As Table 1 shows, none of the five major companies in the South African renewables sector has its headquarters in South Africa; these are renewable energy TNCs with global operations. One important player in the green energy landscape, however, is the South African energy and petrochemical giant SASOL, the world’s biggest producer of fuels and chemicals from coal and gas, which is buying up renewable energy capacities in the country. In 2023, SASOL announced a partnership with the French gas company Air Liquide to procure 1,200 megawatts (MW) of renewable energy to power their respective operations. The two companies also entered a 260-MW wind and solar purchase agreement with TotalEnergies and the South African renewable energy firm Mulilo.33 SASOL is also involved in the production of green hydrogen, for instance in Sasolburg in the Free State, and has signed several agreements to secure supplies.34
At the Green Hydrogen Summit held in Cape Town in June 2023, President Cyril Ramaphosa presented South Africa as a future ‘global exporter of energy’. Currently, there are around 20 green hydrogen projects in the pipeline in South Africa. Nine of these have been declared Strategic Infrastructure Projects in 2022, meaning they will be fast-tracked and approval processes eased. Although Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia De Lille claims that the projects have undergone ‘extensive quality assessment’, it is unlikely that environmental and social impact assessments will be given sufficient consideration and resources, given the investor-friendly focus of the green hydrogen strategy.35 Four of these projects – the Boegoebaai Green Hydrogen Development Programme, Prieska Power Reserve, Ubuntu Green Energy Hydrogen Project and Upilanga Solar and Green Hydrogen Park – are located in the Northern Cape.36
The Boegoebaai Green Hydrogen Development Progamme, which will be established in the Richtersveld municipality is a flagship project for the South African green hydrogen strategy. The South African government together with SASOL and ArcelorMittal are planning the Freeport Saldanha Industrial Development Zone, aiming to generate 80GW by 2050. This is likely to make Boegoebaai one of the world’s largest green hydrogen projects. Among activists, SASOL and ArcelorMittal are known for neglecting any form of corporate accountability and indeed covering up environmental and social harm.
In response to such developments, backed by the government and global capital, activists formed the group for Vrywillige, Vooraf en Voortdurende ingeligte Toestemming (VVVT) Namakwaland, to contest land and water grabs.37 In Boegoebaai, roughly 450,000 hectares of community-owned land are earmarked for the Boegoebaai Green Hydrogen Development Programme, without consultation nor consent of the affected communities. These communities had only recently reclaimed parts of this land, and are now at risk of losing it again. The land question in South Africa clearly cannot be addressed only by an increased focus on FPIC. Yet, for those communities owning land, FPIC remains one of the last resorts for defending land rights, which are often customary rather than owned via legal title.
Fishing is critical to the livelihoods of coastal communities and central to local identity and culture. Local residents argue that the jobs promised as part of the development project are unattainable for community members as they require specific and high qualifications.38 VVVT Namakwaland has demonstrated and protested against the planned project in the Northern Cape, including through creative forms of resistance. Theatrical performances by Nama Khoi Productions stress the need to consult the Nama Khoi Indigenous Peoples before developing new mega-projects on their lands.39 In one of their recent plays during International Khoikhoi Languages Week, the group left the audience with the question ‘If we sell our LAND, then WHAT?’,40 leaving no doubt about the inextricable link between land and identity for Khoi Peoples.
Against this background, it is a sinister comedy for the German Green Robert Habeck, Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Climate Action to promote green hydrogen as the energy of the future, ignoring its social and environmental costs.41 In fact, Germany is cashing in twice from promoting green hydrogen in South Africa: first by by selling the technology and expertise needed for its production and second by importing it at low prices . There are currently no comprehensive or binding environmental and social standards for green hydrogen projects in South Africa, and decisions on the national hydrogen strategy were conducted without inputs from civil society, trade unions and the affected communities.
The development of the green hydrogen economy in South Africa hence begs the question of a green energy transition for whom? It ought to be hard to justify exporting energy during an energy crisis, especially when the wind and solar capacities planned for the Boegoebaai project are significantly larger than all renewable energies currently installed in South Africa taken together.42 It is difficult to imagine how the production of green hydrogen for export does not compete with or downgrade local and national energy needs and demands.
Rather than selling green hydrogen to wealthy G7 countries, the energy could be used to light streets and homes, or build up a national manufacturing sector. At present, manufacturing in South Africa is minimal and the entire production of the hardware for renewables takes place elsewhere. All the solar panels and wind turbines installed in South Africa are imported, mainly from China, France or Germany. While the Department of Science and Innovation claims to be reorganising the mining sector, the focus is on exports. The national Just Energy Transition plan allocates only 0.1% of the planned budgets reserved for localisation efforts to invest in domestic manufacturing industries to produce the hardware required for renewable energy.43 Communities also report that there is minimal transfer of expertise, leaving the monopoly of knowledge of installation and maintenance of renewables in foreign hands. In other words, local communities are expected to remain only as consumers and to uphold a system of exploitation to their own disadvantage.
Clearly, there will be no decarbonisation without further mining and the extraction of resources. A right to ‘say no’ to all kinds of mining would be difficult if not impossible to achieve. While the Right to Say No is aware of this tension, this does not weaken the demands. Members of the Right to Say No, especially those living in urban or peri-urban context in direct proximity to mining activities, stress that saying no to extractivism does not necessarily mean saying no to all kinds of resource extraction. Rather, by ensuring environmental standards, appropriate community consultation and participation through safe and fair employment opportunities, as well as the provision of basic services such as clean water, electricity and waste management, it would make an enormous difference in moving towards fairer energy systems. Being able to decide about questions of development, including in the energy sector, is vital for fulfilling the right to self-determination. When benefits and burdens, as well as power over decision-making processes, are spread equitably, we can start talking about a non-extractivist just energy system.