E-Governance: Silencing Vulnerable Populations

Water and sanitation services in South Africa are characterized by gross inequalities. Despite twenty years of non-racial democracy, poor predominantly black African areas still make due with overburdened and poorly maintained infrastructure. Communicating water and sanitation issues is key to the maintenance and improvement of delivery systems, and the City of Cape Town has promoted SMS based fault reporting as an inexpensive and convenient method for reporting problems to service providers. While it is known that most Capetonians own a mobile phone, less is known about how people use them, and in a city as socially stratified as Cape Town, it is important to know if e-Governance initiatives are accessible to poor and vulnerable populations to avoid further marginalizing them. The purpose of this study was to identify whether marginalized populations in terms of access to water and sanitation, are able to communicate their needs to the municipal government using SMS. We carried out an extensive survey in the township of ImizamoYethu, and found that populations characterized by limited mobility, such as the elderly, disabled and infirm, faced significant barriers to accessing water and sanitation, yet also lacked the technological capacity to communicate their problems to service providers. The results provide insight into the applicability of e-Governance in reducing inequality in societies characterized by extreme social stratification.