What constitutes the social in (social) sustainability? Community, society and equity in South African water governance

ABSTRACT This article explores the question of what constitutes the “social” in (social) sustainability. It applies a governmentality perspective and focuses especially on how social sustainability is understood in relation to the concepts of society and community. Furthermore, it investigates what social sustainability means, or could mean, in the specific context of water governance in South Africa – one of the most unequal countries in the world. This case study is based on original fieldwork in the country, conducted between 2017 and 2018. The theoretical exploration, together with the empirical study, demonstrate that there are two interrelated tensions between understandings of social sustainability, between approaches that place society/social cohesion in focus and those that emphasise community and between approaches that focus on basic needs and those that emphasise equal access. At stake here, between these different understandings, is the role of equity and to what extent social sustainability takes into account the situation of individuals and groups in relation to one another. Ultimately, the article raises the question of the (South African) elephant in the room: to what extent can large inequities between individuals and groups be accepted in a society considered to be (socially) sustainable?


Introduction
This article explores the elusive role of social sustainability in sustainable development policy and practice as it pertains to the particular context of water governance in South Africaone of the most unequal countries in the world.
The article has two interrelated aims. The first is of a theoretical character: to investigate the question of what constitutes the "social" in (social) sustainability. This task is a worthwhile one since there is uncertainty about the definition and understanding of social sustainability, both in academia and in policy circles. More specifically, the article examines how social sustainability can be thought of in relation to the concepts of society and community. It is important to highlight how these concepts are understood in connection to social sustainability, since this is directly related to how inequities in society, within and between groups, are viewed. Another reason why this is important is the increasing focus on the community as the relevant zone for sustainable development interventions (Rolfe 2018), and the particular effects this has on how sustainability is envisioned.
The second aim of the article is to explore, through the article's theoretical governmentality frameworkwhich focuses particular mentalities, rationalities and techniques of governing (cf Mayhew 2004) what social sustainability come to mean, or could mean, in the specific context of water governance in South Africa. The issue of social sustainability, or the social aspect of sustainability, is both relevant and urgent for the South African water sector, since the country, at the same time as adhering to sustainability and equity as guiding principles in national water governance, is also characterised by inequities in water use and access.
The South African case study is based on original fieldwork in the country, conducted between 2017 and 2018. Ultimately, the theoretical exploration, together with the empirical study, raise the question of whether the social in social sustainability refers to conditions and relations within particular communities or to something larger, to an idea of society. At stake here, between these different understandings, is the role of equity and to what extent social sustainability takes into account the situation of individuals and groups in relation to one another. Here, the difference between equality and equity is recognised. Equality is understood to refer to everyone's right to the same treatment/opportunities, while equity recognises that in order to reach a fair outcome, people ought to be treated in accordance with their situation/needs, acknowledging past injustices. 1 The text will proceed as follows. The second section, on context and theory, presents how sustainable development, and in particular its social dimension, relates to questions of water governance. This section also gives an overview of the concept of social sustainability and how we can understand the concepts of society and community from a governmentality perspective. The third section discusses how notions of society and community are relevant in the South African context and outlines the country's water governance in the post-apartheid era, with a focus on distribution and inequities. The fourth section describes the methodology of the study. The fifth section presents main findings in relation to the role of social sustainability in South African water governance. The final section offers conclusions.

Sustainable development, the social and water
Sustainable development has gained increasing public attention, evolving into new areas and sectors, and become the overarching principle for development, as indicated by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Nevertheless, the relationship between its different pillars, or dimensions, is anything but clear. Regarding social sustainability, there is also uncertainty about what should be included under this label and how it is to be understood, defined and measured (Bostrom 2012;Cauvain 2018;Dempsey et al. 2011;Holden 2012;Littig and Grieβler 2005;Vallance, Perkins, and Dixon 2011;Åhman 2013).
In the water context, sustainable development has been a concern for over three decades. While the 1977 United Nations Water Conference in Mar del Plata was the first intergovernmental meeting to discuss future challenges of water supply, the Dublin statement, in 1992, explicitly established "scarcity and misuse of freshwater" as a threat to sustainable development (ICWE 1992). After Dublin, integrated, participatory, gender-sensitive and demand-sided management, which is to be both economically and ecologically sound, became the answer to the challenges of sustainable water governance. The framework is known as Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), 2 and it embraces three basic criteria for water management: social equity (ensuring access for all users to an adequate quantity and quality of water), economic efficiency (bringing the greatest benefit to the greatest number of users possible with the available financial and water resources) and ecological sustainability (ensuring the functioning of ecosystems) (Lenton and Muller 2009). These criteria, known as the three E's, are closely connected to the mainstream definition of sustainable development in terms of its three pillars (environmental, social, economic). Currently, and although 30 years have passed since Dublin, sustainable development remains an overarching principle in water governance, and water issues and governance are part of the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, where IWRM is explicitly mentioned in SDG 6.5.
Although sustainable development has been a concern in water governance for a long time, there is a marked absence of the concept of social sustainability, both in academia and in policy. In academia, only a few studies use the concept explicitly; Bui and colleagues (2018) focus on groundwater and three main social sustainability aspects: quantity, quality and management. Another contribution is made by Hellberg (2017), who problematises how South African water governance is productive of social hierarchies and particular subjectivities in water management.
In the policy context, the concept of social sustainability is rarely referred to, since social equity is used to describe the social component of sustainable development. Concerning how the three E's relate to one another, the 2015 World Water Development Report acknowledges that even though the IWRM framework is guided by the concern for all three dimensions of sustainable development, social equity is, in practice, often given less priority in decisions on water allocation (WWDR 2015, 21) The report concludes that greater emphasis needs to be placed on issues related to social equity in water management. The subsequent 2019 report argued that access to water and improvements in water management are essential for addressing inequitiesmost severely experienced by ethnic minorities and indigenous peoplesand that human rights-based approaches and good governance can aid this process (WWDR 2019).

Social sustainability: the concept
Social sustainability is, arguably, the least defined and explored dimension of sustainable development, described as a "missing" or "forgotten" pillar (Bostrom 2012;Hellberg 2017;Opp 2017). In the academic literature, there has been divergence about the objectives of social sustainability (Omann and Spangenberg 2002), and the status of the concept in relation to environmental and economic sustainability has been debated. In this debate, it has been suggested that environmental and economic concerns have been prioritised over social concerns (Holden 2012). It has also been suggested that it is an under-utilised (Davidson 2009) and under-theorised (Åhman 2013) concept.
Usually, the concept is understood to be related to indicators such as quality of life and health, equity, inclusion, access, social cohesion and participatory processes (Holden 2012based on Partridge 2005Wolsko et al. 2016). Several attempts at defining the concept have been made, however. Murphy (2012), for example, argues that the social pillar encompasses four overarching social concepts: public awareness (for sustainability), equity, participation and social cohesion. One of Murphy's main arguments is that these concepts need to be better linked to environmental dimensions of sustainability. In line with Murphy's focus on social cohesion, other scholars emphasise that social sustainability should, among other factors, involve a focus on social integration, and a reduction of social and spatial fragmentation (Stren and Polèse 2000). Opp (2017) proposes a working definition for urban contexts: "for a city to be labelled as socially sustainable, all people, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or income level must, have the ability to enjoy equal access to the fruits of public investment while also being able to satisfy their basic human needs". Based on this definition, four broad dimensions are identified as vital for social sustainability: equal access and opportunity, environmental justice, community and the value of place, and basic human needs.
One aspect that needs emphasising here is that the focus on "community" is common for many social sustainability scholars. While a focus on "community-based development" is not exclusive to social sustainability, but rather something noticeable in the (sustainable) development context in general (Rolfe 2018;Li 2007), the community is often the starting point for the discussion around social sustainability, for both policy makers and academics (see, for example, Suchowerska 2021), and it is within the community that social sustainability is worked with and to be attained (see Manzi et al. 2010). In this context, resilience is frequently described as a desirable quality or indicator (see Magis 2010).

The social and the community in governmentality theory
Taking community as a starting point for social sustainability is, however, not a given but can, from a governmentality perspective (Dean 1999;Foucault 1991;Li 2007), be seen as central aspect of a certain way of governing. While governance theory generally puts forward that a community focus involves opportunities for participation, power and influence from actors beyond the state (Rolfe 2018), governmentality literature contrasts "society" with "the community" (Rose 1996), arguing that the focus on the community as the relevant territory for government interventions is implicated in a new relationship between the governing of others and the governing of the self (Rose 1996). What such a perspective makes us see is thus that the way that social sustainability dominantly is thought and practiced is linked to larger shifts in the way that power and governing work. The perspective allows us to critically interrogate governing rationales, in the context of social sustainability, but with a simultaneous awareness of the different shapes that such governmentalities take in particular geographical locations (Rutherford 2007).
Society is heredespite the differences it encompassesimagined as a "single space, territorialized across a nation" (Rose 1996, 333), a "collective existence" with "collective responsibilities and obligation" (Rose 1996, 333). Society is assumed to be tied together by an idea of solidarity, manifested in the idea of "social citizenship" (Rose 1996, 333). A focus on the community, in turn, involves a "de-totalization" of governing, since it is in relation to communities, which are "localised, heterogeneous, overlapping and multiple", that we form our allegiances (Rose 1996, 333).
The focus on the community is understood as a particular form of governing related to the shift in government techniques towards what is called neoliberal (Dean 1999) or advanced liberal (Rose 1993) governing. At the core of neoliberal/advanced liberal ways of governing is "governing at a distance" (Rose and Miller 1992) through techniques of self-government and processes of responsibilisation. This means that citizensor members of certain communitiesincreasingly become responsible for their own choices (Rose 1996), be it selecting healthcare facilities, schools for their children or level of water service, and for the effects on their lives of these choices.
In this shift to advanced liberalism, governing rationales are changed. The cohesion of the population is no longer seen as important for economic security (Hindess 1994in Rose 1996 and individuals are seen as equipped with agency and capacity to be active in their own government (Rose 1996). The relationships between individuals and their community become instrumentalised for the purposes of governing (Rose 1996). Being part of a community entails an ethical component, which involves responsibilities and obligations, not only to oneself but also towards the community. These responsibilities and obligations are mediated both by emotional bonds and by processes of identification (Rose 1996), which work differently compared to identification processes when citizens understand themselves as members of a "national society". Community identification processes, in contrast, appear more "direct", more "natural", because of affinity and proximity (Rose 1996).
What is argued in this literature is that the focus on the community is not just a matter of "professional jargon" but indicative of a "mutation" in our "thinking and acting" in relation to the "administration of individual and collective existence", which previously used to be "conducted in a 'social' language" (Rose 1996, 331).

The social and the community in (post)-apartheid South Africa
In the South African context, the difference between thinking about the social as the sphere of government, in contrast to centring on the community, takes us right to the idea of the creation of the post-apartheid state and the notion of the "Rainbow Nation".
At the heart of this notion, which was coined by the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, is harmony, in the coming together of different racial groups. It was thus proposed as a remedy for the racial separateness of the apartheid regime (Habib 1997). The notion of the Rainbow Nation became adopted by key political figures such as Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki and gained widespread acceptance by various actors both within and outside of South Africa, not least when telling the story of the South African transition as a "miracle" (Habib 1997). In accordance with the theoretical framework presented above, to refer to South Africa as a Rainbow Nation is a way of articulating "a 'social' language" (cf. Rose 1996) and of constructing an idea of a collective existence, an integrated population, across the South African Nation.
The logic of the Rainbow Nation was criticised early on for neglecting class issues and mainly focusing on racial antagonism as the predominant conflict in South African society (Habib 1997). This neglect of socio-economic variables was projected to affect the prospects of consolidating the South African democratisation process (Habib 1997). Almost three decades after the fall of apartheid this hypothesis seems to have been confirmed. While socio-economic rights are formally recognised in the constitution, the neoliberal economic policies that have characterised South Africa, ever since the Growth, Employment and Redistribution macroeconomic strategy (GEAR) (RSA 1996b), have not been able to redress the inequalities of apartheid and, arguably, rather work against these rights (Mwipikeni 2019). Contemporary political commentary has labelled the tendency of glossing over inequities and differences in lived experiences as "rainbowism" (Gachago and Ngoasheng 2016). Moreover, state capture, understood as systemic political corruption (Galvin and Roux 2019), has affected the state-society relationships negatively and has, arguably, hampered the effectiveness of combatting poverty and unemployment (Khambule 2021).
The concept of community, in turn, is not a new invention in South African governing. Rather, it is of both historical and contemporary importance. Historically, the concept has been used to serve the interest of the ruling minority under apartheid as well as being an important concept within the liberation movement (Butchardt and Seedat 1990).
The notion of community served the apartheid regime in two ways. First, it was a prerequisite for its establishment since it was employed to unite and create coherence amongst Afrikaners of different socio-economic classes (Butchardt and Seedat 1990). Second, for the apartheid regime, community was a euphemism for "race" and "ethnic group". Community had a positive connotation and could therefore effectively be used for sustaining the policies of "separate development" (Butchardt and Seedat 1990). The different groups categorised in the population register and the Group Areas Act were referred to as belonging to different communities (the "Indian community", the "Coloured community", and so on). Similar to the role that community has in neoliberal governance, where self-sufficiency and self-government are emphasised, there was also a notion that each community should "provide for their own needs" (Thornton and Ramphele 1988;34 in Butchardt andSeedat 1990, 1095).
In the 1970s, community became popularised in the liberation discourse (Butchardt andSeedat 1990, 1095). The term was used to designate either large socio-economic groups, the "Black community", or residential entities, usually referred to as townships and locations. To represent "the community" was associated with acting for the common good (Thornton and Ramphele 1988;34 in Butchardt andSeedat 1990, 1095). Here, a problematic relationship between the emphasis on community and the liberation cause appeared. Butchart and Seedat write: […] by placing greater emphasis upon what transpires within these 'communities' than on the ongoing interactions between them and the wider context, the idea is communicated that 'community empowerment' is accorded a higher value than transformation of the society that perpetuates the 'communities', separate existencethe means becomes an end unto itself, and by romanticizing 'community empowerment' the racially fragmented nature of South African society is reinforced. (Butchardt andSeedat 1990, 1095) Thus, according to the above, regardless of who has been using community, for what purposes and when, it can be viewed as a discourse that reinforces racial categories and ideas of separateness (Butchardt andSeedat 1990, 1095;Malherbe, Seedat, and Suffla 2021).
In contemporary South Africa, the community has kept its importance. Community involvement in local development processes is an important component of South African democracy (Katsaura 2012). It is also a way to describe different groups and the place in which people live, as well as a platform from which engagement and activism are performed. Thus, the community can be understood as the socio-political arena that is the most relevant to people's lives and it can be used for accounting for differences and injustices (e.g. Canham 2018).
Currently, community is, however, mostly used to describe poor areas where previously disadvantaged groups reside, i.e. Black, Indian and Coloured communities (Ngonyama ka Sigogo, Tso Modipa, and Hook 2004;Malherbe, Seedat, and Suffla 2021). Another aspect that is specific to communities in South Africa, is that they, to a large extent, are spatial entities, resulting from apartheid planning since the post-apartheid state has failed to restructure spatial patterns (du Plessis 2013; Maharaj 2020).

Water governance in post-apartheid South Africa
One of the areas in which the post-apartheid South African state aimed to redress previous inequities was water access. At the time of the democratic transition, approximately 12-14 million South Africans lacked access to safe water (DWAF 1997). The constitution declared that "[e]veryone has the right to have access to sufficient water" (RSA 1996a, 27 [1][b]). The National Water Act (NWA) (RSA 1998) made it clear that the state was the custodian of water resources, in contrast to the situation in the apartheid era, when water rights exclusively belonged to white individuals (Turton and Meissner 2002). Under the new system, water rights were created and legislated in relation to different categories of water use (RSA 1998). These categorisations include the so-called Reserve, which has priority over other uses and is divided into an ecological reserve and a basic needs reserve. For other purposes the legislation requires that users attain licences. The new water legislation was commended internationally. First, the so-called free basic water policy (FBW) 3 became the tool to achieve the constitutional right to water, and it gained global recognition as a way forward for promoting fairer access to water. Policy implementation has, in aggregated measures, been a success: according to a WHO assessment, there was a 36% increase in the number of households with access to improved water supply between 1990 and 2015 (SAHRC 2018).
Nevertheless, there are still people living in South Africa who lack access to reliable water supply and a lot has been said and written about the unequal nature of South African water access and usage (see Bond 2000;Cole et al. 2018;Loftus 2005;Rodina 2016;Rodina and Harris 2016;Sutherland, Scott, and Hordijk 2015). This literature has focused on inequities both in terms of the access to and use of household water and in terms of water for productive and livelihood purposes (Hellberg 2020;Marcatelli 2017;Movik 2014).
Regarding household use, figures presented by Statistics South Africa (2017) show that 89.8% of households use piped drinking water as a main source. According to these figures, 44.4% had access to water inside their dwelling, and 30% had access inside their own yards, while 1.9% accessed water from a neighbour, and 13.3% from a communal tap (ibid.). In addition, 4.3% relied on water from unprotected sources such as rivers, streams, wells or springs. The largest inequities concerning access to safe drinking water are between rural and urban areas, and between impoverished and informal areas and better-off communities, especially the former white suburbs.
Inequities also exist within communities, for example, between those who can pay for water and those who rely on free basic water (Hellberg 2014). Lack of water and sanitation services has gendered effects, as women and girls are most affected, not only because they often bear the burden of water collection but also because of the high rate of sexual assault and rape in the country. The collection of water or use of sanitary facilities outside of their homes puts them at risk. Disabled people are another vulnerable group disproportionately affected by the lack of access to water and sanitation services (SAHRC 2018, 60).
Compared to the provision of water for household use, the transformation of the distribution of water rights for productive uses and livelihood purposes has been slower. Recent figures from the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS), in the masterplan for water and sanitation, illustrate this well: white commercial farmers use 95% of the water in the agricultural sector (NWSMP 2018, 17). The reasons are manifold. Water users who had been granted water rights in previous periods, for Existing Lawful Uses (ELUs), were exempted from the need to apply for a licence through the ELU clause. While this was supposed to be a transitional arrangement, with entitlements eventually to be turned into licences, the process has been drawn out and some of these users, mostly established commercial farmers, still use water under this clause (Marcatelli 2017). The ELU clause did not include water users in the former homelands, however, and emerging users from previously disadvantaged communities have struggled with the administrative processes to apply for licences (van Koppen and Schreiner 2014). This has seriously hampered the transition to a more equally shared access to, and use of, water in the the country.
Along with the challenges of extending water access, another major challenge in post-apartheid water governance has been (the perception of) increasing water scarcity. After the democratic transition, it was no longer possible to harness new sources of water by continuously building new dams as a response to increasing demand, as had occurred under apartheid. Rather, water management after the democratic transition had to address "a new reality" and to increasingly "manage within the constraints that are given us by nature" (DWAF 1997). This meant that water resources had to be distributed within acknowledged resource constraints, and scarcity became an overarching rationale for water governance (Hellberg 2020;Marcatelli 2017). The more recent National Water and Sanitation Masterplan defines South Africa as a "water scarce country" (NWSMP2 2018) and stipulates that without effective interventions, there could be a gap of approximately 17% of available water sources, by 2030 (NWSMP2 2018, 1-1). It therefore establishes water security as a "critical challenge confronting South Africa in the twenty-first century" in relation to "social wellbeing and economic growth" (ibid.). In this context of scarcity, critical research has shown how processes of responsibilisation, mediated by policies and technological devices, are utilised in governing especially poor people's water use and access (Hellberg 2018(Hellberg , 2020von Schnitzler 2008).
Another important aspect of the performance of South African water governance is related to institutional factors. The DWS has recently been found guilty of numerous cases of financial mismanagement and corruption; "state capture" has been a feature of the Department's conduct in the 2010s (NWSMP2 2018). A report by the Water Integrity Network/Corruption Watch, published in 2020, outlines the prevalence of corruption in the South African water sector, and finds that corruption is systemic (Muller 2020). In addition to institutional challenges on the national scale, many smaller municipalities struggle financially and in terms of capacity to fulfil their responsibility to provide their inhabitants with water (Palmer, Moodley, and Parnell 2017). Moreover, the state of the infrastructure of the country's water supply systems has increasingly become an urgent matter, as there is a high (and increasing) degree of failure in water services delivery (NWSMP2 2018).
Thus, water governance in South Africa faces a number of institutional, infrastructural, distributional and resource-related challenges with negative effects for South Africans' ability to access uninterrupted, good quality water. Inequities in water access and malfunctioning water supply systems have, however, not been silently accepted by South African residents. Service delivery protests have been a regular occurrence in South Africa, both during and post-apartheid (Bond and Mottiar 2013;Palmer, Moodley, and Parnell 2017). Since the democratic transition, the country has seen protests against water shortages, lack of water services and prepayment devices, some resulting in casualties. Along with the factors discussed in this section, the protests and discontent amongst the South Africans furthermore suggest that the social sustainability of water governance is a relevant and urgent issue in South Africa.

Methodology
In order to explore the role of social sustainability in South African water governance, this article adopts an abductive approach, which implies that insights gained from the empirical data collection have been used to revise and refine the theoretical framework (Dubois and Gadde 2002). Concretely, this means that the conceptual tools of society and community have been developed as a result of the reading of the empirical material.
This material consists of key policy documentsthe National Water Act (RSA 1998), the Water Services Act (WSA) (RSA 1997) and the Masterplan for Water and Sanitation (NWSMP 2018)and of interviews with water experts and managers. All experts and managers were approached because of their knowledge of and responsibilities for issues of water infrastructure and/or social sustainability. Representatives from the following organisations were included: the Department of Water and Sanitation (DWS) (4), 4 the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) (3), the Department of Planning Monitoring and Evaluation (DPME) (1), KPMG (1), 5 the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) (2), 6 the Water Research Commission (WRC) (2), 7 the Agricultural Research Council (ARC) (1), 8 Rand Water (1), 9 Magalies Water (1), 10 the Trans-Caledon Tunnel Authority (TCTA) (1), 11 and former high level professionals in research and government (2). The funder did not require an ethical approval for the study but a South Afrian research permit was attained The study has followed the Swedish research council's guidelines for good research practice (VR 2017) and the Belmont report for principles for the protection of human research participants.
Although this material is not entirely representative of the whole water sector in South Africa, it provides a solid base for exploring the meanings, roles and tensions connected to the concept of social sustainability. The collected empirical material is analysed through a text analysis. Documents and interviews were searched for meanings and definitions connected to "sustainability" and its different dimensions/pillars, and for the words "social" and "(in)equity".. The analysis gives an overview of the meanings attached to social sustainability in South African water governance and how they relate to the indicators and dimensions in the literature on social sustainability. The analysis also problematises, from a governmentality perspective, the relations between key concepts of social sustainability: society and community and basic needs and equal access in relation to equity and scarcity, the latter two being overarching rationales in South African water governance.
The collection of the empirical material took place during a turbulent period in South Africa. It was turbulent because of the "recalling" of Zuma, debates about "state capture", and, in water governance, because of institutional mismanagement and corruption as well as persistent drought. This environment made it hard to get in touch with relevant people, especially at the DWS, and people were reluctant to be interviewed. The Johannesburg water utility, Johannesburg Water, which was initially part of the research plan, demanded that as a researcher, I sign legal documents stating that I would "not harm the company's reputation in any way". Doing so would have compromised my integrity as a critical scholar and required me to redesign the research plan. Also, during the conducted interviews, an unsettling atmosphere could sometimes be detected; it was not uncommon for the interviewees to ask me to turn off the recording device to share something that they did not want on tape. Some interviewees were worried about the situation and unclear why some decisions had been taken. One such controversial issue was the discontinuation of the Blue Drop/Green Drop programmes, introduced in 2008 with the goal of monitoring compliance with drinking water quality standards (Blue Drop) and wastewater treatment (Green Drop). Given the highly politicised nature of water governance at the time of the fieldwork, and the unease in certain interview situations, the names and affiliations of the interviewees will not be provided. Since the aim of this article is to explore the role of social sustainability in the water sector, not to analyse particular actors' understandings of the concept, this does not affect the results of the analysis.

Sustainability and equity
Social sustainability is not a concept explicitly referred to in key policy documents. Instead, the social aspects are most centrally captured in the concept of "equity", as "sustainability" and "equity" are defined as central guiding principles in water management and governance. The following quote from The National Water Act (RSA 1998) is illustrative: Sustainability and equity are as central guiding principles in the use, development, conservation, and control of water resources. These guiding principles recognise the basic human needs of present and generations, the need to protect water resources, the need to share some water with other countries, the need to promote social and economic development through the use of water and the need to establish suitable institutions in order to achieve the purpose of the Act. (ibid., 14) That equity is a concept separate from the concept of sustainabilityas in the NWAis also manifested in the WSA (RSA 1997). The WSA acknowledges that the government has a duty to "ensure that water supply services and sanitation services are provided in a manner which is efficient, equitable and sustainable". The masterplan echoes this way of describing sustainability in relation to social issues: The desired state of a water resource is the state that ensures that it functions sustainably i.e. a state that supports ecological functioning as well as socio-economic requirements (which include basic human needs) without compromising the ability of the resource to provide appropriate goods and services. (NWSMP 2018, 8-7) Although not typical for how central policy documents frames the concept of the social, the "social pillar" is however referred to explicitly in the masterplan: Evidence has shown that most technical interventions without adequate social engagement and education of communities often lead to failures of good technical interventions. The social pillar is thus driven mainly to ensure community buy-in and support of technical programmes aimed at reducing water losses and wastages within communities. (ibid.,  In this particular instance, the social pillar is reduced to an instrument with the purpose to keep peace and make people in communities adhere to governing logics. As shown above however, in central policy documents, social and equity concerns, with specific reference to basic human needs, are described as sepate from the concept of sustainability, which, is understood as ecological sustainability. As the main concept for social aspects of water management, equity appears in the NWA regarding the need for compulsory licencing (RSA 1998, 60) and as "one of the considerations in setting differentiated charges" (RSA 1998, 70). This is also reflected in the WSA, which stipulates that, in the endeavour to provide "equitable access", norms and standards may differentiate on an equitable basis between "different users" and "types of water services" as well as "different geographical areas", taking into account both "socio economic and physical attributes of each area" at the same time as, amongst other factors, "promot[ing] and achiev[ing] water conservation" (RSA 1997, 18).
The masterplan reiterates the guiding principles of the legislation, but simultaneously acknowledges that national government has been "largely reactive" regarding the reallocation of water to black users, which has limited the possibilities for these users to make "productive use of the land" (NWSMP 2018, 4-2). The masterplan makes particular reference to "racial equity", in that racial equity must be given priority in situations when it comes into conflict with the objective of shifting water use "from low to higher economic use" (NWSMP 2018, 4-2). 12

The social aspects of sustainability in key interviews
The absence of an explicit use of social sustainability was also reflected in the interviews with experts and policy makers. Given that the policy makers and experts did not work explicitly with the concept of social sustainability, or had a clear definition of it, I probed into what social sustainability could mean in relation to their responsibilities or knowledge fields. When I probed into the meaning of social sustainability, the interviewees related the concept to the following key aspects/concepts in the water sector (Table 1): Overall, what the interviewees associated to the concept corresponds to how social sustainability is discussed and defined in the academic literature, presented above. Social sustainability is understood as related to well-being, inclusion, access, social cohesion, equity and participatory processes, some of the characteristics that Holden (2012), Partridge (2005), Murphy (2012), Opp (2017) and Wolsko et al. (2016) propose. Furthermore, "community" and basic human needs stands out as important in how the interviewees related to social sustainability.

Community and Basic human needs
Community, and community representation and participation, are formally included in the NWA and the WSA in relation to establishments of water institutions and management of water resources in their water management area (RSA 1998;RSA 1997). One interviewee answered the question about what social sustainability is in these words: To me social sustainability, in the context of infrastructure projects, is that all the way from planning, construction, commissioning, you have to find a way to integrate all the social issues: from participation and social value wherein the community will come in, get jobs, get some form of corporate social responsibility benefits and also […] it has to prioritise the community objectives and community wishes, […] The project managers should be able to make provision to listen to those demands but most important is the whole issue that once the project is completed, communities must have been changed. (my italics) Another central theme in the interviews, also reffered to in key policy documents is basic human needs. The importance of the Free Basic Water (FBW) has been outlined in the section on water governance in post-apartheid South Africa. The way that the interviewees related to the concept however differed. One interviewee focusing on basic needs said: social sustainability: to provide the people with the basics, you look at what it is that they need. Don't assume what they want. You ask them, you talk to them to find out what is it exactly what they need [..] you will be surprised how basic sometimes some of the stuff that […] they need Another interviewee held the view that the social aspect, in accordance with the Constitution and the Water Act, has a much broader aim and which requires more than fulfilling basic needs: Here, criticism emerges against the narrow focus on water for basic needs, and the quantification of progress in this regard, while the interviewee also embraces a broader view on the social aspects of water to include economic development, dignity and livelihoods.

An elusive, yet under-utilised, concept
Even though social sustainability appeared to be an elusive concept for the professionals interviewed in this study, several of them underlined the need to work more systematically with social aspects. What the interviewees mostly focused on in this regard was the lack of (or superficial) consultation and dialogue with communities. There was an awareness that lack of focus on social issues could help explain why water projects, such as irrigation schemes, fail. Several interviewees related the rationale for social sustainability in communities to the commonly occurring service delivery protests, along with the recognition that proper consultation and participation are currently missing. One of them said: The system is not yet at the point where we are saying, when we want to deliver a project, what are social issues? What are all the social risks? And what are those social aspects that can advance this project?
Another interviewee spoke the same language: […] the end objective [of water infrastructural projects] is to achieve social sustainability because if communities don't accept infrastructure that's given to them, they are not going look after it, not going pay for it, they are going to vandalise it. So, I think [social sustainability] is integral to any infrastructure implementation project […] In South Africa we assume a lot, we assume that communities want that technology, we assume that communities will pay for that infrastructure but you know what? I think that there's a need for us to actually consult more and not just to consult in terms of saying, "we are going to do this", but consult in trying to get their opinion on it and: are we on the right track? Is this what you want?
Here social sustainability appears as a tool for community buy-in in order to prevent protests and vandalisation, similar to what it says in the masterplan. In the interview excerpts, criticism of how communities are viewed and involved in decisions that concern them is, however, also expressed. Hence, according to the interviewees, the concept of social sustainability has the potential to do productive work in the South African water sector and might be seen as an under-utilised concept, as recognised above. There are, however, key tensions in how this concept is described by the interviewees and in policy, tensions that are worth pinpointing because they signal watersheds in how we conceive of (social) sustainability and sustainable societies, not only in South Africa but generally. To identify these tensions, I will pick up on some of the key dimensions/criteria discussed in the social sustainability literature which come forward as key aspects in the South African case. The criteria/aspects of social sustainability that will be discussed derives particularly from Opp's (2017) four dimensions: equal access and opportunity, environmental justice, community and the value of place, and basic human needs. Murphy's (2012) and Stren and Polèse's (2000) focus on social integration, and a reduction of social and spatial fragmentation are also taken into consideration. Against the backdrop of governmentality theory, I will discuss these themes in relation to overarching rationales in South African water governance.

Communitysociety
The first major tension that this article wants to focus on is how notions of community and society are enacted in relation to social sustainability in the context of South African water governance.
Learning from the article's theoretical framework, we can contrast the focus on the community with the idea of society. From this perspective, it has been argued that "society" loses importance as a relevant "zone", "target" or "objective" when "community" gains prominence as the relevant unit for governing (Rose 1996). What emerges in the empirical material is, in addition and contrast to the focus on the community, ways of seeing social sustainability as connected to social well-being, social development and social cohesion, as shown in the excerpts and the table above.
To refer to social cohesion is to refer to South Africa as a "collective existence" (Rose 1996, 333), which invokes a sense of society beyond individual communities. Here, the relationality aspects of social sustainability become more important, compared to a community-centred understanding, as emphasis is placed on the situation of individuals and communities in relation to one another. In turn, this means that equity and distribution become key aspects.
When critically analysing a community-focused approach to social sustainability, three aspects are especially worth discussing. First, such an approach means that it is the conditions within the communityfor example, consultation, communication, participation, the value of water, access and job creationthat are in focus. Such an emphasis on the dynamics within the community, rather than on the interactions between communities and surrounding society, risks reinforcing fragmentation and separateness (Butchardt andSeedat 1990, 1095). This means that a community focus might stand in a tension to social integration, and a reduction of social and spatial fragmentation (Murphy's (2012) and Stren and Polèse's (2000)). It also risks normalising inequalities between communities (Knutsson 2020), as communities are seen as islands rather than as part of a larger societal whole. In connection to the tension above, this might mean that a basic needs approach (which we will come back to below) is applied in poor communities, whereas better-off communities can enjoy higher standards of water use and access, and it thus implies a downplaying of equity dimensions of water governance.
The second aspect is that South African communities are heterogeneous, being socially and politically diverse, as argued by scholars (Bénit 2002;Katsaura 2012). In relation to water there are, as mentioned above, differences between community members in terms of their ability to pay for water. Often South African communities have multiple community-based organisations claiming to represent the community inhabitants and contending for influence and legitimacy (Katsaura 2012). From a governmentality perspective, which focuses on the workings of power, this suggests that it is important to question power relations not only between communities but also within communities and between communities and state representatives (Super 2014, 12). In the context of social sustainability, rather than addressing communies as monoliths, we ought not to lose sight of inequities within communities related to factors such as citizen status, (dis)ability, ethnicity, gender and gender identity as well as income and employment. It also needs to be questioned who speaks in the interest of the community, and for what reasons (Katsaura 2012).
The third aspect is connected to processes of responsibilisation. Governmentality literature has shown how a focus on the community can be viewed as a particular technology of governing that places responsibility onto communities themselves rather than on formal governing institutions (Rose 1996;Rose and Miller 2010). In some interviewees' responses, ideas of "self-sufficiency" and "independence" appear in relation to the idea of community and as a way to instill responsibility for managing and taking care of infrastructure, as described above. However, in the specific context of South African water governance, the dominant understanding is that governmental interventions are needed. The dividing line is between those that advocate for a basic needs approachwhich implies that people ought to be left to their own self-reliance at the level above survival (Hellberg 2018)and those who argue for a broader approach, where the importance of equitable access to water also for other purposes becomes more pronounced.

Equal accesssatisfying basic needs.
Developing this further, we can thus identify the second, and interrelated, tension between between equal access and satisfying basic needs. In Opp's (2017) definition, these two components should be simultaneously fulfilled (along with the other two components) in order to reach a state of social sustainability. In the practical governance of the distribution of water, however, there is a potential tension, or difference, between a rationale that prioritises satisfying basic needs, through giving access to the FBW of 25 lpcd, and one that focuses more broadly on livelihoods dignity and economic development and on people's ability to access water in relation to other individuals (or groups), ie. equal access. This both in terms of water for household consumtion and for productive uses.
In South African water governance, during the last decades, emphasis has been placed on extending water infrastructure and services to those who have previously been without those services, and on putting in place policies for fulfilling the constitutional right to "sufficient water", through the policy of Free Basic Water (FBW). The relationship between individuals and social groups in terms of their ability to access water has, in this context, received limited attention, apart from being one of the considerations in setting differentiated and cross-subsidised charges and in relation to the need for compulsory licencing.
Ultimately, the tensions, or different perspectives on social sustainability, discussed above have effects for how to understand the role, and meaning of equity; if equity in water governance mainly is associated with the provision of water for basic needs or whether it is understood as a tool for redressing past injustices, which, in turn requires redistribution.
Furthermore, questions of equity and water distribution are intrinsically connected to the idea of scarcity as a fundamental challenge for South African water governance. Here the social dimensions of sustainability become linked to the environmental (Murphy 2012). What scarcity means for the idea of social cohesion is, however, not straightforward, according to interviewees. Here, two completely different views of scarcity can be identified. The first stipulates scarcity as a threat to national stability, as provinces in the country move towards thresholds in the so-called water scarcity index, which indicates the level of scarcity as the amount of renewable freshwater available per person per year (Falkenmark, Lundqvist, and Widstrand 1989). This understanding portrays physical water access as a limitation in terms of sustainability, as it undermines social cohesion. From another position, it is argued, on the contrary, that the physical limitations of water have a transformative potential in that they demonstrate the need to distribute water equally. Thus, scarcity appears here both as a a risk factor for social sustainability and stability and as an opportunity for more equally applied limitations.

Conclusion
The article has explored what social sustainability means, or could mean, in water governance in South Africa. It has found that social sustainability is not a concept that is explicitly used in this contex and that equity is the main concept for capturing social aspects of water governance.
Exploring further the role of social and equity concerns in South African water governance, the article has brought attention to two interrelated tensions; between notions of community and society and between equal access and satisfying basic needs. While these tension are relevant both in a South African context and in relation to the general idea of social sustainability, a community focus is prevailing, which involves particular effects for governing.
The community might seem like a "natural" or self-evident space for local democracy and participation. The community can also, however, be seen as socially constructed and as a concept that, regardless of why it is used, can reproduce ideas of racial categories and separateness. Seen from this perspective, the emphasis on "community" can be understood as an antipode to "society" and symptomatic of the development of the South African state in the post-apartheid period, which has involved a failure to create the Rainbow Nation projected in the transition to democracy. This suggests that while "community" is not a new invention in South Africa, it gets a specific role in the contemporary social order. Here, community can be seen as a meeting point of leftist, progressive ideas of "people's power" (Super 2014, 9) and neoliberal forms of governing that emphasise governing from a distance and technologies of responsibilisation. This meeting point resonates with the general discourse of the ANC, which reiterates the commitments to redistribution and equity but in combination with a neoliberal governance approach, a strategy which has been criticised as "talk left, walk right" (Bond 2004).
Ultimately, the results of the article raise an overarching question: does the social refer to conditions and relations in a particular location or to something larger, to an idea of society? It also raises the question of the (South African) elephant in the room: to what extent can large inequities between individuals and groups be accepted in a society considered to be (socially) sustainable? Furthermore, somewhat paradoxically, it raises the question of whether "society" is even a relevant "zone", "target" or "objective" (cf. Rose 1996) in strategies governing sustainable development. Given that the social pillar is constantly downplayed in policies and practices of sustainable development, in tandem with the persistent emphasis on "community", these are warranted questions which ought to be addressed by academics and policymakers alike.