Nkosikhulule Nyembezi
CAPE TOWN - Gwede Mantashe is a law unto himself.
The Mineral Resources and Energy Minister approaches his constitutional duties to promote the law and human rights the way a toddler handles broccoli.
He understands the idea that it contains some goodness, but it will touch his lips only if a higher authority compels it there.
He is now inciting massive protests and protracted litigation at a time when the country and the world is seeking solutions to stop climate change.
Take his retrogressive plan to build more coal plants, and his declared willingness to go to court to fight for it because he knows “we’re going to end up in court for it. Everything we do, you end up in court, but I think we should”.
Addressing reporters at the African Energy Week conference in Cape Town last week, Mantashe also said: “Africa must seize the moment, we must indeed position Africa oil and gas at the forefront of global energy growth. The cutting of financing for coal, oil, and even gas — as is the case among the world’s largest lenders — is a mistake.’
Some of Mantashe’s cabinet colleagues have constantly distanced themselves as they saw how dreadful this was from the start and appreciated how vulnerable it made them to the charge of corruption and lack of accountability levelled by human rights activists.
Those ministers who did the right thing, such as denying Karpowership licence applications, may feel vindicated.
But that is the only reward they are likely to get. When the ANC gets a reputation for being sleazy, voters don’t tend to discriminate between the saints and the sinners. The taint clings to all.
So, those in the ANC who mobilised the country around the “Ramaphoria” era of a caring and accountable government also have reason to be furious with the straying of the government.
The utterances directly undermine plans developed by the recently established Presidential Climate Change Coordinating Commission, known as the nationally determined contributions to the Paris Agreement.
These were submitted at the Conference of Parties 26 (COP26) in Glasgow in the UK, as a plan for the country’s just transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
All this in the midst of human rights activists in the Eastern Cape and elsewhere in the country publicly voicing their opposition after Shell announced it will start a three-dimensional seismic survey searching for oil and gas deposits from Morgan Bay to Port St Johns on December 1. Shell has appointed Shearwater GeoServices to conduct the survey, which will last from four to five months and cover 6 000 km² of ocean surface.
There are several coastal communities earmarked for similar activities in the next 18 months and beyond. And this environmentally destructive exercise must be stopped.
A soft-spoken Ntsindiso Nongcavu told the media the survey comes as a shock to them as fishers in Port St Johns as it will “kill our businesses because you can’t open a mine where there is fishing. Our government does not want to listen to the people and ask what kind of development they need in that area; instead they are being used by businesses.”
He is Coastal Links Eastern Cape chairperson and a member of the Green Connection Legacy Programme, supporting the advocacy work of local communities earmarked for fracking, exploration and exploitation of oil and gas.
This year, I have listened to several detailed accounts of this perception about Mantashe from environmental activists and small-scale fishers. These are individuals and communities whose livelihoods are negatively and increasingly affected by the government’s insatiable appetite for oil and gas.
Some participated in the oceans tribunal organised by the Green Connection last September, which produced a memorandum to President Cyril Ramaphosa.
In our collective opposition to the government’s Operation Phakisa to exploit offshore oil and gas or the move to introduce 20-year long contracts for Karpowerships to generate electricity in the ports of Saldanha, Ngqura and Richards Bay; we should note Mantashe’s belief that he should be treated as an exception, one who should be free of the family of constitutional and legislative obligations which bind everyone else.
He rarely encounters a rule on environmental protection without feeling the urge to break it.
Know this, and you are well on the way to understanding why the government engages in grubby scheming to undermine the rights and livelihoods of citizens in coastal communities by mobilising international investors to pour money into fossil fuels.
Then brutish bullying of affected communities and government departments — such as the Environment, Forestry & Fisheries which administers Environmental Impact Assessment plans — to make them follow his orders, that now threatens the intensity of a backlash to force compliance with the applicable legal framework.
This contemptible episode is not a once-off, but the latest exhibition of the pathology of Mantashe’s handling of his executive mandate.
There’s a pattern of trying to bend the guardrails designed to keep our democracy clean and undermine independent scrutiny of the government’s conduct relating to the adoption and implementation of a revised energy policy that should facilitate South Africa’s inclusive, just transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
He is straying from his mandate to ensure that we all enjoy the right to an environment that is not harmful to our health or well-being and to have the environment protected, for the benefit of present and future generations.
This must be done through reasonable legislative and other measures that prevent pollution and ecological degradation, promote conservation; and secure ecologically sustainable development and use of natural resources while promoting justifiable economic and social development.
Mantashe is driven by a restless sense of his entitlement to be at the apex of power and a conviction, supported by evidence gathered on his journey to the top, that rules are a trap to catch weaker members of the society.
Having such a personality at the heart of government makes nonsense of co-operative government principles.
Much of South Africa’s politics proceeds by the observance of constitutional principles and values, serving as invisible rails guarding against the tyrannical caprices that details in our constitution and energy framework explicitly prohibit.
There is an accrued cultural expectation of democratic propriety, a self-policing code of conduct summarised in section seven of the constitution as an obligation of the state to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights in the Bill of Rights.
It is hard to predict how long Mantashe and the ANC’s arrogance can last, but two things can be forecast with confidence: the fall will be messy, and few who cheer Mantashe today will boast of having done so once he is gone.
Nyembezi is a political analyst and human rights activist.
Cape Times