Water service provision and social equity in a South African rural district municipality

Africa's Public Service Delivery and Performance Review

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Water service provision and social equity in a South African rural district municipality
 
Creator Hutete, Clarity Sibanda, Modeni M.
 
Subject Public Administration social equity; procedural fairness; distributive equity; district municipality; water governance
Description Background: Equitable water governance is at the centre of sustainable development. Nevertheless, achieving this goal requires the application of social equity lenses with a focus directed to all dimensions of social equity. Social equity often places more focus on distributive equity, than other equity dimensions, which equally have a profound impact on ensuring universal water access (sustainable development goal 6).Aim: This study aimed to explore social equity dimensions in water service provision and how they affect water provision in rural municipalities.Setting: A rural district municipality in the Eastern Cape province, South Africa.Methods: A constructivist exploratory qualitative case study research redesign was used. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews, participant observation and focus group discussions from a purposefully sampled participant (n = 34) and data were analysed using thematic analysis.Results: Findings suggested that less attention was given to other dimensions of equity than distributive equity in the area under study, which undermines the district municipality’s efforts to eradicate disparities in water governance.Conclusion: The study concluded that achieving the Sustainable Development Agenda of 2030 in water service provision demands full attention to the procedures, quality and outcomes as they are intertwined and significantly impact overall societal goals in public service provision.Contribution: There is still a need to address disparities in water governance and ensure social equity in rural municipal water service provision. However, to achieve this, equal attention must be paid to all dimensions of social equity, which necessitates collaboration and participation from all stakeholders.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor Govani Mbeki Research and Development Centre (GMRDC)
Date 2022-12-19
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — qualitative research
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/apsdpr.v10i1.641
 
Source Africa’s Public Service Delivery & Performance Review; Vol 10, No 1 (2022); 12 pages 2310-2152 2310-2195
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/641/1291 https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/641/1292 https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/641/1293 https://apsdpr.org/index.php/apsdpr/article/view/641/1294
 
Coverage Eastern Cape Province 2021 water governance actors
Rights Copyright (c) 2022 Clarity Hutete, Modeni M. Sibanda https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
ADVERTISEMENT