Resilient, or ignored? On township vulnerabilities to load-shedding.
“People in townships are not as affected by load-shedding. They’re more used to it, and adapt more easily” — an actual statement
Let’s break this down.
The majority of townships and many informal settlements are at least partially electrified. In fact, according to the City of Cape Town, 97.3% of households have access to electricity .
So, when we claim that “people in townships” are “used to not having energy”, we are either normalizing poor service delivery, or only really counting un-serviced informal settlements in our definition of townships, which is either ignorant or misleading.
“They adapt more easily”.
Adaptation is related to resilience. It is our ability to recover quickly, or to do as well with less/under changed circumstances. It can relate to our ability to tolerate stress, to pool resources within a community (of place/sector/faith etc) or to find new sources of security/well-being. It can be connected to our range of choices and flexibility to move within those. It can also be related to redundant resources at our disposal, or even our ability to demand change. Many household and business level adaptations to load-shedding cost money, so really, middle and upper income suburbs adapt more easily. Similarly, some are related to demands — requesting exclusions from load-shedding, for example. Others are related to our personal abilities to adapt how we plan our days, use our time, and respond to stress.
Townships consist of both low and middle income households, and formal and informal businesses. There are certainly some within each of those categories who have high resilience.
But generalising an exclusion from severe impacts of load-shedding is a romanticisation of the resilience of certain parts of society. And it could have unjust results in terms of responses to the current crisis.
Why this perception is dangerous
The perception that townships are more resilient, or less vulnerable, in the face of consistent load-shedding, especially when held by leaders in the public or corporate sectors working to mitigate the impacts of load-shedding, can lead to:
- excluding township voices in engagements on the issue, and thus in designing and implementing desired responses
- tailoring mitigation advice and support programmes to the middle class and corporate spheres of society, only
- ignoring unique threats in township environments, at potential long-term costs to society, the economy and the fiscus.
Five ways people living in townships are affected by load-shedding
There are surely others, these are some examples
1. Safety is impacted
Safety from crime, as well as safety from fires and other disasters.
In communities where people are walking to shared ablutions, or walking home after a late shift, or a delayed train, the link between street lighting and crime is well-known. The Social Justice Coalition has worked tirelessly to raise attention to the link between street lighting and personal safety, for example.
Similarly, increased use of paraffin and candles increases fire risks (in all households), but in informal settlements the risk of a fire in one household spreading to others is disproportionately higher.
Ignoring this in our responses to load-shedding is a good example of an area that would bear long term social and fiscal impacts.
2. Businesses are affected
This one should be fairly obvious, and others are talking about it:
Businesses in townships often fall into the following categories:
- retail — spazarettes and shebeens require refrigerators and lighting
- prepared food — some operate on fires and gas, but many use electricity for home-based preparation, and refrigeration of stock
- personal services (hair, nails, gyms) — utilise machinery that require electricity
- creches and after-school — utilise electricity for lighting, kettles etc
- light manufacturing (welding, furniture) — a major constraint to the growth of these businesses is often the lack of 3-phase electricity in townships. These guys definitively rely on power.
- mechanics — as above
- construction — as above
- car washes — depending on the formality level varying degrees of energy dependence. These guys were knocked hard by law-enforcement during the water crisis, while other businesses had breakfast with senior officials and politicians. Have we learnt nothing?
Worse still, many of these businesses are owner-managed, and less likely to have access to financing and/or savings to purchase and run generators, solar panels, or take a knock to their revenue. Retailers and prepared food businesses, similarly, may not have access to finance or insurance to recover stock damaged through refrigeration issues or mid-preparation oven & pot disasters.
We didn’t need load-shedding to understand the importance of electricity for township economies. Here’s a story from the past:
3. Household incomes are vulnerable
Township economies and the well-being of families living in townships rely not only on the performance of business as above, but to a large extent on incomes earned by working outside of the township itself. Many workers coming from townships are employed in the following sectors:
- retail, hotels and restaurants
- manufacturing
- construction
- domestic and business cleaning services
- personal services and child care
- public service
All of these are vulnerable to load-shedding.
Those earning hourly wages and/or tips are arguably the most exposed to direct income impacts of load-shedding.
4. The next generation is affected
Learners and students in townships are also affected by load-shedding. Not only are they often travelling the longest distances from technikons and universities back home, now they also have to study by candle-light. These learners are also more likely to be relying on libraries for internet access, unable to afford increased cellphone data usage.
5. They seem to have it more often.
Does anyone know if its possible to get data on real load-shedding (i.e. not whats on the schedule, but historic data on which areas were actually down and for how long)? I’ve submitted a request via the CCT open data portal, and I’ll update this post if I am successful.
Disclaimer: Until we have such data, this remains “perception” and “anecdotes”.
Anecdotally, Cape Town city bowl which includes the CBD and wealthy suburbs like Oranjezicht seem to never go down, while Khayelitsha was without electricity for 8+hours two days in a row.
If this is true, it might be a direct result of the perception that township residents and businesses are somehow more immune to not having energy and/or their weakened ability to negotiate exclusions.
Vulnerability is a measure of exposure to a threat (5 above), sensitivity to its impacts (1–4 above) and adaptability/redundancy (addressed earlier).
I hope that we are now on the same page that townships are affected by load-shedding, and, arguably, households and businesses within townships are more vulnerable to the impacts of load-shedding. These impacts need to be considered in how we engage, plan, and deliver response strategies.
I can’t believe I even had to write this.
