Surviving on Four Buckets: 03 Parched Fields

Описание: This six-part documentary series examines chronic water insecurity in Mountain City and Phumla Mqashi, two informal settlements in the City of Johannesburg, through an empirical focus on the 'truck-and-tank' system (Jojo tanks supplied by tanker deliveries). Drawing on residents’ accounts and sustained on-site observation, the series analyses how a nominally temporary service arrangement becomes institutionalised as a long-term modality of urban water provision. It documents the operational features of the system—unpredictable delivery schedules, insufficient volumes, and weak maintenance —and traces their consequences for daily practices of water acquisition, rationing, and household reproduction. The series further investigates downstream developmental effects, including constraints on hygiene and health, disruptions to Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres, and limitations on household food production and livelihood strategies. Particular attention is given to the political economy of coping: the accumulation of household-level infrastructure (containers, drums, private tanks) and the expansion of informal water markets that shift costs onto low-income residents, often increasing the unit price of water relative to formal tariff structures. By foregrounding community agency and resilience without recognition, the series contributes to debates on state capability, accountability, and rights-based service delivery, and advances a practical agenda for transparency and minimum service standards in tanker-based water provision.

Part 3
This episode analyses water insecurity as a constraint on household livelihoods and local development, extending beyond domestic consumption to the material conditions required for food production, income generation, and nutritional security. Drawing on residents’ accounts, it examines efforts to cultivate vegetables as a strategy to offset rising food costs and strengthen household resilience and shows how the truck-and-tank system effectively forecloses such practices by rendering water availability irregular, insufficient, and difficult to allocate to productive uses. Even where limited land is available for small-scale cultivation, scarcity transforms gardening into a seasonal and uncertain activity, often dependent on rainfall rather than reliable supply. The episode traces the resulting trade-offs between immediate household survival needs and longer-term livelihood strategies, highlighting how the erosion of local food-growing practices contributes to heightened food insecurity and vulnerability. It argues that stalled development outcomes in these contexts are not primarily attributable to a deficit of initiative or capability, but to infrastructural exclusion and the absence of consistent water access—the basic enabling condition for viable household economies and community-level wellbeing.

About
PARI is an African institute doing research into the constraints to effective governance, underlining the importance of improved institutional design and performance. We work towards building effective and democratic state institutions, for more equitable policies to reduce poverty and inequality.

Learn more about our work at:
https://pari.org.za/