Social Flows of Water: Rough Sleepers and the Navigation of Street Life.

No single word or phrase can be used to describe the journey that has been the past few months. The data collection stage is one that I have always had great enthusiasm and excitement for and going into this phase, it was no different. The rough sleepers, or as they often refer to themselves, street people, in Cape Town are a dynamic, interesting and self-aware demographic. Now split between the areas of Mowbray, Observatory and Claremont, a story of community, strife, hope, care and at times—weirdly enough—contentment starts to amass, weave and take shape. 

In these areas, I volunteered at three NGO’s—Mowbray SDA Soup Kitchen, Obs Can Feed You, and U-turn Homeless Ministries—to build rapport and gain familiarity with the street people. From past experience volunteering at my church’s homeless initiatives in Johannesburg, I was certain that this would be a great way of acquainting myself with them. Though, I would soon come to find out that street people are very perceptive, and I was no stranger. They see and they watch: people, animals, the weather, Groote Schuur, school children, shop owners, each other, new and budding construction projects, hotspots for skarreling[1], the change in landscape and everything within it.

They didn’t know exactly where I resided and truth be told, they weren’t interested. But they had noticed me around. They knew my face. Sometimes, I would just have random people greet me so warmly as I walked on my way, and I would spend quite some time trying to figure out where I knew them from. This was until the next Saturday or Sunday, and I saw them among the small congregation gathered around for bible study before the “breaking or rather sharing of bread”. To me, they were a sea of faces—each distinct only in the moment yet none committed to memory—but to them I was as distinct as their mirrored image in a passing car window. Yet as time went on, this sea of faces would eventually backtrack into individual courses with names, unique personalities and a much deeper relationship with each person.

A life on the street is by no means easy. It’s a sentiment shared and expressed by every street person. They are constantly antagonised by the authorities and regarded with distaste. I recall a conversation I had with an older street person who had lamented continuously about the way she had been treated by “her people” in the bus. Due to her unwashed appearance and the accompanying stench, people had avoided the area in which she sat and gossiped about her. It made her feel uncomfortable and “less than human”. Similarly, another street person—who once had a budding career as a policeman and later on as a chef—recounted the bitter dichotomy between his past life and his present situation. Once upon a time as a respected patron of gas stations, there was a certain ease with which he could access the toilets therein should he so require it. Only that now, he at times faces great resistance from security guards at certain gas stations when he merely seeks water. Underscoring their desolate situations, epithets such as “beast” and “animal” would pop up in conversations, now and then, around their challenges with accessing water, their lives on the street and the ways in which they would describe themselves.

On the street the distinction between “drinkable water” and “non-drinkable water” was a survival tactic necessitating adherence lest a stomach bug fast became the bane—and possibly end—of one’s existence. As a rule of thumb, water from any running tap is perceived as safe. This is not shocking, as it reflects the consequences of modernity, capitalism and our revised relationship with guaranteeing clean water access through a medium such as the tap. The same is the case for anyone in a home. To think out of these boundaries, would be to take the health of our rivers and other freshwater sources seriously. 

In the absence of targeted, structural initiatives, I fear it would be difficult to achieve this goal as the heavy burden of breaking out of this narrow pipeline would fall on individuals with little or no access to tap water in the first place. Take the Liesbeek River, for example, many a street person recalled its instrumentality in the washing of laundry and for showering but due to the egregious pollution of its water, it has now become a place to steer clear of. 

Figure 1: The Liesbeek River at Observatory. Water from this river would be classified as “non-drinkable”

The more I had conversations with street people about their challenges with water, the more I discovered that “people”, in the literal sense of the word, also constitute either an opportunity or challenge to water access. Within a home, one might not think quite deeply about this link because one is so far removed from it. Essentially, once your utility bills are paid, it is expected that you are granted and guaranteed access to what you paid for. Only in the event of a disruption to this norm—take for example, water outages like the ones I experienced in Johannesburg—does one maybe think about just how dependent we are on the city (a fancy term for a conglomerate of “people”) for this resource. On the street, however, this link is direct, pulsating, undeniable, tangible and realised in the everyday lived experience of the street person. Here, water access is not just tied to a building, organisation or tap but to “people” as well. And they decide who gets access, who does not, how much, how little and how often.

Figure:2  As instrumental as this tap is for rough sleepers, the people residing here in Aero Town (Pseudonym)  where the tap is located, have unilateral prerogative on who gets water and who doesn’t.

Another fascinating discovery for me was the categorization of water according to its use which in turn determined its value. For a long time, this put me in a state of cognitive dissonance because in as much as street people noted the undeniable importance of water in phrases such as “water is life” and “water is a human right”, they also harboured (at the same time) an indifference towards it. To reconcile this dissension, I began to practice active listening when they talked, noting their hand gesticulations and expressions, as well as asking clarifying questions. Through this, I got to understand that water was just not water on the street. It was drinkable (sometimes portable) water, water for washing, polluted water, clean water, manageable water, bottled water and so on. I recall asking a street person, now undergoing rehabilitation at U-turn Homeless, to rank water on his priority list of essentials for street living and he had ranked it the lowest. I was taken aback, and he explained that I had to understand that street people operated on survival mode and that taking a daily bathe and having clean clothes, for instance, was perceived as luxury. With the understanding that he had connected “water” immediately to “showers” and “washing”, I rephrased and specifically asked where he would rank “drinking water” on the list. This he put as second just after food, stating that indeed water in that use was much more valuable than water in the use of showers or clothe washing. Another street person had noted that “drinking water” was also very important to her because she was on medication as were a lot of other street people that she knew. And while another street person had expressed that showers were important to her in order to feel her best, going to the Liesbeek river as a woman was also very dangerous as she could be a target to unscrupulous individuals. 

Figure 3: Fulfilling the need for water on the street is something that requires planning, improvisation, negotiation and physical labour as illustrated in this picture. Thereby, complicating the dominant narrative of water as a seamless household service flowing through fixed pipes and metered connections

Nevertheless, in these dank realities was a golden threading of cohesion, warmth and community. I remember a street person introducing me to her daughter-in-law, the mother to the daughter-in-law, her lover and her friends all in the span of a few minutes’ conversation with her. More participants meant more stories for me, I would think—but with that came a level of trust and transparency that was, at times, difficult to bear. I’ve heard a lot of upsetting things and at first it did not bother me. The strategy was to empathize with them and not dwell too much on it. In hindsight, I gather it might have been easier to do that, given that those unsettling events had already taken place, and it was discussed more as a testament to their resilience and character building than anything else. The stories were said with pride. Recently, though, these gloomy events are happening in real time and discussions outside of my study focus are being had. It is quite impossible to retreat into the role of an aloof stranger. My street friends are very persistent anyway. It’s in these times, I thank God for earphones. Plugged in or not, they have been instrumental in blocking my ears and keeping my gaze fixed away from warm greetings or unwanted conversations. At least until I feel mentally prepared for them. 

Conclusively, I am beginning to learn that while rough sleepers actively navigate and negotiate access to water within the city, this should not be read as evidence of a functional or sufficient system. Their agency exists within, and is constrained by, a precarious and exclusionary urban landscape. As such, to celebrate these practices without critique risks romanticising survival under conditions that fundamentally require structural redress.