Workshopping Water Justice: linking struggles from the Cape Flats to the rest of the Continent

ABSTRACT

Drawing insight and inspiration from our comrade Aziz Choudry, in this paper, we explore the role of political education and knowledge making in social movement struggles to contest the state and capital around access to water and other public services. Drawing on a decade of organising work in the city of Cape Town and at wider scales, we highlight the importance of learning and knowledge generation in social movements and the everyday strategies of organising movements use to overcome divisions based on ‘race’, gender, class and nationality, and to confront those obstacles presented or exacerbated by exclusionary governance arrangements, commodified service delivery and the coercive apparatus of the state. Rejecting elite led organising in favour of working-class self-organisation, these strategies seek to build individual and organisational solidarity across the diverse and fragmented experiences of those living on the margins of capitalist society.

KEYWORDS:

• Political education
• social movements
• knowledge generation
• water justice
• South Africa

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While we met early in our politicisation, have worked closely and grown together throughout it, the ‘we’ used here at times refers to all three of us and at times refers in larger part to Author 2 and Author 3 who have spent far greater time developing, practicing, revising and reflecting upon the organising we discuss here.

2 A branch of the City of Cape Town's law enforcement apparatus that specialises in land occupations.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.