Asivikelane #20 shows that for women access to basic services in informal settlements is closely tied to safety. We report on the experience of women where poor basic service delivery exposes them to many vulnerabilities and risks.

Two-thirds of Asivikelane participants are women and most of them say that there is not enough public lighting in their informal settlements. On the bright side, most metros now have green traffic lights for water however sanitation is still at critical levels. We hope that metros will use their share of the R11 billion of additional equitable share funding announced by Minister Mboweni, as well as reprioritised conditional grant funding, to address this problem.