The T-shirt narrated that was substantially older than the hydrogen economy. Its style originated from the South African History Archive, circa 1989. The Chemical Workers Industrial Union had actually produced it at the height of apartheid. It checked out, boldly: “Disinvest on our terms”.
In 1989, chemical employees were arranging for progressive working conditions for males and females alike, while taking part in the worldwide require boycotts, sanctions and divestment. Their position brought an essential difference. Employees were not just cheering business out of the nation. They were firmly insisting that if capital was going to leave, it would not leave by itself terms, deserting individuals whose labour had actually constructed its earnings.
That persistence was grounded in bitter experience. When international business revealed their withdrawal from South Africa in the 1980s, a number of did not truly leaveThey offered regional operations to management, maintained licensing, innovation and supply contracts, and continued to benefit while declaring the ethical credit of having actually disinvested. Employees were frequently neither sought advice from nor compensated.
The unions had a name for this: business camouflage
I was struck by that expression. What we now call greenwashing was currently part of the activist vocabulary more than 3 years back. The practice of dressing up organization as typical in the language of ethical development, of being seen to alter while altering really bit, was called, comprehended and withstood by employees who had whatever to lose.
Simply shift
This history matters due to the fact that we are considering another excellent restructuring of our economy. Frequently, the simply shift is gone over as though it worries mineworkers alone. It does not. The shift far from nonrenewable fuel sources will improve the motor market, steel and chemicals: exactly the markets whose employees comprehended in 1989 what occurs when capital relocations and individuals are left.
Green hydrogen is progressively being placed as the bridge that will bring these markets into a low-carbon future. It might yet end up being that. We ought to be truthful about where we are.
South Africa’s September 2026 Africa Green Hydrogen Summit saw the unveiling of 6 top priority green hydrogen and Power-to-X tasks, along with the launch of the nation’s inaugural Green Hydrogen Deal Book. These advancements develop on substantial public and worldwide funding dedications planned to develop a domestic hydrogen economy.
The aspiration is significant. The concern is whether the financial principles, facilities and markets are establishing at the very same rate as the financial investment story.
Green hydrogen stays pricey to produce relative to standard fossil-fuel-based hydrogen. Its business practicality depends upon access to budget-friendly sustainable electrical power, water, transportation facilities, storage and, most importantly, purchasers going to spend for the resulting items. The advancement of these markets can not just be presumed.
There is likewise a less comfy concern: just how much of the hydrogen economy being proposed is really green?
Some proposed tasks and associated commercial methods depend, straight or indirectly, on melted gas (LNG). This matters since methane emissions throughout the gas supply chain can significantly weaken the environment advantages declared for gas. Over a 20-year duration, methane has an international warming prospective around 80 times that of co2. A hydrogen job that counts on fossil gas while using a green label threats recreating the extremely fossil-fuel dependence it declares to change.
A task that depends on fossil gas while using a green label is not a shift– it is business camouflage in a brand-new commercial language.
The gas cliff we are preparing around
South Africa’s gas aspirations should have specific analysis.
The initial Draft Gas Master Plan was developed around 2 crucial presumptions: that we would establish native gas resources which we would cultivate enough domestic need to sustain a regional gas market. Neither presumption has actually yet materialised at the scale needed to underpin the aspirations being advanced.
The nation’s existing supply from Mozambique’s Pande and Temane fields is likewise decreasingThe awaited loss of this supply by 2028 has actually ended up being referred to as the gas cliffwith ramifications for commercial users and the nation’s energy security.
Our energy preparation continues to designate gas a significant function. The 2025 Integrated Resource Plan imagines 6,000 MW of brand-new gas-to-power capability by 2030, increasing to 16,000 MW by 2039. These aspirations need substantial facilities, trustworthy supply plans and a market efficient in taking in the expenses.
We appear to be marching like lemmings towards a gas cliff, dedicating ourselves to facilities and long-lasting financial investments before effectively showing that the underlying resource and need presumptions can hold.
The modified Gas Master Plan has actually still not been settled. In April, Business Leadership South Africa’s reform tracker reported that it had actually been even more postponed after Nedlac assessments did not conclude as prepared.
This raises a basic concern: why are we so comfy making long-lasting financial investment and facilities choices around a market whose supply plans, domestic resource base and future need stay unpredictable?
The effects are not abstract. Gas facilities is capital-intensive and developed to run over years. If predicted need stops working to materialise, or imported gas ends up being unaffordable, South Africans might be entrusted to stranded properties and the expenses of a shift that never ever provided the guaranteed financial returns.
Who is forming the energy shift?
These concerns can not be separated from the politics of policymaking and the impact of business interests.
I just recently enjoyed an informative discussion about the work Just Share has actually done to expose the lobbying playbook used by the carbon majors. It is a body of work that is worthy of much higher spotlight, especially as South Africa makes choices about its long-lasting energy future.
The concern I would put to Parliament is this: will it support the proposed Lobbying Transparency Bill revealed by ActionSA’s parliamentary primary whip, Lerato Ngobeni, in July?
The proposed Private Member’s Bill looks for to develop a statutory structure for expert lobbying, consisting of a public register needing paid lobbyists to reveal whom they represent and which federal government organizations they look for to affect.
This is an essential discussion, however it needs to extend beyond the narrow concern of whether lobbying is genuine. Lobbying is an acknowledged function of democratic policymaking. Organizations, trade unions, civil society organisations and neighborhood developments all have a genuine interest in affecting public law.
The concern is whether they have fair access to decision-makers, whether their interests are transparent and whether the proof they provide can hold up against public analysis.
When a fossil-fuel business supporters for gas as a shift fuel, for instance, we must have the ability to develop who is making that argument, what industrial interests they represent, what proof notifies their position and whether contending proof has actually been thought about.
The very same analysis ought to use to the hydrogen economy. Who stands to take advantage of the facilities being proposed? Who is funding these jobs? Who are the designated offtakers? What takes place if the awaited worldwide need does not materialise?
These are not peripheral concerns. They are concerns about the political economy of the shift itself.
Whose pensions are funding these aspirations?
There is another measurement to this discussion that should have far higher attention: public financing.
South Africa’s public pension cost savings are handled through organizations such as the general public Investment Corporation, which spends for behalf of the Government Employees Pension Fund and other public-sector customers. The PIC reported possessions under management of R3.657-trillion as at 31 March 2026.
These are the retirement cost savings of instructors, nurses, policemans and other public servants. Their capital plays a crucial function in South Africa’s advancement, consisting of through financial investments in facilities and tactical markets.
Advancement financing can not end up being a blank cheque for commercial aspirations.
We require much higher examination of the degree to which public pension capital is exposed to gas-related facilities, fossil-fuel-dependent commercial jobs and financial investments whose monetary practicality depends upon the presumptions underpinning our gas aspirations.
The concern is not whether public funds ought to buy commercial advancement. They can and must add to a more fair economy. It is whether those financial investments are being made on the basis of trustworthy need projections, sound danger evaluations and verifiable long-lasting returns, with appropriate securities for recipients.
If the gas market stops working to materialise as prepared for, who brings the monetary threat? If hydrogen jobs can not protect feasible offtake contracts, who soaks up the losses? And what social securities exist for employees and neighborhoods whose incomes are connected to these markets?
We can not discuss a simply shift while dealing with the monetary dangers as another person’s issue.
A shift that leaves nobody behind
There is likewise a chance we are not providing adequate attention: local combination.
At the August 2026 SADC Summit in Durban, local leaders restated the value of enhancing intra-African trade and commercial cooperation. intra-SADC trade stays roughly a fifth of the area’s overall trade. South Africa’s hydrogen aspirations need to for that reason be thought about in the context of structure local commercial capability, instead of merely placing the nation as an exporter of green products to European and other worldwide markets.
We require to ask whether our hydrogen technique will develop local production capability, reinforce regional supply chains and assistance commercial advancement throughout the continent, or replicate an extractive financial design in which we export basic materials and take in the ecological and social expenses.
The legal and political contestation around fossil-fuel expedition likewise provides crucial lessons. In August 2026, the Constitutional Court’s judgment in the Shell and Impact Africa Wild Coast expedition matter enhanced the value of ecological rights and significant neighborhood involvement in choices impacting individuals’s incomes and relationships with land and sea.
As somebody who took part in the Sustaining the Wild Coast project throughout my time at Greenpeace Africa, I do not concern this as an abstract legal concept. Neighborhoods are not barriers to be handled in the pursuit of commercial advancement. Their rights, understanding, incomes and authorization should be main to how we specify advancement.
The chemical employees of 1989 comprehended something that our existing shift discourse in some cases forgets: employees and neighborhoods can not be anticipated to soak up the expenses of financial restructuring while others gather the returns.
Their need was not that capital must never ever leave, or that markets must never ever alter. It was that modification needs to be responsible to individuals it impacts.
That is the requirement we ought to use to green hydrogen, gas and every other suggested path in South Africa’s energy shift.
Where jobs show reputable decarbonisation, significant neighborhood involvement, reasonable benefit-sharing and real securities for employees, they should have factor to consider and assistance. Where green is simply a label, where business presumptions are dealt with as certainties and neighborhoods are anticipated to take in the threats while financiers gather the returns, we must not be shy about questioning the financial investments.
And where the proof does not support the aspiration, we need to be prepared to withdraw.
Disinvestment can not just indicate moving capital from one market to another and stating the shift total. It should indicate altering the terms on which capital runs, who takes advantage of it and who has the power to form the economy that emerges.
The chemical employees of 1989 offered us the language for this. We need to take their need seriously.
Disinvest on our terms. DM
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