Natalia Shaanika, 15, walks her five younger siblings across a busy road to a waste site to discharge themselves every day. Their older sister maintains watch as they squat, half covered by fragments of corrugated iron and dirty toilet paper. When a car approaches, Shaanika rushes them back to their shack, partly naked. Flies swarm over a pail of water, each washing their hands.
"We are a family of eight living in a shack in a community that has no water points or toilets," says Shaanika, who lives in Swakopmund's Democratic Resettlement Community (DRC), one of Namibia's largest informal settlements, where 20,000 people live without running water or sewerage. "We relieve ourselves in the dump behind our house with our parents." "When I'm on my period, I use the same toilet and throw away the used pads," she adds.
Because of these conditions, Shaanika and her siblings, like the thousands of other men, women, and children who use the same and other comparable strips of wasteland as toilets in the DRC, suffer from regular illnesses and episodes of diarrhea. Their situation is not unusual. Over 1 million Namibians lack proper access to toilets, from the outskirts of cities to the most remote sections of the country, leaving them with just one option: open defecation.
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Namibia ranks sixth in the world for the highest rates of open defecation, at 47%, according to data from the World Health Organization and UNICEF's Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) 2020. Less than half of the country's 2.5 million residents utilize facilities that safely isolate waste from human touch, while the remaining 5% rely on insufficient facilities such as open pits, buckets, and hanging latrines. The country's critically low sanitation levels contrast sharply with the rest of southern Africa, where Namibia comes last in terms of sanitation coverage. Its rates of open defecation are more than double those of neighboring Angola to the north and nearly five times those of Botswana and Zambia. The repercussions go far beyond a bad odor. Because of the sheer volume of human excrement deposited in and around Namibian dwellings, preventing touch and even ingestion is nearly impossible. Excrement litters the ground between shacks, where children play with soiled hands, and flies freely migrate from waste to fluids and food. Crops are contaminated as excrement leak into the environment, as are essential water sources used for drinking, cooking, and fishing.
These conditions put Namibians, particularly children, at danger of lethal fecal-oral diseases and infections that cause diarrhea, the country's second leading cause of death among children under the age of five, while sanitation-related deficits such as malnutrition and stunted growth are also common.
"If we don't change our trajectory, things are definitely going to get worse, especially in informal settlements and rural areas," said Matheus Shuuya, a UNICEF Namibia water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) specialist. "We will see an increase in the number of sick youngsters... I'm confident we'll see frequent outbreaks of other diseases as well."
Education, dignity, and safety are also in peril. The difficulty of girls to manage their menstrual health on school grounds that lack proper sanitation leads to increased absenteeism, while Namibians risk rape, robbery, and even wildlife assaults as they seek the solitude of the bush.
Reinard Enrich, 18, was attacked at night while defecating on a landfill in Havana, an informal town outside of Namibia's capital, Windhoek. "The lack of toilets has made our situation dangerous," he explained.
"I was just minding my own business, listening to music on my phone." Two men approached me, one grabbing my throat and the other my phone. I couldn't do anything, so I no longer go out after dark."
Namibia, on the other hand, has ratified the key international human rights treaties that protect the right to sanitation, and its own constitution calls for "consistent planning to raise and maintain an acceptable level of nutrition and standard of living for the Namibian people, as well as to improve public health."
According to Namibia's Water and Sanitation Supply Policy, "essential water supply and sanitation services should become available to all Namibians, and should be acceptable and accessible at a cost which is affordable to the country as a whole." The South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) Party, which has governed Namibia since its independence in 1990, has also committed Namibia to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal Six (SDG6) of guaranteeing access to clean water and sanitation for all inhabitants by 2030. However, according to JMP data collected by the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ), static sanitation standards over the last decade indicate Namibia is not on track - not even close. While over 1 million Namibians await the implementation of this essential human right, the government appears to be taking insufficient steps to address a crisis that may deteriorate owing to climate change and rapid urbanization.
Despite the fact that billions of Namibian dollars have been invested on sanitation in recent years, the country's 5th National Development Plan noted that the sanitation sector has suffered from "poor coordination, lack of accountability, and spreading efforts and resources too thinly." Though the present administration has pledged to increase sanitation access and engage in educating Namibians about the need of basic hygiene, it is too early to predict how successful this endeavor will be.
Dr. Kalumbi Shangula, Namibia's Minister of Health and Social Services, acknowledged Namibians' difficulties. He told CCIJ that poor sanitation was straining health services and keeping Namibians out of work, but he was hopeful that things would change. "Sanitation will eventually catch up... "There is hope as long as there is good will and people are talking about strategies," he remarked.
However, many Namibians require more than optimism. Hilma Hamalwa, 35, resides in the DRC, about a 30-minute walk from Shaanika. When she noticed that her neighbors were getting the same diseases and ailments from defecating in the bush, she constructed a hole in the ground for them — and added four slabs of corrugated iron for privacy.
"This is not the kind of life that a human being should live," she argues.
The magnitude of the sanitation problem
Poor sanitation is wreaking havoc on Namibia's informal communities. 40% of Namibians, according to World Habitat, live in informal settlements. According to the Namibian Chamber of Environment (NCE), more than half of them do not even have access to restrooms. The NCE also estimates that every day, at least 45 tons of human feces are deposited in Windhoek's informal settlements. With almost 50,000 shacks crammed up against one another, Havana is one of the world's largest informal settlements. On their way home from church, school, or the market, men, women, and children find pockets of dirt to relieve themselves. The ground is littered with tissues, sanitary pads, and faeces.
Several government restrooms in Havana are in disrepair, with doors hanging off hinges and latrines overflowing. Many people who have access to these toilets prefer open defecation as the least of two evils. Johannes Nghidinwa, 53, and his wife, who is cradling their five-month-old baby, sit on the balcony in front of their shack. Their house is in the shadow of a landfill, which has become one of Havana's many open-air communal restrooms. "We are a community of thousands of people, but the toilets here are very few; you can count them on your hands," he says. "Not a week goes by without one of us becoming ill with diarrhea, fever, or the flu."
For many others, particularly women, the risks of defecating in the jungle at night are just too great, and they must instead defecate within their own homes. Janet Gaes, 34, lives in Windhoek's Otjomuise 8ste Laan informal settlement with her four children, and her home lies on a hill overlooking a dry riverbed overflowing with toilet paper. She takes her children to the riverbank during the day, but at night they share a bucket at home.
"We don't go to the riverbed after dark," she explained as she washed her one-year-old on the path outside. "Because people are assaulted there, we use the bucket to relieve ourselves at night." Then we toss out the feces in the morning and wash [the bucket] again for the next night."
Open defecation rates in rural regions are significantly higher, exceeding 70%. According to 2020 estimates, about half of Namibians live in thinly inhabited communities dotting the horizon. Residents with water struggle to keep it clean, and those without water sometimes rely on contaminated river and groundwater supplies. Even clinics and schools are not adequately sanitary.
Mukennah Scholastika is the principal of a public primary school in remote Kavango East, Namibia, where kids assemble in classrooms made of corrugated iron. "There are 330 students in our class." "We didn't have toilets until last month, so they had to use the bush," she stated. "Students arrive late for class, exposing themselves to dangers in the bush such as insects and snakes." Some people go home and never return. They even defecate in their clothes at times. "Girls will miss school, especially when they are menstruating," Scholastika warned.
She requested that parents donate to the construction of two toilets for children and one for staff, both of which were built by the community and are maintained by the teachers. Long lines form before the start of class in the morning. "We have one for the boys and one for the girls," Scholastika explained.
It is incredibly difficult to avoid cross-contamination or contact with excrement, yet staying clean is a challenge that even health professionals face in rural settings. Sem Tetera, a 23-year-old nurse, assisted in the delivery of a baby by the side of a road in Kavango West, Namibia's poorest district with the worst sanitary coverage. The new mother was taken to his clinic, a modest structure with no bathrooms and water only when the village chief could afford it.
"It's a struggle working here," Tetera admitted. "Most of the time, we don't have water, and working without it is a huge problem for us."
Namibian Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila stated in March 2023 that the government had "identified the need to improve universal access to sanitation and hygiene in informal urban settlements and rural communities."
In fact, adequate sanitation keeps water and food from becoming contaminated, children in school, and people healthy and safe. However, efforts to promote proper sanitation in Namibia have yet to generate major gains.
Reference: Frederick Clayton and Sonja Smith
Photography by Margaret Courtney-Clarke
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