Accepted | Community-led water governance for addressing water scarcity in a developing context: A review of post-Day Zero drought in Cape Town, South Africa
Manuscript accepted in Earth Science, Systems and Society
T.C. Maramura1, A.A. Ishola1, T. Gumbo2, and F.B. Mushonga3
1 Department of Public Administration and Management, Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences, University of the Free State, Republic of South Africa.
2 Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Faculty of Engineering and the Built
Environment, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
3 Department of Economics, Nelson Mandela University, Gqeberha, South Africa.
Abstract: This systematic review examines community-led water governance in Cape Town, South Africa, following the 2015-2018 "Day Zero" drought crisis. The analysis is grounded in political ecology, water justice theory, and collaborative governance theory, which together provide the conceptual framework for understanding how structural inequalities and power asymmetries shaped community-agency dynamics during the crisis. Despite constitutional mandates for public participation, the study finds that community engagement during the crisis was largely reactive and antagonistic, characterized by "invented" participation through protests and litigation, rather than the "invited" collaboration envisioned by law. Key community groups, such as the Western Cape Water Caucus and the Water Crisis Coalition, emerged to challenge inequitable water tariffs and failures in service delivery. The analysis identifies significant barriers to effective communityagency collaboration, including inequitable implementation of water restrictions, institutional disregard for community input, and the enduring legacy of apartheid-era spatial and social inequalities. The paper concludes that moving beyond a top-down, technocratic governance model is essential. It recommends formalizing community roles in water bylaws, reforming tariff structures for equity, and building community capacity to foster a sustainable, collaborative, and equitable water governance framework for Cape Town and other water-scarce regions.
Keywords: Community-led water governance, Cape Town, political ecology, water justice, collaborative governance, Day Zero
Funding: This paper was funded under the Future Africa Research Leadership Fellowship (FAR-LeaF II), a two-year research-oriented fellowship programme, supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and hosted at Future Africa. This publication was made possible (in part) by a grant from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, formerly Carnegie Corporation of New York, Grant number: G-PS 23-60692.
