Human and non-human “undesirables” in hydrological framing of Cape Town's Kuils River

• In Event: Extractivism, Conservation, Science and Justice: Workshopping Emerging Approaches in Decolonial Science

Abstract

Using the Kuils River as a case study, this paper reflects on the human-river relationship in the history of the Cape Town metropole. Drawn from ethnographic research, the paper explores the ways of relating between the various actors and how they have enacted the Kuils River in relation to the city’s history. The paper demonstrates that in South Africa, the history of the discourse around water management is often highly anthropocentric, centered on logics of science authority and technical efficiency, assuming a singular viewpoint from which to develop and implement solutions. However, even hydrological approaches to water are not free of socio-cultural values and the Kuils River case study demonstrates this. The threat of the poor water quality, poor service delivery and tensions arising from inherited colonial spatial planning and development agendas have generated conflicts between nature, science, techno-efficiency, legal instruments and politics. Through looking specifically at the river course, in recent history and now -- through aerial photos, early maps as well as oral narratives, the paper traces the river’s entanglements with the city. The paper looks at the history of the ecologies of practice along the Kuils, the role of power, becoming, belonging, subsistence and livelihoods on the urban periphery, with a particular focus on the “undesirables” (both human and non-human) and waste streams in the socio-technical and hydrological understanding of the river. It explores the efforts to manage and control the expansion of these “undesirables” beyond allocated spaces of the Cape Town metropole.

Author

• Nikiwe Solomon, University of Cape Town