The 2024 Open Secrets People’s Hearing for Energy Profiteers: Why We Need a People-Led Just Transition
The 2024 People’s Hearing for Energy Profiteers allowed a platform for a vast range of people and organisations to share their lived experiences of South Africa’s energy and climate crisis.
The People’s Hearing for Energy Profiteers, which took place on the 31st of January 2024, is a platform for affected communities, activists, and civil society experts to advocate through their testimonies for the prioritisation of human and environmental rights in efforts to address the energy crisis and the climate crisis. It is primarily an advocacy tool, as opposed to a formal legal process.
The People’s Hearing on Energy Profiteers comes after growing concerns over the health, environmental, and economic impacts associated with the continued burning of coal and diesel, and the push for expensive and harmful alternatives like gas and nuclear power. These impacts are felt most by local communities. To date, little attempts have been made to support communities affected by the energy and climate crisis, nor involve them in decision-making about South Africa’s energy future.
Several different people and organisations, including African Climate Alliance, shared their testimonies at the hearing. The panel that listened to the testimonies included Delme Cupido (the Hub Director for the Southern African Hub of Natural Justice), Melissa Fourie (climate justice advocate, environmental lawyer, and Civil Society Commissioner for the Presidential Climate Commission), Zen Mathe (Investigator at Open Secrets and the lead author of Open Secrets’ first investigative report on the climate crisis ‘Who has the power? South Africa’s energy profiteers’).
Read below or scroll to watch the testimony that African Climate Alliance team members – Sibusiso Mazomba, Gabriel Klaasen, and Sarah Robyn Farrell – shared on the effects of coal and the need for a people-led just transition, which was preceded by a moment of silence for fallen activists and land defenders:
As young people in South Africa, we have a vision for our future — a future where those in power make the health and welfare of all South Africans a priority. Currently the poorest and most underserved in our society bear the brunt of our government’s limited actions on climate change and environmental degradation.
Climate change — caused mainly by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas — is already an economic and humanitarian crisis in South Africa. Devastating floods and widespread droughts, worsened by climate breakdown, crush the agricultural sector, leave towns running out of water, and have already caused so much death and displacement.
But it is not climate change alone that is our concern. It is also the current and historic injustices caused by fossil fuels such as coal, such as removing people from their land, and the health problems caused by polluted air, water, and soil.
The Cancel Coal Campaign and the effects of coal
That is why, today, we don’t just represent our organisation, we represent the youth of South Africa and more specifically youth from the #CancelCoal Campaign. Cancel Coal is a youth-led campaign by the African Climate Alliance, Vukani Environmental Movement, and groundWork. The campaign calls for the end of new coal in South Africa and supports the landmark legal case of the same name, represented by the Centre for Environmental Rights.
This is the first time in South African history that youth have led a climate change constitutional court case against the government and it shows how serious we are as youth to build a better present and future without the chokehold of fossil fuels.
The legal case is a constitutional challenge to the South African government’s plans to introduce 1500 MW of new coal-fired power electricity – the equivalent of three to four large power plants. We are asking the court to put a stop to the government’s call for the development of this new coal capacity.
As we’ve heard today, those who live on the coal front are already suffering extreme health problems because of poor air quality around coal plants. Air pollution from coal-fired power stations kills more than 2,200 South Africans every year and causes thousands of cases of bronchitis and asthma in adults and children annually. This costs the country more than R30 billion annually, through hospital admissions and lost working days alone.
The proposed new coal development threatens the constitutional rights of the people of South Africa, both now and for future generations. This includes the right to a healthy environment, the best interests of the child, and the right to life, dignity, and equality. These human rights violations will especially affect young people and women.
Building new coal power plants also does not align with or support global efforts to stop a climate crisis from happening. It has been proven that there is no reasonable or justifiable reason to build new coal power plants, especially because renewable energy is more affordable, cleaner, and less harmful.
We are not blind to the fact that our leaders are among those benefiting the most from coal investments. But those who have the largest financial stake also can enable this shift. We will not be complicit while entire ecosystems fall apart and poor, working-class people and the youth suffer under climate injustice.
South Africa has a youth unemployment rate of more than 70%, a sure sign of the crumbling of our coal-powered capitalist economy. By prioritising a just transition to non-monopolised renewable energy, and implementing equitable nature-based and restorative solutions, millions of new jobs could become available while providing a solution to our climate and ecological problems.
Our vision for the future
That is why, as the youth, we don’t just say “no more coal”, we also have a vision for a new society without its dangers, a world where people are prioritised over profits and the future is safeguarded for future generations.
A nation that has gone through a comprehensive and genuine Just Energy Transition where coal-affected communities have been upskilled and new jobs have been created. Where South Africans can actively participate in the “green economy”.
A country where there is active and strengthened public participation through meaningful inclusion of women, youth, and other marginalised groups in decision-making processes that affect them.
But as youth tackling coal, we know it cannot stop there and it must extend to moving away from oil and gas.
Moving away from oil and gas
According to Don’t Gas Africa —a campaign led by African civil society to ensure that Africa is not locked into fossil gas production — fossil-fuel-induced energy apartheid in Africa has left 600 million Africans without access to modern clean renewable energy. South Africa is no stranger to this.
At the same time in May 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) concluded that expanding fossil fuel exploration must end and that no new natural gas fields were needed beyond those already under development. If we are to remain below the 2°C limit and prevent catastrophic climate change, no more than one-third of proven reserves of fossil fuels can be consumed before 2050.
Much of this oil and gas is said to be to help our local economy but we know much of it is for export or the extractive greed of the global north. We refuse to let Africa be the Global North’s gas station.
The likes of the successful court case against Shell’s seismic surveys have shown the impact that gas exploration alone can have on communities, small-scale fisherfolk, and South Africa at large.
As we have noted, scaling up cost-effective, clean, decentralized, socially-owned renewable energy is a clear solution.
However, we must keep in mind passive design and energy efficiency - something that has in any case historically been a cornerstone of African natural building techniques.
The impacts of renewable technology in a just transition
We also need to consider technology recycling and ethical social labor practices to reduce the environmental, social, and mining footprint of renewable technology. We have seen the power of South Africa in the international space standing against the Israeli government’s genocide of the Palestinian people. But Israel too has had a hand in the Congo where people there continue to face their own war and genocide over resources including cobalt which powers our laptops phones and green technology.
This speaks to the fact that this is not simply about transitioning from one form of energy to another but transitioning justly without sacrificing people in the name of profit and growth. We seek Just transitions as plural and that also extends to our foreign policy. We cannot seek development at the risk of destruction.
A recent study has also provided insights into how South Africa can use a transition to renewables to boost manufacturing by making components and parts locally. It highlighted that many South African companies can ramp up production to meet demand. Yet we have not seen enough if any action to plan this. Just complicity in the status quo for the sake of profits.
We need a people-led just transition
We are calling for a transformative, people-led just transition involving rapid social, economic, and political change to achieve energy democracy and deliver renewable energy assets into the hands of people and communities in South Africa and across the continent.
South Africa has the opportunity not only to transform our situation at home but to be a leading force for change in Africa. As the biggest emitters on the continent, we owe it to our planet, our people, and future generations.
How ACA is working toward this just transition
That is why, as young people a part of the African Climate Alliance, our vision is to build a grassroots climate justice movement in Africa where youth are equipped with Afrocentric socio-environmental education to act, advocate, and achieve climate justice in their communities.
We do this through building environmental literacy in young people, advocating through policy, court cases, and more, and taking to the streets to demand action.
We will continue to demand energy democracy and an end to energy poverty as a part of our broader March for System Change where we aim to address the interlinking need for energy, water, housing, and food access for all. An end to injustice. Nothing happens in isolation nor can it be solved that way.
It is not just those in leadership positions at the top echelons of society that have the power, the power—both literally and figuratively—belongs to us.
