South Africa's energy transition: investigating the role of social movements

In September 2020, the government of South Africa – a highly coal-dependent country - announced a net zero GHG emissions target by 2050. However, this goal includes continued coal in the energy mix even after that date and further lacks an implementation strategy of respective transition policies to achieve an enduring energy transition. So far, the government institutions do not have developed a coal phase-out plan. In December 2020, the South African president appointed the Presidential Climate Change Coordinating Commission that will advise the president on how to ensure a just and fair transition away from coal for communities and workers in the coal regions. The commission comprises representatives from governments, civil society, business, academia and traditional leadership. Especially the pace of the energy transition is expected to cause conflicts between members of the commission. This paper asks how social movements, such as the South African climate justice movement, frame the energy transition and how they mobilize supporters for their objective of a just transition, inside the presidential advisory commission and among civil society actors. The paper is empirically motivated by South Africa’s long and rich history of protest, among them environmental protests against pollution and environmental racism, especially by poor and often black communities. Resistance against coal mining is not only evolving from environmental organizations, but also in coal-mining affected communities and even among some trade unions that demand a just transition away from the current coal regime. Drawing on qualitative research, such as interviews, as well as newspaper articles, reports by environmental organizations and official policy documents, the paper analyzes how such social movements affect the processes of energy transitions and the implementation of policy decisions towards low carbon futures in South Africa. With this, it theoretically contributes to the literature on energy transition in the Global South and the role of social movements in such transition processes.