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On 31 January this year, Open Secrets, a non-profit organisation that exposes
and builds accountability for private sector economic crimes – often enabled
by the state – held a ‘People’s hearing on Energy Profiteers’. Witnesses living
on the fenceline of dirty industry and the ‘unjust’ transition gave evidence of
how the hope of people for justice 30 years after democracy is shattered daily,
as South Africa fails to deliver on the promise of a just transition for all, where
no-one is left behind.
The message from people on the fenceline is simple: the economy must
change and it must serve the people first. The economy, meaning the entire
system, with a duty to deliver first to those at the local, then the province,
the national and the global level. There was recognition that food gardens – a
critical component of resilience and survival – are not going to change the
economy. Within the present economy people are ‘left behind’. The fight for a
just transition is the fight to upend the economic relations that produce
poverty, not only on the Highveld and the coal fields, but across South Africa,
including the petrochemical hubs and the collapsed mining towns and
agricultural heartlands.
and builds accountability for private sector economic crimes – often enabled
by the state – held a ‘People’s hearing on Energy Profiteers’. Witnesses living
on the fenceline of dirty industry and the ‘unjust’ transition gave evidence of
how the hope of people for justice 30 years after democracy is shattered daily,
as South Africa fails to deliver on the promise of a just transition for all, where
no-one is left behind.
The message from people on the fenceline is simple: the economy must
change and it must serve the people first. The economy, meaning the entire
system, with a duty to deliver first to those at the local, then the province,
the national and the global level. There was recognition that food gardens – a
critical component of resilience and survival – are not going to change the
economy. Within the present economy people are ‘left behind’. The fight for a
just transition is the fight to upend the economic relations that produce
poverty, not only on the Highveld and the coal fields, but across South Africa,
including the petrochemical hubs and the collapsed mining towns and
agricultural heartlands.
