The Violence Prevention through Upgrading (VPUU) is an organization that was initially formed to encounter the pervasive violence in Cape Town township with its formation staring in Khayelitsha. However, the organization addresses a wide range of issues in poor communities looking to innovate and advance the development of these areas through meaningful interaction with the affected communities and other involved stakeholders.
Mission and Purpose
The VPUU through its programs it regards social cohesion and social capital as significantly central to its approach.[1] This means that their programs promote solidarity and positive working relationship between citizens of the affected areas, the local government, the community-based organizations, and other bodies interested in the partnership for the development of the poor communities. The aim of the organization is to facilitate equal participation in the development of poor communities without being affiliated to political party patronage.1 The VPUU shows no indication of any political affiliation, but outside influence cannot be totally ruled out as those might come through the funders or any bodies of power within the partnerships. Due to solidarity of the stakeholders and positive working relationship developed, ''the VPUU political approach allows it to achieve community trust in circumstances of high political contestation and anger of the communities the government for the lack of service delivery pervasive in Khayelitsha''.1 Their strategic approach is crucial because it encompasses diverse and different bodies operating at different levels from local to international, and they include citizens in their decision-making and that to some extent is appealing to citizens as compared to how the government tends to operate.
Further, the intent and goal of the VPUU programs is to achieve a demonstrable and sustainable increase in the safety of the residential population.[2] Its programs are mandated to make significant evident changes and improvements in these communities and those are designed and implemented with the goal of longevity and reliable adequacy of standards.3 However, outcomes of the interventions do not guarantee with certainty the quality and longevity of the results from the projects but to an extent it guarantees there will most likely be interventions taking place in affected communities or areas of focus. In addition, the VPUU projects are not state driven as they advocate for citizens to be at the center of the programs and mobilizing community-based groups to monitor and ensure that the community actively participate in securing their rights.2
[1] Barolsky, V. (2016). Is social cohesion relevant to a city in the global south? A case of Khayelitsha township.
[2] Cloete, J. (2012). Public Participation, Political Representation and Accountability: the case of VPUU in Khayelitsha. Harare in Cape Town.
4 Xabendlini, M. T. (2010). An Examination of Policy Implementation of Water and Sanitation Services in the City of Cape Town: a Case Study of the Informal Settlements in the Khayelitsha Area. Degree of Maters in Public Administration (MPA) in the School of Government, University of the Western Cape.
5 Nleya, N. & Thompson, L. (2009). Survey Methodology in Violence-prone Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. IDS Bulletin. Vol. 40. No, 3. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Origins and Development
In the South African democratic state, townships have been suffering great social, economic, and cultural issues but more prominently unemployment, poor infrastructure, high crime rate to name few. This led to the VPUU founders identifying the gap and saw the need to create safer and sustainable communities as a proactive response to the high levels of direct violence and crime in Cape Town.3 The project of the VPUU was established around 2005 in Harare Khayelitsha and the main areas of focus at the start of the project was Harare, Site C and Kuyasa respectively.2 To provide context of Khayelitsha, it is a large township with predominantly informal settlements located approximately 30 kilometers south-east of Cape Town, and was formed in 1983 as primarily formal settlements that was meant to accommodate the overcrowding in Crossroad, Nyanga, Langa, and Gugulethu which are also large townships of Cape Town.4 The township of Khayelitsha is well known to be crime ridden and poor to non-existent road infrastructure and other social services,5 and all these challenges in Khayelitsha motivated the establishment of the VPUU programs to work with communities to encounter the challenges they face daily.
Therefore, the establishment of the VPUU was made possible by a range of different stakeholders which includes the City of Cape Town, the German Development Bank, the Khayelitsha Community, the SAPS, ward councilors, ward committees, approximately 28 non-government organizations, Western Cape Government, the Khayelitsha Development Forum, the National Treasury, the University of the Western Cape, University of Cape Town, the Legal Aid Clinic of the Western Cape, and many other interested stakeholders.2 The validity of these stakeholders is given by the notion that some of these stakeholders are mentioned by the VPUU websites, even though the totality of the stakeholders involved is not clearly given. Moreover, the partners or stakeholders of the VPUU further established the VPUU Not for Profit Company (VPUU NPC) which was to oversee the running of the programs and facilitate better communications and interventions between the stakeholders.3
Organizational Structure, Membership, and Funding
The success of the programs or events and operations of the VPUU is dependent on the efficiency of the working relationships formed and it is also attributed to the various partnerships between the stakeholders. In conducting the operations of the programs, the VPUU engage with citizen leadership and stakeholders in meetings with citizens taking partial control of the operations and the VPUU playing a supporting role along with other partners.1 This is supported by Cloete (2012) who argues that the VPUU has a program of gathering different stakeholders of different levels and engage them regarding community development and discuss what is best for the community in negotiated development.2 The VPUU programs are mostly ongoing projects which can be regarded as processes that progresses the needs of the communities and improve the services they receive.
The VPUU conducts its programs under different and nine areas of expertise, with six of these considered as content specific and they include the Area Based Management (ABM), Co-Design for Spatial Justice (CDSJ), Early Childhood Development for All (ECD4ALL), Local Economic Development for All (LED Broker), Information and Communications Technology for Development (ICT4D), and the Training and Development (T&D).[3] The other three areas of expertise are more of processes, they are crosscutting in their operations, and these include Community Participation (CP), Project Management (PM), Monitoring (MEL). There is also within the VPUU, the Executive Support Services, which includes Office Management, Information Technology, Human Resources, and Finance & Marketing departments that complete the areas of operation in the VPUU.3
Moreover, the VPUU programs and operations are co-funded by the Federal German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the City of Cape Town, National Treasury, and together with other public and third-party funding.[3] Barolsky (2016) argues that the initial financial agreement between the German Development Bank and the City of Cape Town stipulated that a project-implementing agent or intermediary known as the VPUU Consortium should implement the intervention led by a team of consultants from Sun Development Pty Ltd, which is a subsidiary of a company heard-quartered in German.1
1 Barolsky, V. (2016). Is social cohesion relevant to a city in the global south? A case of Khayelitsha township.
6 Okurut, K. Kulabako, R. N. Chenoweth, J. & Charles, K. (2015). Assessing demand for improved sustainable sanitation in low-income informal settlements of urban areas: a critical review. International Journal of Environmental Health.
Specializations, Methods and Tools
The VPUU typically initiates and look to address the issues affecting citizens by seeking their involvement in the projects, and the community can also initiate the area it would like the VPUU to assist in addressing.3 This, therefore, means that any stakeholder can initiate the programs and seek inputs and support of the other stakeholders, and the VPUU in some cases provides training workshops if the program requires citizens to have the skill sets for a particular program. Barolsky (2016) argues that one of the key citizen engagement tools that the VPUU uses is baseline surveys, which the organization discursively constructs as giving a voice to ordinary citizens through a random sample.1
Major Projects and Events
The challenges of poor service delivery in townships of Cape Town with its fast-growing informal settlements is a challenge the local government is struggling to maintain. The event in this work will focus on the challenges of poor sanitation and the inadequate service delivery in informal settlements of Khayelitsha. The event or project studied in this work is the City Spec Mobile Inspection Tool for Improving Service Delivery in informal settlements of Monwabisi in Khayelitsha, and the program was developed by the VPUU, the City of Cape Town and other stakeholders involved.
CitySpec: A Mobile Inspection Tool Improving Service Delivery
Formula D_: CitySpec Mobile Inspection Tool.
The struggle for informal settlements to receive adequate service delivery is an issue that invites meaningful engagement on how to minimize poor service delivery. And informal settlements are defined as residential areas situated on illegally occupied land or where housing is not in compliance with planning and building regulations.6 The VPUU therefore, working with the community members and other interested stakeholders developed a City Spec Mobile App program in Khayelitsha, and this is a mobile inspection tool that looks to identify service delivery faults for improving essential services in informal settlements.3 According to the VPUU website their aim for developing this program was to get authentic evidence of the service faults in the affected area, by deploying members of the community to gather the evidence.3 The accuracy of this mobile app is validated by a VPUU program facilitator, who acknowledges that the city spec make reporting faults easy as the move from paper to technological reports goes straight to the municipality system and there is no errors of misinformation capturing and immediately receive response through email about the repair process.10 This is significant in revealing the effectiveness of this project and how it has helped improve service delivery using the community and with the community responding positively to the change made by the city spec. As it is reported that in 2011 about 40% of 177 communal taps were faulty and a fault report was sent resulting in the Water and Sanitation Department repairing and seeking to increase functionality of the services to 90%.10
Formula D_: Facilitator Training Community Members
Formula D_: VPUU CitySpec Facilitator (Thulani Manci).
The people using the mobile app are community members trained in established workshops or training programs for efficient and effective participation on solving service delivery challenges.3 Despite the VPUU website failing to explain the criteria for selection, but an individual within the project reveled that those volunteering community members are taken and trained.10 It is said that the city spec mobile app monitored a wide range of services including water taps, toilets, streetlights, and other services, and has different alert codes for different faults and these are reported to the city.3 The wide range of services covered by the city spec makes it imperative for solid communication between citizens and government, however, it does not guarantee that all reported faults will be attended and delivered adequately on a constant basis. The VPUU website also states that the fault reports are uploaded as picture attachment to an online database and the City of Cape Town takes charge of monitoring and repairing the faults using GPS for location areas and type of service reported.3 In addition, the City of Cape Town had a similar project where it developed a GPS coordinate to enable repair teams to easily locate the toilets after faults reports by the community, and that resulted to 256 toilets in Khayelitsha in November of 2011 repaired and hundreds of doors and missing manhole covers replaced and raised others to prevent sewerage holes.7
Formula D_: Community Members Capturing Faults
Formula D_: Community Member Capturing Faults
Formula D_: Informal Settlements of Monwabisi
6 Okurut, K. Kulabako, R. N. Chenoweth, J. & Charles, K. (2015). Assessing demand for improved sustainable sanitation in low-income informal settlements of urban areas: a critical review. International Journal of Environmental Health.
10 Formula D_: vpuu cityspec mobile app.
7 Overy, N. (2013). The Social Justice Coalition and Access to Basic Sanitation in Informal Settlements in Cape Town, South Africa. International Budget Partnership.
10 Formula D_: vpuu cityspec mobile cellphone monitor.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
In the analysis of the City Spec project, the theory that will be used is the Participatory Democracy in an Age of Inequality by Decombe and Parvin. This theory is significant for the study because it explains how participatory democracy make ordinary people the centre of engagement and decision-making. It further explains the significance of citizen involvement in budgetary meetings, and this contributes to the development of citizen’s awareness, capacity of knowledge, and development of citizens to effectively participation giving democracy legitimacy by also holding the government officials accountable.8
Therefore, the establishment of the City Spec by the VPUU initially signify a sense of democracy because the project was brought to life by the coming together of different stakeholders deliberating how the project will operate and these includes the City of Cape Town, the German Development Bank, the community of Khayelitsha, community-based organizations and other stakeholders. Despite full participation of the different stakeholders involved it does not mean the effectiveness of their participation is equal, with the level of their financial contribution to the program being unequal. Since the centrality of this project is to place citizens at the centre of operations, Mugwaneza (2019) argues that public participation is based on the belief that the people affected by a decision have a right to be involved in the decision-making processes, and this includes the importance of their contribution influencing decisions.9 Therefore, the VPUU project by involving community members in decision-making sessions or meetings and providing them with skills and knowledge of the mobile app through development workshop, it is exercising participatory democracy. This is significant with regards to the theory because through citizens direct involvement in the program using the mobile app, it also provides them with adequate information to hold the government to account and participate meaningfully in decision-making, resulting in legitimate and effective governance.
Unlike the GPS coordinates developed by the City of Cape Town which revealed the results of their project, it has been difficult to get information with regards to the success of the programs in the long run and how ordinary community members affected received the project as the community members involved in capturing fault report spoke highly of the cityspec program. This is to mean the sustainability of the program has not been identified in this work and the views of the people in Monwabisi other than those involved in the program. In the participatory democratic theory, Decombe and Parvin (2019) argue that opening democracy to a plurality of voices in this way might lead to tangible benefits in the quality of democratic decision-making.8 This, however, is not a given that all who participate or given an opportunity to participate in decisions is reflective of their impact in decisions. It rather suggests that all participation of different stakeholders is welcomed but decisions of stakeholders holding higher power can easily overpower or suppress to an extent the decisions of the other stakeholders. Even though there is no evidence found that show to be the case in the running or operations of the cityspec program. This leave leaves Piper cited in Barolsky (2016) arguing that the community consultation that the VPUU engages in and the forums it creates is designed in ways that allows for very limited form of direct citizen participation in democratic decision-making.1
Therefore, the analysis of the cityspec program in Monwabisi informal settlements of Khayelitsha has revealed that the participation of community members in decision-making does exist to some extent and that the program is centered around citizen participation. That is because community volunteers trained to use the mobile monitor cellphone are directly involved in alerting the city and the department of water and sanitation about the service delivery faults and these stakeholders directly report back to the community volunteers about the plans to resolve and repair the services found with faults. However, the participation of the community members in direct decision-making and their effectiveness in not explicitly revealed even though it has been shown that they do participate. In addition, the VPUU signify high levels of democracy since community members not only participate in decisions but are provided with information to hold the government officials to account and that maximizes high level of transparency to an extent.
9 Mugwaneza, B. I. (2019). Impact of Mommunity Participation on Sustainability of Water and Sanitation Project in Rural Areas. Case Study of Musanze District, Northern Province of Ruanda. Master Dissertation. Pan-African University.
8 Decombe, R. & Parvin, P. (2021). Participatory Democracy in an Age of Inequality, Representation.
1 Barolsky, V. (2016). Is social cohesion relevant to a city in the global south? A case of Khayelitsha township.
Publications
See Also
References
[1] Barolsky, V. (2016). Is social cohesion relevant to a city in the global south? A case study of Khayelitsha township. SA Crime Quarterly. No. 55.
[2] Cloete, J. (2012). Public Participation, Political Representation and Accountability: the case of VPUU in Khayelitsha. Harare in Cape Town.
[3] http://vpuu.ac.za
[4] Xabendlini, M. T. (2010). An Examination of Policy Implementation of Water and Sanitation Services in the City of Cape Town: a Case Study of the Informal Settlements in the Khayelitsha Area. Degree of Maters in Public Administration (MPA) in the School of Government, University of the Western Cape.
[5] Nleya, N. & Thompson, L. (2009). Survey Methodology in Violence-prone Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. IDS Bulletin. Vol. 40. No, 3. Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
[6] Okurut, K. Kulabako, R. N. Chenoweth, J. & Charles, K. (2015). Assessing demand for improved sustainable sanitation in low-income informal settlements of urban areas: a critical review. International Journal of Environmental Health, 25:1, 81-95, DOI: 10.1080/09603123. 2014.893370.
[7] Overy, N. (2013). The Social Justice Coalition and Access to Basic Sanitation in Informal Settlements in Cape Town, South Africa. International Budget Partnership.
[8] Dacombe, R. & Parvin, P. (2021). Participatory Democracy in an Age of Inequality, Representation, 57:2, 145-157, DOI: 10.1080/00344 893. 2021.1933151.
[9] Mugwaneza, B. I. (2019). Impact of Mommunity Participation on Sustainability of Water and Sanitation Project in Rural Areas. Case Study of Musanze District, Northern Province of Ruanda. Master Dissertation. Pan-African University.
[10] Formula D_
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