Making Connections Between our Households and the Water Commons
Do you know how much water your household uses daily? Do you know who is responsible for the water your household gets? Do you have the water that you need? How does your water use affect other parts of your life such as health, work, education…?… The answers to these questions are an important part of building evidence about social realities of water service provision, realities that are often oversimplified in top-down ways of managing water. Today far too many South Africans do not have adequate access to water (SERI, 2020) and we are worried that decisions about water are being influenced by opportunities to make a profit.
The African Water Commons Collective (AWCC) is a movement of activists who are concerned about the water commons; the infrastructure and decision making that affects water and who can access it. The movement exists in the context of ‘post’-apartheid South Africa where basic services are extremely unequal, worsening and, increasingly, private sector controlled. The AWCC aims to support people to self-organise through popular education to resist the commodification and privatization of water, develop grassroots-led alternatives to water management and ultimately to defend the water commons. This booklet is a guide to mapping household water use – an educational process used by the AWCC over the last 10 years. Here we share what we have learned and the method we have used, so it can become a tool for others to form Water Action Committees (WAC), gather evidence and work towards ‘water for life’.
Download the ‘The Water We Need: A Toolkit for Household Water Mapping’ in isiXhosa, Afrikaans and English.