approach of Mvula to addressing water and sanitation challenges in informal settlements is based on community participation or people-centredness. This is met more than half-way by one of the most interesting aspects of informal settlements: their tendency to self-organisation, or “active citizenship.

Informal settlements have clearly emerged as a crucial and urgent policy challenge for the water sector, as indeed it is for other sectors (such as housing, local government, health, education etc…). This is because:

• a significant proportion of urban settlement in South Africa and Africa takes place in informal settlements. An estimated 1.2 million to 2.4 million
  South African households live in informal settlements. In Ekhurhuleni alone, there are 110 informal settlements. In the city of Johannesburg, there are more than 190 informal settlements. It s argued that informal settlements already are the dominant form of urban growth in Africa. It seems obvious that service provision in informal settlements will become politically and practically more and more important.
• informal settlements perform a positive function in our cities, as they enable in-migrants to share in and contribute to economic activity, support their own livelihoods, and also to provide accommodation and types of social services (e.g. crèches) at minimal or no cost to the state. With the pace of urbanization growing, informal settlements perform a necessary function to support the urbanization process.
• informal settlements pose specific challenges for service delivery, and its sustainability. Informal settlements are often “illegal” and on “private land”, both of which present obstacles to planning processes and investment of public money. A whole host of consequences follow from these two constraints. Informal settlements are dense, creating planning challenges (for example roads, space for amenities) and risks (e.g. fire risks). Many residents of informal settlements are poor, creating challenges in accessing food and paid-for services including housing, schooling, child care, water and electricity, i.e. basic services rural households often send members to cities, who settle in informal settlements, as part of their livelihood strategies. Circular migration between rural and urban areas occurs.