Citizenship Prepaid: Water, Calculability, and Techno-Politics in South Africa*

TLDR: In this article, the authors trace the history of prepayment technology in South Africa from its initial development as a depoliticising device in the context of the rent boycotts, to its present de...

Abstract: Since the first general elections in 1994, the post-apartheid state has been faced by widespread non-payment of service charges in townships, often interpreted as a ‘culture of non-payment’ held to stem from the anti-apartheid rent boycotts of the 1980s. After the spectacular failure of a campaign to encourage payment for services, and in a context of neoliberal reforms prescribing ‘cost recovery’, many municipalities resorted to the large-scale deployment of prepaid meters, devices that self-disconnect households following non-payment. This article focuses on Operation Gcin'amanzi (Zulu for ‘Save Water’), a controversial large-scale project initiated by the recently corporatised utility, Johannesburg Water, to install prepaid water meters in all Soweto households. Taking this project and the protests against it as a point of departure, I trace the history of prepayment technology in South Africa from its initial development as a depoliticising device in the context of the rent boycotts, to its present de...