Reality check

Despite these examples, socially owned and community-benefiting renewable projects remain rare.

South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme requires community trusts to hold a 2.5% equity stake for socio-economic development. Yet Oxpeckers’ #PowerTracker reveals that only 15% of all renewable energy projects in South Africa offer any form of community benefit.

Meanwhile, many communities continue to bear the costs of South Africa’s fossil-fuelled economy. “We can say that the mines are giving people jobs so they can feed their families. But at the same time, they are killing people,” says Sibongile Masina (pictured above) of Empumelelweni, Mpumalanga, in the groundWork film Our Light, Our Power.

Sibongile was initially refused a job as a security officer at the local coal mine after failing a medical test due to breathing problems − which she believes were caused by pollution from that same mine. Then her nephew Anthando died during a severe asthma attack.

She is now campaigning for energy justice for her community, as a volunteer for Vukani Environmental Movement.

Her experience − illness, joblessness, and powerlessness in the face of a large energy company − is common in coal-affected communities.

It is the same experience that our own Fossil Ad Ban campaigners heard repeatedly in their own workshops in coal-mining areas, and the opposite of what South Africa’s Just Energy Transition is meant to achieve.