Mashudu Masutha: senior programmes officer, Southern Africa Resource Watch and Marlies den Boer: first secretary, the Netherlands Embassy in South Africa

Despite 2022’s rise in coal prices because of Europe’s energy crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine, coal, as a fossil fuel, is a dying commodity, said Mashudu Masutha, senior programmes officer at the non-governmental organisation Southern Africa Resource Watch.

The extractive industries in South Africa have a long history of human rights abuses and tense relationships with communities, she said. A practical example of this social dynamic can be seen in the Mpumalanga town of Carolina, which is surrounded by 12 coal mines that supply the national power utility, Eskom.

Eskom’s operations in the area pollute the air and water and this affects what is a finite supply of both. There have been a number of court applications about air or water quality in the area, Masutha said.

In partnership with Southern Africa Resource Watch, the Netherlands Embassy is supporting research in the area that explores the community’s understanding of climate change, she said.

This includes training on what climate change is, and enabling people from the community, with a focus on women, so they, in turn, can train others.

She said, in consultation with a group of women, work is underway on a community manifesto that will set out what they want from a “just transition”. Just transition is a catchphrase that encompasses a range of social interventions put in place to secure workers’ rights and livelihoods when economies are shifting to an economy powered by renewable energy and moving away from a purely extractive mode to one that is more reliant on recycling and other sustainable actions.

Eskom’s Grootvlei Power Station, on the border of South Africa’s Mpumalanga and Gauteng provinces, is soon to be mothballed, said Marlies den Boer, first secretary in the Netherlands Embassy in South Africa.

This means work needs to be done on planning a just transition for the people who live in the immediate area. To contribute to this project, the Netherlands Embassy is working with South African authorities on a study of the land and water resources in the area to determine the “most applicable, climate-smart, labour-intensive farming and related enterprises” to create a positive social impact through Grootvlei’s decommissioning.

The project entails compiling market studies, and soil and water sampling results, and will outline a business model for the community, taking into account climate change’s effects on the area. There are plans to broaden the studies’ scope in consultation with the community.

So far, one “stakeholder engagement” with 45 community members, and with participation from Wageningen University in the Netherlands and the South African non-profit company Indalo Inclusive, has been conducted. The researcher who conducted this research will return to the area in November or December 2022.