Mobilizing the Day Zero Drought in Cape Town

Drawing on three years of interviews and work with a small-scale farming-activist group in Cape Town, South Africa, this book provides a close look at how working-class activism affected equality of water access during the 2017 - 2019 drought, and in turn sheds new light on efforts across the Global South to advance food sovereignty through agroecology . This side of the story is completely lacking from other accounts of the drought, which rely too heavily on an administrative or technical perspective. Here Matthew Wingfield shows how a group of environmental activists used the drought to highlight their concerns over unequal access to water and the misuses of water for large companies and commercial farms. In so doing, he provides new, granular insights into the intersecting issues of land access, water access, and other kinds of natural resource use, and thus suggests some new directions applicable throughout the Global South for how working-class activism and small-scale farming can reorganize the connection between water and land in a country characterised by historical dispossession.

Product details

• Authors: Matthew Wingfield
• Assisted by: Harcourt Wendy (Editor of the series)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Release: 23.07.2026
• EAN: 9781350576919
• ISBN: 978-1-350-57691-9
• No. of pages: 208
• Series: New Writing in Critical Development Studies
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political theories and the history of ideas; SCIENCE / Global Warming & Climate Change, Climate Change, Africa, HISTORY / Africa / South / Republic of South Africa, Political activism, Republic of South Africa, Urban communities, South Africa: places of interest, Sub-Saharan Africa, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Activism & Social Justice, Political activism / Political engagement, Urban communities / city life