Gqeberha is once again confronting a deepening water crisis that exposes not only infrastructural decay and municipal failure but also the enduring realities of racial capitalism, marked by water apartheid and neoliberal governance in South Africa.
While officials continue to frame the crisis as a technical or climatic problem, lived experiences across the city reveal a far more political story — one shaped by a stratified society ordered according to race and class power. The water crisis poses a question of whose lives are deemed worthy in a market society.
For working-class communities, particularly in townships and informal settlements, water shut-offs have become the rule rather than the exception. Taps run dry for days and sometimes weeks, forcing households to queue for water tankers, rely on neighbours or enter exploitative arrangements. The conditions undermine health, dignity and social reproduction, especially for women, children, older people and the sick.
This is not a new problem but rather a legacy of the historical development of racial capitalism in South Africa.
