A woman holds a placard on the beach as hundreds of people (not visible) take part in a protest against the plan by Dutch oil company Shell to conduct underwater seismic surveys along South Africa's East coast, at Muizenberg Beach, in Cape Town, on December 05, 2021. (Photo by RODGER BOSCH/AFP via Getty Images)
South Africans heading to the polls on 29 May will cast their votes for the political party they believe will supply them with reliable water and electricity; tackle endemic corruption, poverty and high unemployment — and protect them from criminals.
But, for most of the major parties, the focus on the environment and the climate crisis in their election manifestos is “weak”, according to Ferrial Adam, an activist working with the Cooperative and Policy Advice Centre on the Climate Justice Charter Movement.
“I find that with the manifestos, they all get sucked into that politicking kind of thing, and they talk about social justice issues in terms of jobs and housing, but they forget that the environment and climate change is so much a part of what and who we are now, that I think they have not given it the attention it deserves — none of them.”
After trawling through some of the manifestos, Adam says she gets the sense that climate and environmental issues remain “peripheral” concerns for political parties.
“It’s a side issue; it’s like, ‘Let’s just say things to quell that voice.’ Their actions speak louder than their words and there’s no real action in any of those parties in terms of climate justice or water justice or anything.”
ANC – ‘supporting workers and communities in just transition’
According to the ANC’s election manifesto, transforming the economy needs the government to drive industrial growth, innovation and job creation. This, among other things, involves skilling and reskilling workers and meeting the “new global challenge” of climate change.
A just transition to a cleaner, greener future can lead to new jobs and “secure the competitiveness of our exports”, it reads.
It will prioritise green technologies, energy efficiency, waste management, climate-smart agriculture and infrastructure and eco-friendly production processes to ensure long-term sustainability. This includes developing and executing a plan “to become a world player in green hydrogen, battery and electric vehicle production”.
The party says it will “mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change”, technological changes and other trends in the context of a just transition. It pledges to ensure South Africa’s transition to a low-carbon economy supports communities and workers in affected areas, particularly Mpumalanga.
The ANC will prioritise investment in expanding the transmission grid “so that more energy, including from renewable sources, can be supplied”. It will install solar geysers in working-class and poor households to support job creation and local manufacturing and “develop gas, nuclear and hydropower projects for increased energy generation”.
However, Alex Lenferna, general secretary of the SA Climate Justice Coalition, pointed out that the challenge with the ANC “is that they often do a little bit of talk left and walk right and make promises that are broken in other places.
“I feel like, rather than reading their manifesto, I would read their [draft] Integrated Resource Plan, which is something we’re protesting against next week,” said Lenferna, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Nelson Mandela University’s department of development studies.
“It talks about delaying the retirement of coal for a decade, about the massive new build-out of gas … their big push for oil and gas extraction across the country.
“It’s completely against what needs to be done on the climate front, so I think the ANC has kind of shown their weddedness to fossil capital.”
DA — ‘Net zero carbon emissions’
There is only one mention of climate change in the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) 53-page election manifesto. It commits to “achieving net zero carbon emissions to reduce the impact of energy generation on the climate. We will achieve this by diversifying the energy mix.”
But this is too vague, noted Lenferna. “With the DA, for example, they talk about achieving net zero carbon emissions but there’s no timeline on there and they say, ‘we’ll achieve this by diversifying the energy mix’.
“[Gwede] Mantashe [the minister of mineral resources and energy] talks about diversifying the energy mix. What does that mean?” he said, adding that, “This is not a very strong commitment.”
If elected, the DA manifesto states that the party would move away from reliance on Eskom and increase the use of renewable energy sources by building local manufacturing capacity for renewable energy technologies, “without resorting to protectionist trade practices”, and by incentivising the training and development of skills capacity in the renewable energy sector.
It will reduce high tariffs on imports of renewable energy technologies (such as PV panels and other goods) to ensure that these technologies are more affordable and accessible.
EFF — reducing carbon emissions by 10%
According to its election manifesto, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) government will rapidly increase the protected area network to “ensure that all representative ecosystems unique to South Africa are preserved and protected” and will require all mining companies to pay for the rehabilitation of mines “that they have abandoned and for the draining of acid water”.
It says it will officially adopt the civil society-driven 1 million climate jobs’ initiative as a government programme. “Through this initiative, the EFF government will create 1 million jobs aimed at transitioning South Africa from wholly coal-based energy sources to a fair mix of energy sources comprising fossil nuclear, and renewable energy.”
It aims to build a new recycling plant in each municipality by 2028 and phase out the use of plastic bags, so that by 2029, they are no longer being distributed. “The EFF government will fund research into the development of substitutes for plastics such as biodegradable plastic from fish scales.”
It pledges to reduce the levels of pollution in all rivers by 60% by 2029.
The party will establish a research and development centre focused on oil and gas refining and the “development of clean coal technologies” such as carbon capture, sequestration, and storage by 2029, creating 2 000 jobs, half of which will be reserved for women and the youth.
The EFF’s promises are based in two inconsistent worlds, Lenferna said. “They talk of the need to take climate change seriously and then they will talk about using coal for, like, another 200 years.
“They talk about clean coal, which is not a thing. There’s no such thing as clean coal. They talk about gas and nuclear …. The EFF likes to be radical but it’s under the same sort of old tired fossil nationalised resource base and it’s not about really transforming in a way, that eco-socialist vision that you would have from a young party like the EFF.”
IFP — ‘trust us to secure tomorrow’
The Inkatha Freedom Party’s (IFP) election manifesto says it will engage with stakeholders, including workers, unions, communities and businesses, to develop policies and strategies that promote a fair and equitable transition to a sustainable future.
Other focus areas include wildlife protection, supporting initiatives that promote sustainable fishing practices, marine protected areas and education and awareness campaigns to increase public understanding of environmental threats.
It promises to take remedial action to reduce the use of single-use plastics, increase law enforcement efforts to crack down on illegal hunting and to create specialist wildlife courts.
Lenferna said that he wished political parties would read, for example, the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report on what’s needed to get to 1.5ºC.
“There, it’s very clear — you need a wide-scale, full transformation of our energy, our transport and our industrial systems; this is a massive transformation across society. It’s not cute little initiatives.”
South Africa’s political parties are just not up to the scale of the ecological crisis. “They’re also not recognising, like other parties do, that to tackle the climate crisis can be an opportunity for mass job creation, like green jobs programmes, to build more equitable and just economic systems that prioritise ecological and social wellbeing. There’s none of that radical transformative thinking.”
RISE Mzansi — ‘being environmentally sustainable’
In RISE Mzansi’s election manifesto, the climate crisis emerges as its fifth priority theme in which it posits its belief that development and economic growth can be achieved in an environmentally sustainable way.
Despite not having a constituency, and being a fairly new political party, RISE Mzansi was selected because its manifesto is fairly detailed on the environment. Action SA, for example, has not released its manifesto yet.
RISE Mzansi’s climate and environmental policies are considered critical enablers of socio-economic development and “the realisation of the South Africa we deserve”.
Its manifesto declares that its priorities on the climate crisis are to “leave no one behind”. This will be done through balancing inclusive development “with our need to transition from a high-carbon intensive to low-carbon intensive economy in the shortest reasonable time”.
Other interventions include helping communities mitigate the effects of climate change including heat, drought, impact on food supply and increased frequency of natural disasters.
On electricity, it supports a balanced, green energy mix. “Coal should steadily decrease as a primary energy source. Solar, wind and energy storage should be scaled. For baseload generation and energy security, we are open to a role for gas in the transition, as well as next-generation nuclear-based on small, modular reactors.”
Among its priorities are to begin what will be a decades-long process to fully electrify the country’s transport system through expanded, integrated public transport networks (electric trains and buses) and a shift to electric cars for carbon mitigation and export competitiveness.
To become more competitive in the global economy, and to create healthier ecosystems, the country’s manufacturers will need to decarbonise their operations, the party says.
As it is one of the party’s five key pillars, there’s the “refreshing sense” with RISE Mzansi that it is taking seriously and prioritising it to the level that it needs to be, Lenferna noted.