Budgets to Toilets: Citizen Advocacy in Action
Think budget work doesn’t impact daily life in very practical, significant ways? Beatrice’s story proves otherwise.
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Beatrice's Story
What are the contours of a challenging life? Beatrice Ditshego is intimately familiar with each gully and ditch. A childhood marked by abandonment and deprivation. Single parenthood. A livelihood earned by collecting recyclables. But as significant as those challenges are, it was the daily indignity of either no toilet at all or one that is dirty and dangerous that really raised her ire.
Beatrice, 48, is among at least 5 million South Africans who live in one of the country’s “informal settlements”—a phenomenon common across the African continent. Driven by a lack of affordable housing, they are characterized by rudimentary shelters built without permits on municipal or private land. Such basic services as reliable water, electricity, and sanitation are absent.
The landscape of Beatrice’s settlement, long the place she has called home.
HOME FOR BEATRICE
Home for Beatrice is the Lindelani informal settlement, just outside the city of Ekurhuleni (in the outskirts of the capital of Johannesburg). Residents must make do with very little and Beatrice has done just that for herself and others. “I had to renovate the shack we live in myself. A lot of people thought I was a crazy woman, getting right up on top with a nail and a hammer!”
Like most of the residents, Beatrice has lived there for more than 10 years—without sufficient safe, working toilets.
“Up until recently, we didn’t have toilets at all,” she says. “I had to dig a hole and put up a sort of structure around it so it was private. Finally, I decided we needed to take matters in our own hands. The municipality delivered some [public] toilets to an open space [in the settlement], so I said, ‘Let’s find a car and fetch a toilet for us!’ And we did. They weren’t providing any for us, so we had to hire a van and go at night to get some by force.”
ADDITIONAL INFO
Most countries have their share of “informal settlements,” also called shantytowns. It’s estimated that up to 60 percent of the population live in these marginalized communities in some Sub-Saharan African and Southeast Asian cities. And the number of residents is expected to double over the next two decades.
Beatrice was not alone in her frustration. Poor toilets have sparked mass protests before in South Africa’s informal settlements. But then the look of victory on her face fades into frustration.
“But there’s still a shortage and they are only desludged when the company responsible feels like it. And when they are cleaned, the chemicals used are so strong they make people sick. We get rashes and infections. This was confirmed by a nurse in the local clinic. That’s why I still prefer using my pit toilet, to avoid unnecessary illnesses. When it’s full, I fill it up with soil and dig another one. What a life!”
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Budget advocacy can change lives
Enter the International Budget Partnership and Planact, a civil society organization with a mission to alleviate poverty through community development shaped by resident participation in local government. Planact is exactly the type of organization IBP’s country offices seek as partners—possessing meaningful grassroots connections and knowledge, and a serious interest in intense engagement with residents and governments to translate budgets into effective service delivery (safe, clean toilets!).
We’ve learned that the most effective way to empower residents who are low-income or otherwise marginalized is to help them engage in a campaign to improve a specific government service that can significantly benefit their lives. We look for community-based partners that share the same mission, then focus on helping them build the capacities they need to achieve the change they seek.
We value the partnership with IBP because our skills and competencies complement each other so well. While we have a 30-year track record in grassroots mobilization and working on community service-delivery issues, IBP offers investigative skills that help us and our communities learn and understand the budgetary reasons for poor services. They also augment our ability to access high-level officials and budget documents that aren’t easily obtained. Together, then, we develop strategies that draw communities together, while pressuring government to respond to our needs.
STRATEGIC ACCOMPANIMENT
This is the essence of what IBP calls its “strategic accompaniment” approach, based on our deep experience in the field:
- Our in-country teams work with local civil-society organizations on specific service-delivery challenges that matter to their communities.
- We collaborate with them throughout the process to help them build the full range of needed capabilities.
- We focus on “learning by doing,” facilitating rapid and sustained skill development and achievement of results.
The use of social audits to improve public hygiene in South Africa’s informal settlements is an example of how that philosophy is put into action, with Planact as well as other civil society organizations.
Albert’s team first became acquainted with Planact in 2014, when the latter heard about IBP’s “social audits” and sent staff members to observe the process in action. Social audits were introduced to South Africa by senior IBP staff the year before.
Just what is a social audit? In its simplest terms, it is a community-driven process in which residents are trained to obtain budgets and other official documents to identify who is supposed to provide what services according to what terms, then conduct on-the-ground research to document what is really happening. At their heart, social audits cultivate relationships between governments and communities that are mutually respectful, are deeply democratic and address service-delivery issues that make living in poor communities stressful and unhealthy.
ADDITIONAL INFO
Social audits first originated in India, and a team from South Africa (including representatives from IBP and Planact) traveled there to learn the art and science of the practice. In 2015, IBP supported the formation of a Social Audit Network in South Africa, with a goal of expanding use of this tool for community monitoring and participation. Guides are available to help others design the questionnaires, implement social audits and capture data in computer databases.
Planact staff was first introduced to IBP when they were invited by a mutual partner to observe some of the social audits our local team conducted with the Social Justice Coalition.
A year later, in 2015, IBP began helping Planact conduct its own social audits. First, the organization needed to find and gain access to the government tender documents that laid out the terms governing the companies hired to provide and service the toilets. As is so often the case, it was no easy task. In the spirit of IBP’s strategy “teaching by doing,” the South Africa team worked with Planact to obtain and scrutinize these documents.
SURVEY INSTRUMENTS
The contract terms then were compared to actual implementation on the ground using three primary survey instruments developed by Planact:
- A questionnaire for all residents, to assess their experience with the toilets (for example, whether they felt safe and if not, why not), shown below.
- A sheet on which to record observations after physically inspecting the toilets.
- A questionnaire for the contract employees hired to service the toilets (designed to assess training and working conditions, for example).
Fortunately, Planact’s many years of work had resulted in close, productive relationships with the councilors elected to represent the various wards of the city. By showing it had the support of the councilors, that a large number of residents were engaged, and that it already had an “intimate” familiarity with the contract, the team was able to enlist the support of the city’s Water and Sanitation Operations Division for audits in three of the settlements.
In the course of their work, Planact and IBPSA discovered that just one service agreement engaged 16 contractors—a fact that was not public and required sleuthing and patient relationship-building to learn. However, the three-settlement audit only examined the work of two of them. Knowing the problems observed with the two businesses were likely common to all of them, Planact and IBPSA launched a plan for a larger-scale audit.
Together, Planact, IBP South Africa and the Social Audit Network expanded the audits in 2018 to 10 additional informal settlements.
This was a real innovation. By scaling up to cover 10 settlements in one audit, we were able to move beyond site-specific problems and identify systemic causes of poor sanitation delivery. Since we had the cooperation of the city, the findings could inform higher-level discussions that produced large-scale service-delivery improvements.
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This is what success looks like
“One day, I heard there was a meeting conducted by a group called Planact. I decided to stop what I was doing and attend. That’s when I first met the Planact people. They explained who they are and why they were in Lindelani. I decided right then to volunteer. I was tired of the living conditions and wanted to be part of some change.”
Beatrice was one of 157 community volunteers across the 10 settlements who interviewed approximately 20,000 residents about their experience with public toilets in the communities. Seven ward councilors lent their support and a team from the South African auditor general’s office reviewed the resulting report.
“It was not an easy thing to do,” reflects Beatrice. “Some community members were downright skeptical or suspicious about what we’d do with their personal details, even using vulgar language. Some of that resistance was due to the promises we always hear from politicians as voting time approaches, then are quickly forgotten. A lot of people have lost trust in such initiatives as a result.”
However, enough residents participated to provide significant insights. Consider:
Only 5.7% of the volunteer auditors reported finding toilets that were accessible for people with disabilities.
WHAT DROVE SUCH A POOR TRACK RECORD?
The social audit in Ekurhuleni documented a number of problems. Among the most common were:
- Non-compliance with contract specifications. For example, very few toilets were constructed with the steel frames needed to ensure stability—a big contributor to residents’ perceived lack of safety.
- Insufficient monitoring by the city. Overall, fewer than 10% of respondents said they noticed anyone monitoring whether the toilets were cleaned properly. Only four community leaders indicated that they liaised with anyone in the city government about the rampant problems. And only 27% of the volunteer auditors reported visible posting of a call-center number.
“One day, I heard there was a meeting conducted by a group called Planact. I decided to stop what I was doing and attend. That’s when I first met the Planact people. They explained who they are and why they were in Lindelani. I decided right then to volunteer. I was tired of the living conditions and wanted to be part of some change.”
Beatrice was one of 157 community volunteers across the 10 settlements who interviewed approximately 20,000 residents about their experience with public toilets in the communities. Seven ward councilors lent their support and a team from the South African auditor general’s office reviewed the resulting report.
“It was not an easy thing to do,” reflects Beatrice. “Some community members were downright skeptical or suspicious about what we’d do with their personal details, even using vulgar language. Some of that resistance was due to the promises we always hear from politicians as voting time approaches, then are quickly forgotten. A lot of people have lost trust in such initiatives as a result.”
These findings led Planact to present a number of recommendations to the city, with extensive coaching from IBP South Africa prior to the meeting. These included clear, contractual requirements for toilet placement, ventilation, accessibility for disabled users, etc.; a posted schedule for maintenance and cleaning; a system for monitoring compliance, including site visits; and a process for residents to submit complaints. The call to action: Include these changes in the specifications in the next tender for a sanitation contract.And that is just what happened. When the city’s sanitation contract expired in June 2019, and the wording in the tender was drawn almost entirely from the recommendations from the social audit.
IF PROPERLY EXECUTED, THE NEW CONTRACTS WILL PROVIDE DRAMATICALLY IMPROVED SANITATION TO:
The national government has even become a supporter. Auditor General Kimi Makwetu comments, “We’ve always yearned to give substance and meaning to the reports we issue. This methodology is so reliable that an auditor can actually determine where the bulk of the resources are actually going and how the community has experienced the way they are spent.”
By the end of 2019, changes on the ground already were happening as a result of the modified contracts. For example, monitoring showed that disability-friendly toilets had been installed in a few of the Ekurhuleni settlements. Much more progress was set to happen.
But the benefits of the social audit process extend well beyond the specific focus—in this case, toilets. Planact now has skills and experience that will allow it to both conduct productive social audits in other communities and focused on other challenges, as well as be more effective in all phases of its service to constituents. And residents like Beatrice now have channels through which to speak up that can be more productive than protests.
“I learned how to stand my ground and fight for my rights. I am now able to go to the municipality and tell them the demands of this community,” explains Beatrice.