The gendering of the water-energy-food nexus in peri-urban and urban South Africa

This doctoral study examines the social and structural dimensions of the Water–Energy–Food (WEF) Nexus in South Africa, placing hunger, food insecurity, health, and everyday wellbeing at the centre of analysis. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Lorentzville, Johannesburg, and a peri-urban Eastern Cape site referred to by the pseudonym Mqanduli, it explores how access to essential resources is shaped by intersecting inequalities related to gender, class, migration, and geography, alongside failures in water, energy, healthcare, and housing systems.
The study challenges dominant WEF approaches that prioritise technocratic and policy-driven solutions while overlooking lived experience, social relations, and health. It examines how hunger and food insecurity are experienced; assesses the relevance of the WEF framework at household and community levels; explores links between resource insecurity, poverty, unemployment, intimate partner violence, and unequal care responsibilities; and analyses community- and NGO-led responses.
Data were collected between 2022 and 2023 through 55 in-depth interviews and 10 focus group discussions, supported by a scoping review of WEF scholarship. Findings show that hunger is not simply a lack of food, but an expression of structural violence, emotional strain, and systemic inequality. Food insecurity was closely connected to service failures, constrained healthcare access, intimate partner violence, and the unequal distribution of domestic and care labour. Across both sites, these interconnected pressures intensified marginalisation, constrained household coping strategies, and undermined the capacity of individuals and communities to sustain dignified lives. The study proposes an intersectional, place-based, and socially just WEF framework that foregrounds care, dignity, agency, and everyday wellbeing.