Coal to green energy: Rural solar can transform mining gains
- Lee-Anne Gaertner
A truly just transition would ensure that communities are not left behind when shifting from coal power to green energy.
The eastern Limpopo is dressed in lush greens after a season of dry, dusty days cut with sudden heavy downpours. The bush is dense, rolling up and over low hills that stretch out to the left and right. Scattered here and there are rocky outcrops with dark smears of red earth spilling from the edges of the taller peaks. The sky fades from brightest blue overhead to a pale off-white nearer the horizon, where wisps of cloud curl down towards the land.
Small settlements begin to appear. Dirt roads split directly off the main highway and lead to simple brick structures with zinc or terracotta tiled rooftops. At an intersection, a man offers up a large fish by the gills, caught fresh in the nearby river. A donkey and a patchwork of goats are grazing on the turf around a bus stop. Fuel stations are plentiful, with unfamiliar English names like Elegant and Echo and Global. This is the sort of place where the local pharmacy is just called “Pharmacy”.
Closer to Burgersfort, ashen mounds of sand become visible not too far from the road. A long, deep gash has been carved from the side of the mountains that make up the Sekhukhuneland, home of the Bapedi. The ground here is rich in chromium and platinum, palladium and rhodium. The area is host to about 40 mines that have been granted the rights to excavate this earth and claim these precious metals.
Despite the abundance of minerals and mining operations, few of the people from the surrounding villages like Manjekane, Ditwebeleng and Makgopa have had that much to gain from them. Unemployment in the region remains high, about 60% at the last count. Less than a tenth of households have water piped into their homes. The vast majority still make use of pit toilets.
Though the mines have been operating here for years — some since 2002 — this has not translated into the scale of development and job opportunities so often promised.
The Fetakgomo-Tubatse Local Municipality is said to be named after the Sepedi proverb “Feta kgomo o sware motho, mofeta kgomo ke moriri o a hloga,” which loosely translates to “A human being is more important than a cow, they will be blessed who put a person before a cow.” It is interpreted to mean more simply “people first”. Feta Kgomo O Sware Motho was also the name given to a movement formed by the people of Sekhukhune to resist the brutality of the apartheid regime, and in particular its policy on Bantustans.
Sekhukhune in turn is named for a king who ruled over the people known as Bapedi or Morota or Basotho ba Lebowa in the mid to late 1800s. He was born Matsebe, son of King Sekwati the First and Thorometjane Phala, but came to be known as Sekhukhune — “the one who sneaks” — for his strategic leadership in battles against Boer settlers.
Calls for justice still echo across these hills. The people of Sekhukhune are politically active and well organised. They have come together under the banner of the Sekhukhune Combined Mining Affected Communities or SCMAC (pronounced “sis-mack”). SCMAC is a community-based organisation that promotes the rights of people affected by mining, and advocates for mines to comply with their social and economic obligations.
Social and labour plan
In South Africa, when a company applies for a mining right, one of the documents they have to submit is known as a social and labour plan, or SLP. The plan outlines how the mine intends to share the gains derived from mining with those affected by their operations, namely workers and communities.
Community projects in social and labour plans should include projects such as upgrading nearby road infrastructure, building clinics and supporting local economic activity. Once a company is awarded a mining right, their social and labour plan becomes a binding legal document. Social and labour plans must be created with input from communities and aligned with the municipality’s integrated development plan.
Research has shown, however, that this is seldom the case. Instead, many social and labour plans are poorly designed without meaningfully consulting proposed beneficiaries about their needs. The promised projects also tend to have a small-scale impact — if they materialise at all.
Far from meaningfully improving quality of life for nearby communities, a study on the social and labour plans of three large mines in the Sekhukhune area has found that failure to comply with social and labour plan commitments instead compounds social and economic challenges there.
SCMAC is trying to change this — with plans that have the potential to breathe new life into the flawed social and labour plan system. They are calling on mining companies to support a more ambitious project aimed at benefiting local communities.
As a result of protracted rolling blackouts and the need to move away from relying only on fossil fuels, some mining companies in South Africa have started investing in renewable energy to meet their electricity needs.
What SCMAC is proposing is for mining-affected communities to generate their own power through solar farms. Any excess could then be sold on to the mines and the funds used for community projects.
Similar schemes involving wind, hydro or solar power supported by government grants and corporate investment have been successful in other countries, including in Brazil, Puerto Rico and Indonesia.
Social ownership of renewable energy
Social ownership of renewable energy is one way to contribute to what is known as the “just transition” — moving towards a greener, low-carbon economy while at the same time supporting social development, job creation and measures to protect workers who were dependent on jobs in the fossil fuel value chain.
SCMAC has partnered with civil society organisations to conduct research into the viability of such a social ownership project in the villages around Sekhukhune. They called a meeting with community members to present the findings of a preliminary report and a proposed model for how the project could work.
They gather early on the morning of 28 February at the Morapaneng Nursery. Morapaneng is one of 387 villages in the municipality, which doesn’t appear on Waze or Google Maps – unlike such nearby attractions as Sefateng Waterkop Mine or Bokoni Platinum Mine Protection Services. This is how to navigate the area, then: with directions from the nearest mining operation. In this case, Twickenham Platinum Mine, located down one of the few tarred roads and enclosed by a shining silver fence topped with barbed wire.
Morapaneng Nursery is about two kilometres north-northwest of the mine gate, down the unmarked D4220, then right on to a sand road with no name. Just past the zinc shed of a corner shop advertising Coca-Cola is a nondescript brown gate. Inside, the garden is neat and well cared for.
On the open grass at the back of the venue, a tent has been erected over a sea of mismatched chairs to accommodate the crowd in attendance. Some of the SCMAC leaders wear black golf shirts with their emblem embroidered on the chest: the sun rising over a hill. Others have T-shirts reading “System change, not climate change”.
Just transition
The workshop lasts until four o’clock and the majority of it is conducted in Sepedi, with only a few sections requiring translation. If the interpreters struggle to find the right words for “participatory action research” or “just transition” or “social ownership”, they don’t seem to show it much.
The community is engaged, frequently asking follow-up questions. They volunteer information about their own experiences with the reliability of solar power. They recount stories of mines blasting near their homes coinciding with cracks in the pipes that carry the community’s water supply. They wonder aloud how to raise awareness and get investment in something that is not the typical “small project” found in social and labour plans.
One of the items that elicits the most discussion is the mention of free basic electricity. A member of the Ward Committee is present to explain the somewhat complex process of qualifying for and accessing this essential service.
Those gathered are in favour of a community-owned renewable energy project. They can imagine a time when they would be able to collectively manage a scheme that generates their own power as well as an extra source of income – to be used, they suggest, to tar roads so ambulances can access the villages, or even to build a local clinic to service the area.
But they also need access to whatever electricity they can get in the meantime.
Here is what is often left out of discussions about a just transition. It is not meant to be purely about moving from fossil fuels to renewables, from companies relying solely on government generating power to becoming independent power producers themselves.
A truly just transition would ensure that communities are not left behind when shifting from coal power to green energy. It would see power foremost as a means for social development. It would require a shift in mindset from “profits first” to “people first”.
That evening, the rain which has been hanging in the air all day comes pouring down. Children in yellow shirts and grey trousers run home from school.
The Anglo American logo at the Twickenham gate is rendered almost invisible. Some cars pull to the side of the road with their hazard lights on to wait out the storm.
At the main intersection is a set of traffic lights that looks to be brand new but doesn’t appear to be working. Tucked into the sides of the misty mountains all around are the communities who have the potential to put the “just” into the just transition.
Lee-Anne Gaertner is a communications specialist at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, Wits University.