Women’s struggles to access water for household use in peri-urban zones of small rural towns in Southern Africa are on the increase, and this requires urgent intervention(s) if urban and regional planners are to witness inclusive cities in the region. Ensuring access to water and sanitation for all by 2030 is a major target for Sustainable Development Goal 6; as well as Goal 11 that seeks to make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. Yet, in many peri-urban zones of small rural towns of Southern African cities access to clean water remains a challenge, and women bear this burden the most. This is a cause for concern. Common phenomena that characterize small rural towns of Southern Africa are their location in the rural scape, and the surrounding villages where peasant agriculture dominates household livelihoods. New housing developments in the peri-urban zones of small rural towns continue to blur the boundaries between the urban and rural spaces.
Spatial planning functions that enhance service provision in the peri-urban zones are either weak or absent as people simply apply the Occupy-Build-Service-Plan model as opposed to the Plan-Service-Build-Occupy model for housing development. The concept of inclusive cities seeks to ensure that ‘none is left behind’ with regards to the fulfilment of social, economic, environmental, and spatial experiences. This concept is thus complex because it carries wide implications for application in peri-urban debates. This is because spatial expansion of the peri-urban zone(s) is not an event but largely processual. As the peripheral zones are proclaimed urban, new peri-urban spaces emerge further pushing the divide beyond the set boundaries. Neglecting or procrastinating spatial planning for the current peri-urban spaces has direct implications for the future urban plans on inclusive cities.
Inclusion of peri-urban zones in the urban spatial fabric through the master planning imperatives remains a critical component for inclusive cities, and the ultimate provisioning of infrastructure for services such as water. I highlight the struggles faced by women to accessing water for household use in peri-urban zones of small rural towns in Southern Africa reflecting on selected case studies from South Africa and Zimbabwe. I raise the following points: the nature of these struggles; how women cope through urgency; and the critical success factors for inclusive cities in Southern Africa. The assumption is that shifts in the peri-urban zones because of spatial expansion of small rural towns increase the distance from established water sources, and this has a direct implication on women’s role on fetching water for household use.
My presentation is (re)shaped by my research experiences in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Venda. I conclude by highlighting the critical success factors to alleviating women’s suffering from the burdens of fetching water for household use in the peri-urban zones of small rural towns. I therefore suggest the provision of adequate, efficient and effective mobile water clinics; drilling water boreholes within the standard walking distance; strengthening effort on hydrological exploration and modelling; and provision of water infrastructure. In order to achieve these development planning goals in peri-urban zones of small rural towns in Southern Africa, there is need for redefining the concept of inclusive cities; protecting ecological ecosystems; recognising the (co)existing and multiple land tenure systems in peri-urban zones; rethinking the role of master planning; and incentivizing ‘planned’ peri-urban human settlements.
