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23 March 2026
For Immediate Release
Contact: Tsepang Molefe +27 74 4051257; for more info
PCC – the good the bad and the absent of the first five years.
Johannesburg, 23 March 2026. groundWork, Friends of the Earth South Africa launches its 2025 Report titled An Imbalance of Power: The Just Transition, the Life After Coal campaign and the Presidential Climate Commission, 2020-2025.
This year’s groundWork Report offers a critique of the achievements and blind spots of the Presidential Climate Commission (PCC) in its first five years from the perspective of environmental justice activists. Life After Coal (LAC) commissioners and coalition members draw attention to absences of health, waste, mining rehabilitation and restorative justice in the work of the PCC and the broader transition.
This report unpacks South Africa’s purposive transition and engages with a narrative from within the PCC secretariat claiming that the PCC has set in place the architecture for a progressive just transition that shows that South Africa could achieve decarbonisation, attract green investment and deliver social justice at the same time.
“We take a hard look at the good, the bad and the missing of South Africa’s first PCC and the attempt at a just transition,” says Bobby Peek, Executive Director at groundWork.
However, experiences on the ground, particularly the Komati decommissioning process, surfaced broader challenges: the absence of key government departments, shifts in global sentiment and tardy action by funders. After push back from powerful actors in the Minerals Energy Complex, this “climate settlement” moved to a lower level of ambition. The narrative argues that there is still potential for a more progressive deal if constituencies within civil society, like the labour and environmental justice movements, emerging green firms and scientists fight for it.
The authors also cast a wider view of the global politics of energy and climate in the time of Trump. Trump’s election campaign was heavily backed by big oil. Once elected, Trump proclaimed that his administration aimed for energy dominance. Not only would it promote the expansion of fossil fuels in the USA, it would also impose fossil fuel expansion led by Big Oil USA on the rest of world. We note the aggressive fascism of Trump’s second presidency, as he dismantles the environmental justice, climate change and human rights architecture in the richest country in the world, at the behest of his big electoral campaign funders in big tech, oil, gas and coal. The South African push back against the climate agenda shares the aims of Trump’s shrill politics: to remove all regulation from corporates and allow them to escape responsibility for any externalities they have historically imposed or are currently imposing on people and their environments.
The report also proposes an emerging agenda for the next five years and sets the push back against the PCC in the context of a global push back, exemplified by Trump’s destruction of climate response architecture. Many of South Africa’s big polluters wave and smile from the PCC using it as a pulpit for sermonizing on the “just transition” while clinging steadfastly onto fossil fuels. Now that the PCC is a statutory body with a clear mandate under the Climate Change Act; it has the potential to do better and address the policy contractions in government.
“We will deliver a copy of the report with its recommendations into the hands of President Ramaphosa as the Chair of the new commission,” says Peek.
The launch event takes place at the Wits Professional Development Hub Atrium in Johannesburg from 13:00 – 16:00. The format will be a fishbowl conversation featuring present and past PCC commissioners, the authors and community members affected by the just transition with prompts Bobby Peek who served as a PCC commissioner in the first five years.
The event opens with a live performance of the theatrical production Old King Coal, a play that weaves together the complex social, economic, and political realities of coal-affected communities and is performed by activists from fenceline communities in Mpumalanga.
Emerging agenda for the next Five Years
- The absence of a national awareness raising communications campaign, despite a clear need and numerous requests.
- Important Eskom planning documents about the decommissioning of the nine other power stations have been continuously withheld from the public, affected communities and activists.
- The coal industry was glaringly absent from discussion and action for mine and catchment rehabilitation and social responsibility.
- Health was a big absence and an indication of how the huge externalities imposed by coal are not accounted for, dealt with, or even part of the conversation.
- Waste was also absent from discussions and is also an externality that is denied attention by government and corporates. We argue that climate, environmental and jobs gains are relatively easily available in the waste sector.
- There is a refusal of responsibility by government departments in general, and the mining and energy departments in particular, as became clear in the case of Komati power station decommissioning processes.
- The refusal to properly decommission the shuttered oil refineries in south Durban did not appear on the PCC agenda, showing a narrow focus on coal and specifically coal producing areas. Nor is there any discussion about decommissioning Sasol’s plants and a just transition in Sasolburg and Secunda.
Launch Details:
23 March 2026, 13:00 – 16:00.
Wits Professionals Development Hub, Johannesburg
92 Empire Road, Gate 06
Note: Hardcopies of the report will be available at the launch.
