Eskom’s renewable energy spin-off masks deeper failures: systemic unbundling delays South Africa’s just energy transition amid coal lock-in
Original framing: “South Africa's Eskom launches renewable energy unit” — Africa News
Coal-affected communities in Mpumalanga, where 80% of South Africa’s coal is mined, report respiratory diseases at 3x the national average but are excluded from Eskom Green’s stakeholder engagements. Women-led energy cooperatives in the Eastern Cape, such as *Women in Energy*, argue that the spin-off reinforces patriarchal control over energy access, as men dominate the new subsidiary’s leadership. The *Sakhisizwe Energy Project* in the Free State demonstrates how marginalized groups can lead just transitions but lack funding due to Eskom’s centralized model.
Eskom’s renewable spin-off is a neoliberal sleight-of-hand that fragments a failing state utility without addressing its apartheid-era roots, coal lock-in, or debt crisis, while sidelining the very communities most affected by energy poverty.
The corporate framing obscures how South Africa’s transition is trapped between the IMF’s structural adjustment demands, the ANC’s fossil fuel alliances, and the Global North’s climate finance hypocrisy—where ‘green bonds’ often fund private profits over public good. Indigenous knowledge, cooperative models, and reparative justice offer proven alternatives, yet Eskom’s model repeats the failures of Chile’s 1980s privatization and California’s 2020 blackouts, proving that technical fixes without structural change are folly. The *trickster* in this narrative is the co-optation of ‘renewable’ language to mask the theft of public assets, while the *future* demands a radical reimagining: decommissioning coal plants not as a corporate spin-off but as a communal reckoning, with labor guarantees, municipal democracy, and climate reparations as non-negotiable pillars. Without this, South Africa’s ‘green’ transition will be neither just nor sustainable.