Nearly 80% of the more than 80,000 residents who work in Ermelo are employed by Eskom and Transnet, the state-owned energy and transport companies.
Coal is a booming business among communities living in or near Ermelo, the commercial center of the Gert Sibande municipal district in the Mpumalanga province of South Africa. Located about 200 km east of Johannesburg, Ermelo is home to the Camden Coal Power Station, which is scheduled to close in 2025.
“Coal is the heritage of this province, it is the backbone of our economy. It is an undeniable fact,” says Philani Mngomezulu, founder of a community-based ecological project established in the township called the Khuthala environmental group.
According to Mngomezulu, almost 80% of the more than 80,000 residents who work and earn income in Ermelo are employed by Eskom and Transnet, the state-owned energy and transport companies. Camden is one of 12 coal-fired power plants in Mpumalanga scheduled to be decommissioned in the coming years, most of them by 2035.
“As an environmental group, we are clear about the impact of coal on our environment, particularly climate change and pollution. However, as an Ermelo community we will only agree to the energy transition if it is going to positively impact the local population,” he says.
Ermelo and other coal mining regions in Mpumalanga province are on the front lines of South Africa’s Just Energy Transition (JET) process, which aims to reuse coal power plants and coal mining land for energy. more ecological. But coal workers are still hesitant and have said they feel left out of the country’s energy transition.
lack of consultation
However, according to Mngomezulu, the people of Ermelo do not know anything about the transition because the government is not consulting the communities.
“We have been telling the presidential climate commission [PCC] that they should come and do a proper consultation in Ermelo because people here depend on coal, so if we are going to shut down power plants and any other coal mines without informing the community, that is a bit unfair,” he said.
The PCC is a multi-stakeholder body established by President Cyril Ramaphosa to “oversee and facilitate a just and equitable transition to a low-emission, climate-resilient economy” in South Africa.
Thulani Madlala, a ward councilor in Msukaligwa Township, says she is looking forward to seeing how the transition will help local people stricken by poverty.
“We are waiting for JET to be explained to the masses of our people on the ground. We hope that this program does not negatively affect the unemployment rate that already exists because, if that is the case, our people are going to be against the transition,” says Madlala.
Meanwhile, the Ermelo communities live in “energy poverty: most of our informal settlements have no electricity, so they are dependent on coal, and some can benefit from coal sales,” he says.
‘Causing havoc’
Data collected by Oxpeckers’ #MineAlert tool shows that at least 227 government-licensed coal mines surround Ermelo. The area is also home to more than 3,000 small-scale artisanal miners who contribute to the local economy, paying rent, buying clothes, and providing work.
Since Masina says the downside of phasing out coal is that companies like his will have to go out of business. He opened a coal yard in Wesselton, Ermelo’s satellite municipality, in 2011 that sells coal to community members and employs people from the community.
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Masina says that they had not heard anything from the government regarding consultations with the community. “Look, if they decide to phase out coal, this means that I will also have to lay off the employees that I have employed so far.”
“There is no doubt that this transition is wreaking havoc in South Africa. Right now, power plants are being bombarded by this transition that is not being adequately explained to the people of the country,” says Masina.
In December, the government deployed troops to at least four Eskom power plants after a series of theft and sabotage incidents.
Employment opportunities
The JET plan, released in 2022, states that more than half of the youth in Mpumalanga communities are unemployed and that the decline of the coal value chain will further reduce employment opportunities as the sector shrinks.
It shows that the coal sector provides direct jobs to almost 90,000 people in the province’s mines and power plants, and indirect jobs for people who provide goods and services to the coal sector, which supports a significant part of the induced jobs and other economic activities.
Power company Eskom says the implementation of JET is expected to create some 300,000 jobs in the renewable energy value chain. “This represents a net job gain,” an Eskom spokesman said in response to questions from Oxpeckers.
Dado Masina says his coal yard will have to close and lay off employees from the local community (Photo: Thabo Molelekwa)
Research from the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies published in 2022 indicates that in South Africa as a whole, job creation through renewables could exceed projected job losses in the coal sector.
However, in Mpumalanga, not all job losses in the fossil fuel sector can be replaced with clean energy jobs. Under an ambitious decarbonization scenario, these net losses can be minimized.
The report states that the two most important technologies for the energy transition in Mpumalanga will be wind and solar PV, which will also make the largest contributions to job creation: up to 43,000 solar PV jobs and 28,900 energy jobs. wind by 2030.
recycling programs
While people on the ground who spoke to Oxpeckers are unaware of the retraining programs, Eskom says that people employed at the power plants that will be decommissioned are “being trained to gain skills in the renewable industry so they can manufacture, install and service to renewable energy”. energy components necessary to operate reused power plants”.
“To achieve this end, and in partnership with the South African Center for Renewable Energy Technology at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology and recognized labor unions represented at Eskom, Eskom has established an accredited training center at the Komati power station. “, an Eskom spokesman who asked not to be named said in response to questions from Oxpeckers.
“Those whose skills are required at other coal-fired power plants are transferred to those plants to meet staffing requirements there. As part of the closure plan, extensive socio-economic studies were carried out that included extensive consultation with all the communities around the affected power plants.”
And most importantly, he said, Eskom assures all its employees that “no Eskom employee will lose their job because of JET.”
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The spokesperson said that employees who no longer work at Komati have either resigned, retired or transferred to other stations.
“Eskom plans to use its limited funding to catalyze the construction of renewable energy plants across the country,” the spokesperson said. “This is demonstrated by the leasing of land at Eskom power plants to allow private participants to quickly bring new generation capacity online, among other things.”
marginalized unions
Michelle Cruywagen, coal and just transition campaign manager at environmental justice NGO Groundwork, says unions put processes in place for a just transition in 2018, “but the business and mining sectors didn’t really come together to help ease the transition , even though they are legally obliged to do so through social and labor plans”.
“This can be coordinated through the mineral council [a mining industry employers organisation]and the unions that usually negotiate wages and retirement plans should have led the way,” he says.
Cruywagen argues that the consequences now are that the transition is not being properly managed, and job losses are not being mitigated due to a lack of management and political will, putting communities in a vulnerable position.
“It’s okay to retrain people, but employment is really what people need,” he says. “Part of what we are pushing for is engaging local government to push the message, raise awareness and facilitate engagement on just transition issues at the local level.”
Thabo Molelekwa is a freelance environmental and health journalist and an associate at Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism. This research was originally published in Oxpeckers and was supported by the African Climate Foundation’s New Economy Campaigns Hub.
