in 2019, the world’s foremost climate science body warned that if we are to avert devastating climate destabilisation, we need to take sweeping and unprecedented action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade. In other parts of the world, political parties are responding by declaring a climate emergency,and promising bold climate action in line with science and justice.
However, as we head to the polls, South Africans are not given political options compatible with the need to equitably transform the country from being the biggest carbon polluter on the continent to becoming a renewable energy leader.
The Action 24 Project recently released an environmental scorecard of election manifestos. The scorecard analysed the political platforms and policy priorities of the main contenders in the election, with mixed results.
The ANC, which has the best chances to win this election, like every election since 1994, is second last in the ranking, coming in ahead only of the ACDP — which failed to even mention climate change in its environmental policy platform. The ANC, as the governing party, should largely be assessed by what it has achieved.
Apartheid’s pollution-heavy legacy and 25 years of ANC policies have left SA 114th out of 115 countries on progress transitioning to a sustainable and secure energy system — with polluting coal dominating our energy sector, and only 68% of the population with reliable electricity access. While the ANC has made some vague promises to shift course, their past actions speak louder than electoral promises.
The opposition does not offer convincing options either. How the EFF plans to reduce carbon emissions 10% by 2024 coupled with a promised GDP growth of 10% in three years’ time, fuelled by booming nationalised mining, oil, gas and coal sectors is not clear. At different points, the EFF manifesto commits to both ramping up and ramping down coal production while alluding to “safe” “environmentally friendly” energy from coal.
There’s no such thing — coal is always dirty. To complement their “safe coal”and their commitment to the myth of “safe” fracking, the EFF also wants to exhume our problematic and expensive nuclear programme, a cost the country cannot absorb financially and a safety and environmental risk we cannot take.
In comparison to both the ANC and EFF, the DA manifesto includes a longer list of policies and ideas as well as a vision for government, or “agenda for change”; yet they all fail to mention a just transition, the environment, climate change or any environmental issues. The DA’s lack of concern for workers and communities that might lose out in the transition away from coal signals that it has not yet understood that social justice needs to be at the core of any real efforts to halt climate change in a just way.
Its call for privatisation of the energy sector without any mention of communities and workers dependent on coal will do little to quell the resistance of those who fear losing out to climate action. A just transition to a lower-cost, 100% renewable energy future is possible, but the DA offers us a future powered predominately by fracked gas with a bit of renewable energy too.
Given the current moment, Eskom’s crisis — really, a crisis of a model for the production of energy — should be considered as an opportunity for climate justice, where the multiple crises of load-shedding, increasing energy costs, unemployment, pollution and climate change, should lead us to embrace a just transition to a more reliable, affordable, job boosting, cleaner, renewable energy future. Instead, vested coal interests have used this crisis to falsely shift the blame for our crisis away from a dysfunctionally run, expensive coal sector, to renewable energy.
The failure of our major political parties to put forward a transformative vision on climate justice is an indictment of our leaders' willingness to take seriously the gravest threat facing global society.
Polls show that South Africans overwhelmingly favour renewable energy. It is a critical time for the country to turn that preference into political momentum and power. This is why 350.org and partners are going to mobilize people in South Africa and across the continent for a regional day of action on May 25, Africa Day.
As more and more people bear the brunt of climate change, it becomes urgent for politicians to get in step with the times and lead us through a rapid and just transformation of our economies and societies.
• Lenferna is a climate justice campaigner at 350Africa.org
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