Social relations of water access among the poor in urban Malawi

This paper examines some intimate ways that water constitutes and is constitutive of social relations in urban Malawi in a context where the government-sponsored water supply system has left a large section of the population off the municipal supply grid. Specifically, the paper focuses on the ambiguous role of ganyu, an informal and ad hoc form of labour with deep roots in Malawi’s colonial history. Based on qualitative research (n = 30) and grounded in perspectives rooted in urban political ecology, our findings indicate that ganyu helps poor households cope with acute water shortages. On the other hand, it also binds them to problematic and often exploitative social relationships. Specifically, the findings show that ganyu relations give rise to usufruct rights through which the urban poor can obtain potable water on a day-to-day basis from the homes of the individuals for whom they work. However, material control over potable water by those who own it fosters indentured relations, as it allows these individuals to wield enormous control over the productive labour of the people who work for them. And as these providers of ganyu hold all the cards, they also sometimes weave sexual demands into these ad hoc contracts, locking poor women into a cycle of both labour exploitation and sexual servitude. Underscoring the relational nature of water, overall, these findings contradict simplistic notions of water as a market commodity and show that in urban Malawi water is a mechanism for the generation and exercise of social power, a marker of social differentiation, a force for material reproduction for the well-off, and an instrument for further subordination of women.