ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces an underappreciated artefact of global connection – the humble toilet – and examines a convergence between two different human imaginaries around it. Whereas the Dignity Toilet imagines an Africa of rural landscapes and fields ready for fertilizing, the bare installations of Makhaza, Khayelitsha and Moqhaka in the Free State Province expose the harsh inequality of urban slum life. A common – and eminently reasonable – approach to reinventing the standard form is the urine diversion toilet promoted by organizations such as EcoSan and AfricaSan. The chapter contrasts the global plans of humanitarian designers to redesign the toilet for a more healthy and sustainable future with recent sanitation activism in South Africa, and demands for immediate inclusion within existing infrastructural norms. The modern flush toilet, it argues, is a sign of modern citizenship in a democracy in which the disposal of human waste ought to be the problem of modern state infrastructure.
