Examining the Interplay between Economic Development and Local Women Vulnerability to Flood Impacts in Selected Local Areas in Durban,South Africa

Interlinking perspectives: political economy and feminist political ecology

Political economy is a subfield of political science. Political economy perspective articulates the belief that ‘political considerations – and the interest groups that drive them – have primacy in determining influence and thus economic outcomes at (almost) any level of investigation’ (see Serrat, 2017: 208). As a reaction to rational-choice theorists who assert that political behaviours regarding policymaking are inherently self-interested or “value-neutral”’ (Petracca, 1991: 239), scholars of political economy attempt to understand how ideas (such as ideas regarding rural development), norms and values, rather than self-interest, shape policymaking (Campbell, 1998: 377). Institutions, ideas and interests that influence choices of development programmes largely determine the outcomes of such programmes. For instance, choices of adaptation governance are likely to have an enormous impact on how such governance addresses the adaptation needs of the most vulnerable population to climate change risks. Moreover, in addressing gendered vulnerability, the impacts that governance choices have on women are a pertinent issue to explore, especially from a specific contextual perspective.

Feminist political ecology analyses gender and environmental issues within the broader perspective of political economy. The two perspectives unpack the complexity of socio-economic and socio-political decision-making processes regarding local women’s adaptation to climate disasters. On a macro-level of analysis, the two perspectives, especially when analysed from a Marxist-post-structuralist perspective, can be applied to identify the effects of ideas, institutions and interests in shaping inequality and poverty in the Global South. This paper discusses the contextual conditions and power dynamics that shape Black women’s vulnerability within eThekwini municipality and how developmental choices interact with these factors to influence gender equity and the women’s vulnerability to climate disaster. We examine whether a developmental approach focusing on addressing local women’s vulnerability reduces the vulnerability or exacerbates it.

Political economy perspectives have been applied in different analytical levels to analyse social vulnerability to climate change impacts. From a macro-level, Liverman (1990) explains how exploitation of specific nations or regions – through resource outflow, land expropriation, exploitative labour conditions and political oppression – aggravates the level of vulnerability of those nations or regions, thereby creating inequality and differential vulnerability. From a micro-level, Serrat (2017: 219) analyses how the choices of approach to environmental management adopted within the floodplain region of Himalaya, Bangladesh, was causing a ‘man-driven’ increase in vulnerability and inequality. According to Serrat (2017: 220), the structural responses to flooding in the area exacerbated inequality in many economic, social, ecological and institutional ways that tended to affect the poorest most severely. Serrat (2017: 219) states that the poorest people were the most severely impacted because ‘they are not empowered to participate in making the decisions that shape their lives’.

This paper employed a political-economic developmental approach in selected informal settlements in Durban, including Inanda, Ntuzuma, KwaMashu and Umlazi. It explores the effects of the introduction of formal economic processes on the rural informal rural/informal economy that sustains the livelihoods of many of the local Black women and how this subsequently influences the vulnerability and adaptation of local Black women within the area to flood impacts. The following discussion explores the conceptualisation of adaptation as contestations between ideas, interests and institutions about stakeholders involved in adaptation governance.

Adaptation as contestations: politics, gender and vulnerability

Adaptation has been identified as an issue of contestation between policymaking bodies and political office holders who, in some cases, must approve adaptation policies for implementation. This role sharing sometimes brings conflict of interest where the ideas and interests of the two parties are not in agreement. Dolsak and Prakash (2018: 319) describe an instance of an ‘adaptation puzzle’. An adaptation puzzle describes a situation where the best adaptation portfolios recommended by competent scientists and analysts do not match the on-ground adaptation practices in a city or local government. Such contestations are likely to thwart efforts towards a just and equitable adaptation governance, one that considers the needs of the most marginalised population. In the situation of an ‘adaptation puzzle’ (Dolsak and Prakash 2018: 319), it is challenging to discern whose voices should count in evaluating climate change risks. Such contestation is likely to prevent climate adaptation policymakers or implementers from pursuing adaptation programmes or interventions that increase resilience or reduce poverty of the most marginalised population.

Studies by Eriksen and Lind (2009) and Dolsak and Prakash (2018) have conceptualised adaptation as politics. According to Dolsak and Prakash (2018: 319), politics has to do with who gets the power to decide how resources are shared among citizens. The Macmillan International Higher Education conceptualises politics as the ‘exercise of power, the science [and art] of government [and governance] the making of collective decisions, and the allocation of scarce resources’. ¹ The abovementioned conceptualisation of politics implies that politics is associated with an arena or ‘location’, in which people’s decision-making behaviours become political. ‘Politics’ is also viewed as a ‘process or mechanism, in which case ‘political behaviour’ is behaviour that exhibits distinctive characteristics or qualities, and so can take place in any, and perhaps all, social contexts’. ² Politics is closely linked with policy in that both influence each other regarding making formal or authoritative decisions on issues affecting a community, a group of people or an individual. To understand why a municipality would not prioritise issues of equity and justice of the most marginalised population in its adaptation intervention, it is crucial to explore how actors’ conflicting interests influence an adaptation policy or intervention.

According to Dolsak and Prakash (2018: 319), adaptation is conceptualised as politics because ‘it concerns power issues, conflicting policy preferences, resource allocation, and administration tensions’. Dolsak and Prakash (2018) also note that politics is not a ‘negation of rationality’ or a ‘roadblock in achieving policy optimums’, instead, collective action challenges in politics occur because decision makers are ‘boundedly rational actors playing games with specific structures’. When ‘adaptation as politics’ intersects with gender and class, one can see how policy preference or implementation can either enhance or weaken the adaptive capacity of local women to climate change-related impacts. Eriksen and Lind (2009) note that in adapting to drought in Kenyan drylands, political office holders were more likely to assent to policies that promoted their interests and that the kind of policies that promoted their interests did not maximise net benefits for the masses, specifically, the people whom the adaptation policies were meant to benefit. At times, policies that maximise net benefits for the masses might be challenging to achieve because of intervening socio-economic and socio-political factors. To understand what shapes an optimal policy preference that responds to the adaptation needs of Black women in eThekwini, it is necessary to understand the incentives and interests that characterise the choice of development or interventions stipulated in the South African policies in general and eThekwini municipality in particular.

As opined by Eriksen and Lind (2009: 817), ‘climate change adaptation policies are unlikely to be successful or minimise inequity unless the political dimensions of local adaptation are considered’. According to Eriksen and Lind (2009), existing power structures and conflicts of interests represent some of the political obstacles to developing equitable adaptation policies. Challenging existing power structures that daunt a favourable gender-sensitive or gender equity adaptation programme is enhanced by forming interest groups. Tummers and MacGregor (2019: 62) show how the feminist political ecology perspective is used to support ‘commoning’ projects and research in European cities to move ‘beyond wishful thinking’. Their study found that although co-housing projects had changed the social reproduction spaces where people shared time and resources, they were still likely to fail in achieving social justice unless patriarchal-capitalist structures were challenged through radical cultural change. In a neoliberal society where people’s rights seem to have been commodified, collective action groups have been formed to seek social justice. For instance, environmental justice movements began in the 1970s in the United States when the more impoverished population organised themselves to protest the unequal distribution of environmental pollution. Studies, for example McAfee and Shapiro (2010) and Kirwan et al (2015), have also shown how environmental activism against commodification, enclosure and overexploitation of natural resources emerged in the Global South. Such collective groups form a significant avenue where marginalised groups voice their concerns and demand justice and equity.

The influential role of collective bargaining has also been illustrated in a case study by Eriksen and Lind. In their study of adaptation to drought and conflict in Kenyan drylands, Eriksen and Lind (2009: 817) found that in the face of drought, individuals, politicians, customary institutions and government administration formed relations to strengthen their power bases in addition to securing material means of survival. The authors also discovered that national economic and political structures and processes had affected the local adaptive capacity reasonably, for instance, through the unequal allocation of resources across regions. It is also possible that adaptation policies made at the national, regional or local level can be biased against particular groups, individuals, or communities. A situation where adaptation policies disadvantage the most vulnerable group to environmental disaster is, of course, likely to compound or widen existing inequalities in a society or community. According to Eriksen and Lind (2009: 817), whether development policy widens the existing wealth gap depends on power relations existing at multiple scales, which shape how conflicting interests are negotiated.

Arguably, since climate change adaptation has multiple dimensions, actors involved in adaptation interventions may also have varying perceptions about what adaptation entails and the multiple ways of addressing people’s vulnerability. In one aspect, adaptation can seek to address biophysical vulnerability through investment in physical infrastructures such as dams, thunder-resistant houses, strengthening bridges, or in addressing the socio-economic and socio-political aspect of vulnerability through strengthening the social, economic, or political capacity of people. However, in most cases, actors involved in local adaptation seem to understand adaptation intervention solely as addressing the physical aspect of vulnerability. As Nightingale (2017: 1) notes, most adaptations plan in developing countries usually follow the adaptation framework/template charted out by the United Nations Framework on Climate Change (UNFCC).

Eakin and Patt (2011) have pointed out that in the UNFCCC framework, once vulnerabilities are ascertained, what follows is a shift of focus to technical measures, that is to infrastructural and institutional building, involving national, regional and local level coordination, including local-based adaptation management groups. As noted by Nightingale (2017), what this implies is that such internationally mediated local adaptation plans assume that one, adaptation is biophysical. The best way to address the vulnerability of the local population is through infrastructural and institutional improvement measures. However, in most cases, this assumption may conflict with the actual adaptation experiences of the local people. In this study, the vulnerability of local Black women goes beyond just biophysical vulnerability to incorporate other aspects of a vulnerability that are influenced by socioeconomic, cultural and political processes. In this regard, and in most cases also, gender intersects with ‘class’ to shape local women’s vulnerability to climate disaster. Therefore, it is crucial to consider the multiple dimensions to building people’s resilience to cope with environmental disasters while taking the people’s social context into cognizance.

Building people’s adaptive capacity to cope with climate disasters entails strengthening their resilience, and the process can be complex. It involves also building people’s emotional strength or improving social capital among people. However, in a situation where adaptation intervention is one-dimensional or where policymakers impose their thoughts and decisions on the local people, those policymakers would likely choose the techno-spatial aspect of adaptation intervention that seeks to improve infrastructure. Such intervention is likely to ignore other dimensions of vulnerability experienced by the affected individual or community.

As already noted, vulnerability also involves other stressors resulting from the context of political, institutional, economic and social structures and processes that put pressure on people, affecting their ability to cope with floods and other climate-related disasters. As O’Brien et al. (2007) mentioned, the choice of responses to a climate change disaster can affect the context for responding to other societal or environmental changes and vice versa. In the context of this study, the vulnerability of local women was found to involve other complex issues besides the stress caused by the degraded physical environment and flood events. The socio-cultural determinants of gender roles and responsibilities contributed significantly to the vulnerability experienced by the women. In other cases, gender-based violence and negligence of family responsibilities by men have put extra pressure on women. In the case of male negligence of family duties, mothers now had to bear the sole responsibility of the family’s welfare. This implies that in addressing the women’s adaptation to floods in the areas, it is critical to take cognizance of intervening and apparent contextual factors of vulnerability rather than rely only on an interventionist approach (which only reiterates the economic development at the affected areas as a way of helping the residents adapt to climate disasters).

Post-apartheid rural economic development in the informal settlements in Durban: implications for rural Black women adaptation to climate disasters

One of the proposals highlighted in Durban’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy is to address climate change impacts through addressing the ‘Triple Challenge’: poverty, inequality and unemployment facing the more significant population of the country (eThekwini Municipality, 2012). The ‘Triple Challenge’ is reported to have impacted enormously on the social, economic and political fabric of South Africa. ³ Poverty and inequality are critical challenges in South Africa. These two issues also constitute a significant challenge to Black women living in rural settlements in the country. Consequently, as part of the general strategy to reduce rural women’s vulnerability to climate change impacts within the municipality, the eThekwini municipality has recognised the need to address the poor communities’ economic challenges.

The Durban Climate Change Strategy document states that:

Poor communities within the municipal rural areas and those living in informal settlements are most vulnerable to climate change. These communities are often located in poorly serviced areas with a high risk of extreme weather events, compounded by poor infrastructure, and thus are not resilient. These poor communities generally do not have access to financial resources and have minimal coping mechanisms to deal with the consequences of extreme events, thus escalating their vulnerability. (eThekwini Municipality, 2012)

As stated earlier, the eThekwini municipality seeks to address the historical injustices and bridge the gender equity gap in its climate change strategy. The need to address the historical gender, racial and class injustices in South Africa are equally stipulated in the country’s post-apartheid Constitution (Section 9, article 2) and other related policies (especially the South Africa’s National Policy Framework for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality and the National Development Plan Vision 2030). A critical aspect of the eThekwini municipality’s strategy is how to provide equal opportunities to women, especially those who have previously been severely disadvantaged due to their gender, race and class. Historically, Black women who reside in the rural/informal settlements comprise the most disadvantaged group in South Africa in terms of gender, race and class. Walker (1990: 19) has shown that historically, sources of livelihoods of Black African women have been located within informal settlements’ informal economy.

It has been reported by the South African History Online (SAHO, n.d.: 7) that at the turn of the 18th century, during the labour migration, when many African men migrated to work in the mines, the women (Black women) were left alone in rural areas. The report also states that since the sole responsibility for family care was now resting on the women, they devised a means of sustainable livelihoods by invigorating the local economy. While some took up employment as domestic workers for mainly White people, many turned to subsistence agricultural practices. The report states that Black women who did not have employment resorted to brewing local beer and sold them to many migrant workers who could not afford Western beer and local men who preferred the local beers to the imported or European ones. This possibly explains the history of many Shebeens ⁴ in informal settlements in South Africa.

However, at the turn of democracy in South Africa in 1994, and with the quest for a development approach that tackles historical injustices, including rural poverty and women’s inequity, the eThekwini municipality reiterated its commitment to integrate informal settlements into the economic hub of Durban. As stated by the eThekwini Municipality (2012), the integration was to be done through Action for Building Productive and Sustainable Nodal Economies. Furthermore, the programme of action (PoA) was and is intended to stimulate economic growth and development in the Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu nodal zones as well as to identify opportunities for public and private sector investment; identify barriers and constraints to economic activity within the nodes; and acknowledge recommendations on strategic interventions for improving the nodal business climate and the institutional recommendations for implementation (eThekwini Municipality, 2012).

In the Durban development trajectory, the Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu are combined into a single area and referred to as the INK nodal zone. The INK node is about 30 km north of the Durban city centre and comprises formal residential townships and informal settlements. The three areas are adjacent to one another, with a very blurred boundary. The eThekwini municipality manages affairs of INK through a single administrative unit, and local councillors are responsible forwards that cut across all three areas. The INK node forms one of the presidential poverty nodes ⁵ within the Urban Renewal Programme (URP) ⁶ of South Africa. The node is one of the eight in South Africa that was considered for an Area-based Approach (ABA) ⁷ Despite the differences between the individual areas, the three INK nodes share a standard set of challenges.

As noted during the fieldwork of this study, since the settlements are majorly residential areas with low levels of internal economic activity, the areas’ growth prospects were strongly linked to external areas (mainly the Durban city centre). Inanda still has predominantly informal settlements/structures, but KwaMashu and Ntuzuma have many formal settlements. KwaMashu, because of its proximity to the Durban city centre and its access to major transport corridors (rail station and taxi rank), serves as the main economic hub of the node. Nonetheless, INK area also boosts significant economic and infrastructural development – for example the Bridge City, KwaMashu Community Health Clinic, Princess Magogo stadium, Inanda Dam and Resort, among others. As reported by the South African Department of Provincial and Local Government, following the 2011 census in the country, most (51%) of the INK population are female while 49% are male. However, though this is what the formal census reports, the researcher observed during the fieldwork that most of the households were inhabited by women. Moreover, many of the study participants also mentioned that most of the households in the areas were female-headed households and many of the women were poor. Possibly many of the men had migrated to other cities in search of labour.

Similarly, uMlaz is primarily a Black African settlement. As reported by the South African Department of Provincial and Government and Business Trust (2007), the residents of Umlazi are 94% Zulu speakers, and the limited level of English instruction inhibits chances of gaining employment in the eThekwini municipality’s knowledge economy. These statistics may have changed as most recent statistics seem to be unavailable. The statistics may have changed now because of the presence of formal educational institutions in the area and the fact that post-apartheid South Africa has put policies in place to encourage the education of Blacks – for example the introduction of the National Students Financial Aid Scheme to fund students from low-income backgrounds. However, although there have been several private and government investments in Umlazi (such as the Mangosuthu University of Technology and many other higher institutions, Umlazi Mega City, Philani Valley shopping Centre, Kwa-Mnyandu shopping centre, King Zwelithini Stadium, among others), many Black women in Umlazi, significantly much older women, residents still live in the degraded part of the township. This part is highly susceptible to flooding. Umlazi will be used as a case in point to analyse the kind of development in the study sites.

From the researcher’s observation during fieldwork, many of the investments in Umlazi are in one section of the township. In other words, one section of the township is topographically favourable for infrastructure and businesses. The other section where development has not reached and serves as the residential area for most of the Black women interviewed during the study has been left degraded. Development in Umlazi seems to adopt a capitalist approach to development, with little or no interest in poor women empowerment or environmental sensitivity. However, the mega-private investments in the localities have provided some job opportunities for the residents, especially the young people. The presence of shopping malls and other service facilities has also relieved some of the residents – who can afford to buy from the malls – the stress of travelling long distances to the Durban city centre for their shopping needs. However, these mentioned advantages do not disprove that the mega private and capitalist investments have overshadowed the informal economy, from which some of the local women sustain their livelihoods. Many informal retail businesses and roadside vending were affected/overshadowed.

The gender implications that arise from such overshadowing are significant, especially since the people affected are mostly older women with less formal education, which limits their opportunities of being absorbed into an economy that requires a certain level of formal education or at least a certain level of language (primarily English) fluency. One participant in Umlazi, who was running a spaza shop ⁸ in the area, said, ‘now there are very few sales because many people now go to the mall to buy stuff’. Her spaza shop was located in the interior, undeveloped and environmentally degraded part of the township. Improvement in infrastructural development (such as road transport network) in the interior areas of townships have the potential to advance businesses such as shebeens and street vending in those areas. This is partly because the increased traffic arising from good road networks can influence sale volumes of street vending businesses such as shebeens and other roadside retail businesses. As noted earlier, while there is an opportunity for economic growth-generating activities arising from additional investment in the area (primarily private-sector-led firms, though), low additional employment potential is being generated for the local women. This is while their sources of livelihoods were severely impacted. Therefore, we argue that such development seems to serve the interest of a few capitalists at the expense of the many rural residents.

Figure 1 shows the two different sites of Umlazi. The first two images show the interior, undeveloped flood-prone areas, while the second image shows the well-developed and industrial part of Umlazi. While the developed section of Umlazi has functioning facilities such as good roads, electricity, water supply and good housing facilities, the floodplain lies on an uneven topographic landscape. Simple water supply is a scarce resource for the residents of the floodplains.

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Figure 1.

Spatial differences between the economic and the residential sites of Umlazi Township.

Studies have shown that urban or rural development that is executed primarily through an economic lens has gender implications (Gay-Antaki, 2016). In events of climate disasters, such development is likely to influence poor rural or urban women’s adaptation to climate change disasters. According to Gay-Antaki (2016: 62), gender implication is an essential consideration within neoliberal development. Development is linked to land ownership and access to resources and property. In the Global South, men are better positioned socio-culturally than women to possess these resources. Moreover, the extensive literature on gender and sustainable development suggests that development projects that do not consider gender marginalise women’s access to land and resources, excluding them from formal decision-making (Resurrección and Elmhirst, 2008; Arora-Jonsson, 2011; MacGregor, 2010). As stated by Nagar et al. (2002: 261), ‘under global capitalism, poor women and men are marginalised through informal economies of production and caring that subsidise and constitute global capitalism’.

In the study contexts, the neoliberal approach to development seems to have widened the inequality gap. As mentioned, this is because the introduction of mega shopping malls and other mega food processing industries, as especially noticed in Umlazi, had significantly impacted the informal sources of livelihood for women. In Umlazi also, the inequality was quite visible in the spatial location of infrastructures. As already noted, the nature of the development is that few sections of the Umlazi township are equipped with improved housing. In contrast, the more significant part of the townships still lives in poverty and degraded land. As observed during the study, some of the Black women from the interior section of the township who managed to get employment in the mega enterprises of the modern Umlazi were still engaged in menial jobs like cleaning, till-point attendants and goods packers.

As MacGregor (2010) notes, global economic processes have directly intensified the ‘feminisation of production, reproduction, and community management’. According to Gay-Antaki (2016: 54), rather than being unintended side effects, neoliberal forms of development ‘have used women’s roles in production, reproduction, and community management as a critical subsidy for the economic and social viability of projects’. Capitalist forms of production that rely on utilising subsidised women’s efforts in production processes or development schemes exacerbate social and gender injustices (Arora-Jonsson, 2011). Moreover, as Gay-Antaki (2016: 62) observed, in addition to increasing women’s labour burden, unequal development that capitalises on the market’s interest tends to result in a ‘progressive loss of knowledge concerning forest health, biodiversity, and climate change’. During the fieldwork, the researcher observed that although there were large portions of fertile land, they were not being utilised by the residents, at least for subsistence purposes. This is linked to the negative side effect of the many private sector-led investments and food production firms that made residents lose sight of the farming economy.

Although not directly related to climate adaptation intervention, literature has also identified the various implications that an area-based approach to development has on the informal economies of rural settlements in South Africa (Donaldson and Du Plessis, 2013; Ligthelm, 2006; Mathenjwa, 2007; Zondi, 2011). According to Donaldson and Du Plessis (2013: 296), some of the implications of capitalist investments on informal economy pertain to the ‘role of the community in the process, as well as partnership and interagency cooperation, and the quest for complexity’. An equitable approach to rural area development is that which adopts a multi-dimensional approach to development, taking into cognizance the complex interplay of social, economic and environmental problems in shaping people’s vulnerability. The vulnerability of local women due to natural disasters is influenced by such a complex interplay of socio-economic and socio-political factors. Therefore, any developmental approach with gender equity as one of its goals or addressing gender justice of local women should consider this complex dimension of vulnerability.

One of the approaches to tackle climate change in a sustainable manner, as indicated in South Africa’s National Development Plan (NDP), vision 2030, addresses the impacts of climate change while addressing inequality in the country. As indicated in the NDP, this is to be implemented through (1) upgrading informal settlements on suitably located land; (2) prioritising infrastructural development of rural communities and (3) reshaping South Africa’s rural settlements with projects to address the existing spatial divides between cities and rural settlements (RSA, 2012). Arguably, these prospects indicate some aspect of addressing the country’s historical racial, class and gender injustices.

Furthermore, Donaldson and Du Plessis (2013: 296) note that of great significance to a successful [rural] renewal is ‘creating a new sense of place’. A sense of ‘place’ is created when the local people are incorporated fully into any development. From a case study of area-based development in Khayelitsha informal township in Western Cape Province, South Africa, Donaldson and Du Plessis (2013: 296) observed that a sense of place can be created through a ‘sharing of local development perspective and strategy, as well as creating legitimacy for development choices through participation and ownership’. Any development in the INK nodal zone or Umlazi area of Durban should ideally provide local businesses, which form part of the precinct, by pre-empting and avoiding damages to such existing local businesses. Such development planning should find ways of integrating informal downstream enterprises into the formal economy. According to the South African National Treasury (2010), provision for informal and downstream enterprises could include elements such as suitable space, storage and cleaning services and small business development training. In their study concerning how to facilitate a pro-poor land use management in South Africa, Gorgens and Denoon-Stevens 2010: 4) assert that ‘while informality may well support the immediate needs and livelihoods of the poor, their exclusion from the planning system (whether it is “strategic” or due to neglect) is likely to exacerbate systems of inequality’.

Some local studies have documented the impact of shopping malls on small township businesses in South Africa. For instance, Ligthelm (2006) shows that in Soshanguve township in Pretoria, the turnover of street retail businesses declined at about 80% for those traders situated less than 1 km from the mall and about 30% for those cases at a distance of 45 km from the mall. Similarly, Mathenjwa (2007) carried a survey study in Soweto and showed that 60% of the respondents said that their spaza shops had been negatively impacted by the presence of the Jabulani shopping mall in the area. Similar studies have been undertaken by Donaldson and Du Plessis in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. Similarly, work by Zondi, titled, Investigating the Social and Economic Effect of Jabulani and Maponya Malls on the Residents of Soweto, suggests that the impact of shopping malls on small townships business in Soweto townships constitutes a double-edged sword. Whether the local women gain or lose from it depends on the type of business they run. (2011: 1). According to Zondi, while spaza shops and general dealers experienced a decline, businesses like shebeens and street vending were positively impacted due to the presence of the shopping malls. As already mentioned, the context and the type of development in a town determine the nature of the influence such development has on small-scale, informal economies.

In the context of this study, the interviews were carried out in the remote parts of the townships, with limited access to good infrastructure, road networks and communication technologies. These were the areas heavily affected by flooding. During the fieldwork of this study, the researcher noticed that the few people who ran roadside retail trading were primarily middle-aged women. Many of them did not have the opportunity to attain formal education. Lack of formal education training limits their chances of being absorbed into the formal knowledge economy of Durban city. Second, the rising unemployment in the country probably contributes to the rise of street vending businesses. A report by Trading Economics ¹⁰ (2020) shows that between 2000 and 2020, South Africa’s unemployment rate has risen to 30.4% in the third quarter of 2020. Moreover, reports by Polity.org.za have shown that street traders are usually poor, unskilled people at the lower end of the socio-economic ladder (Siqwana-Ndulo, 2013). According to the report, ‘the majority of street traders in South Africa are black women who trade in a range of goods including sweets, knickknacks, cigarettes, clothing, and (most prominently) in fruit and vegetables (often produced by someone else)’. In eThekwini in particular, the report indicates that females make up the majority (58%) of street vendors.

The South African Constitution (Section 22) guarantees freedom of trade and occupation. This would imply that street vendors who may not have other means of livelihood have some degree of protection in the Constitution. Moreover, Section 152 of the South African Constitution also empowers municipalities to entitle individuals and communities to involve themselves in municipal affairs through economic growth and development. However, the legalisation of street vending is still a blurred issue, as the Constitution does not seem to state that street vending is legal explicitly. In the same vein, though its legality (street vending) does not seem to be explicitly stated in any known eThekwini municipal policy, the municipality – as shown in the eThekwini Municipal Council Policy, ¹¹ adopted in February 2001 – has ‘recognised’ street vending as means of jobs and income.

In South Africa, street vending was not permitted during the apartheid era. However, it seems that in Umlazi and the INK nodes, and perhaps in other formerly disadvantaged settlements in South Africa, the area-based development approach is regarded as an essential means of addressing climate change (adaptation) challenges. However, how the development is planned and implemented seems to have inherited an approach of separate development and spatial planning that puts the poor at the periphery, far away from the wealthy and middle-class who may buy their products. Generally, such an approach to development has many implications for women’s adaptive capacity in climate disasters. Most of the underlying factors that contribute to women’s vulnerability to floods in the study areas were issues linked to unemployment, poverty, lack of government’s attention to the degraded environment in the floodplains, declining sales by street vendors as a result of the resurgence of big private shopping malls, gendered violence against women and rising crime in the neglected part of the settlements. These factors had disproportionate impacts on the local women in adapting to the impacts of floods. In future environmental disasters, these issues will likely continue to impact the women’s adaptive capacity unless drastic measures are taken to offer more significant opportunities and security to their livelihoods (especially as many of them are the head of their households). As efforts to address climate change impact in the rural settlements are linked to economic development in the areas, it is crucial that the policymakers and planners look deep and intentionally into the relationship between markets, economic activity and space that affects local women. More significantly, the policy needs to take an institutional form that considers how the unequal spatial planning and development in the areas affect the interests of the local women, including their capacity to adapt to impacts of natural disasters. Therefore, any economic growth and development initiative in rural settlements must not overshadow the underlying gendered factors that influence local women’s vulnerability to climate-related disasters.