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Nearly 28 million South African registered voters will go to the polls on 29 May to elect more than 800 representatives to the national assembly and provincial legislatures.
The leader of the party that secures a majority in the 400-member national assembly will become the country’s next president.
For the first time, independent candidates will be allowed to run, although all but 11 of the 14,889 certified candidates were nominated by 70 political parties.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC), which has been in office since the end of apartheid in 1994, retains the most support – despite dwindling fortunes.
Its closest challengers are the right-leaning Democratic Alliance (DA) and the left-leaning Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).
A new party formed by former president Jacob Zuma, uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK), had been expected to also play a significant role in the election. However, South Africa’s top court has now ruled that due to the 15-month jail sentence he served, Zuma himself is ineligible to run.
South Africa – a country with more than 62 million people and considered the most industrialised economy in Africa – was the world’s 14th largest emitter of greenhouse gases in 2018. (See Carbon Brief’s South Africa profile for more.)
The country is gripped by a severe electricity crisis due to faltering and ageing coal power plants, which account for more than 80% of power generation.
Shortages have forced the government to implement electricity rationing, known as load shedding – helping drive a boom in rooftop solar for those that can afford it.
The ongoing crisis – and a failure to meet wider renewables goals – means coal plants will be kept running for longer and the country’s 2030 climate pledge will be missed.
In the interactive grid below, Carbon Brief tracks the commitments made by South Africa’s leading political party, the ANC, and its closest challengers, the DA and EFF, in their latest election manifestos. The grid covers a range of issues connected to climate change.
Each entry in the grid represents a direct quote from one or more of these documents.
Climate policy
South Africa is already experiencing the impact of climate change, including droughts, floods and an acute water crisis. However, climate change itself is not a key focus for South African voters; as of 2021, only about half of South Africans said they had heard of climate change.
Meanwhile, under the ANC, the South African government has strengthened its commitment to the Paris Agreement, by pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions to between 350m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO2e) and 420MtCO2e by 2030, from 442MtCO2e in 2020.
The country has also set the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, although a presidential commission report suggested it would require up to 535bn rand ($29bn) per year to meet its climate targets. South Africa’s national climate plan also emphasises the importance of adaptation in the face of climate impacts.
In its manifesto for the 2024 election, the ANC reiterates its commitment to net-zero, adaptation and mitigation plans, plus pledges to continue to “work with other countries in the fight against climate change, global poverty and inequality in line with applicable international resolutions”.
The DA manifesto also says it is committed to “achieving net-zero carbon emissions to reduce the impact of energy generation on the climate”.
Within its manifesto, the EFF also pitches climate action, although it does not explicitly back the net-zero target. It says:
“The EFF government will reduce carbon emissions by 10% by 2029 and will renegotiate our nationally determined contribution (NDC), which includes components on climate adaptation and mitigation as well as support requirements for both.”
However, a professor of politics at the Wits School of Governance, David Everatt tells Carbon Brief most South African political parties have merely performed a “ritual nod towards climate change” in their manifestos, as climate concerns are not a major campaign issue in the country.
Instead, the focus is on reducing load-shedding and strengthening energy security.
Electricity policy
The revitalisation of South Africa’s power sector is undoubtedly one of the major focuses of the coming election.
“The vast majority of the debate in South Africa is about the power sector and load-shedding,” says Dr Tracy Ledger, head of the energy transition programme at PARI, an African research institute affiliated to the University of Johannesburg and Wits University in South Africa. She tells Carbon Brief:
“Load shedding has ruined people’s lives and devastated the economy; the economy is probably 20% smaller than it would be without load shedding; hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. It’s been a disaster.”
During COP26 in Glasgow, South Africa, alongside France, Germany, the UK, US and the European Union, announced a Just Energy Transition Partnership. This is designed to mobilise an initial $8.5bn to support South Africa “to move away from coal and to accelerate its transition to a low emission, climate resilient economy”.
However, South Africa’s worsening electricity crisis has raised concerns that it may struggle to fulfil its climate ambitions. In April 2023, president Cyril Ramaphosa said the government will consider a delay in the decommissioning of coal plants to help ease electricity cuts.
Another concern is the potential job losses associated with coal decommissioning in Mpumalanga province, an area known as South Africa’s coal belt.
In their 2024 election manifestos, the ANC and the DA do not mention coal, instead pledging investments in renewable energy. However, the EFF says that it would “establish a state-owned mining company to manage coal mines owned by Eskom (South Africa’s state-run power utility), ensuring a quality coal supply at affordable prices”.
Dr Ledger tells Carbon Brief:
“The DA is very much in favour of the just energy transition. The official line of the ANC is that they support the energy transition, but the ANC is in so many factions, and there are a lot of factions within the ANC that are anti-energy transition.
“The EFF is trying to keep everyone happy at the same time. They are saying we need security of supply and we need to address climate change, but we can’t close any coal-fired power stations because people will lose their jobs.”
Meanwhile, despite the continued support for coal in South Africa, particularly in Mpumalanga province, the ANC, DA and EFF all acknowledge the importance of renewable energy in their manifestos.
Dr Ledger believes that regardless of the rhetoric around coal, renewables have a place in South Africa’s energy mix:
“There is now so much embedded [renewable] generation making up the deficit [in supplies from the central grid]. The coal plants will eventually have to shut down. We can’t afford a nuclear power plant and the treasury will never approve it. So, the only practical option available is the private sector and renewables. The energy transition is kind of happening by stealth.
“Electricity generation in South Africa is being privatised and what the private sector is interested in is renewables and maybe a little bit of gas. But gas can’t compete on price with solar. Nothing can compete with solar. Solar in South Africa is already 30% cheaper than the power being produced by Eskom from its coal-fired power stations. And in ten years time, it will be 70% cheaper. That’s what is going to drive the energy transition in South Africa.”
Water policy
Alongside the power crisis, South Africa is also suffering a water crisis, as droughts become increasingly common. In March, thousands lined up for water in the country’s largest city, Johannesburg.
Record temperatures have exacerbated the problem, but the issue has also been politicised with the DA, for example, blaming the ANC for mismanaging the country’s water resources.
Meanwhile, sewage systems are leaking and polluting the country’s freshwater supply, further complicating the matter.
According to Prof Richard Meissner, a water governance expert at the University of South Africa, water-related issues are set to play a more significant role in the 2024 election than in previous years. He tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s important to note that South Africans use 61.8% more water than the global average, which is 173 litres per day. This is largely due to issues such as leaks, wastage and illegal connections, which can be addressed through proper infrastructure maintenance.”
He adds that political parties have also focused on water security in their manifestos, proposing specific solutions to improve water and sanitation services.
For example, the ANC promises it will allocate more powers to the national and provincial government to provide clean water to citizens. The EFF has a similar solution – prioritising government intervention.
The DA, on the other hand, wants to involve “private companies in water infrastructure projects through a performance-based private-public partnership model”.
The post South Africa election 2024: What the manifestos say on energy and climate appeared first on Carbon Brief.
South Africa election 2024: What the manifestos say on energy and climate
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An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor
- Prof Pierre Friedlingstein, chair of mathematical modelling of climate systems at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Carbon Project team.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
The 21st edition of the annual “global carbon budget” report, published today, says that this small decline is largely due to a 1.9% drop in emissions from oil and the energy shock triggered by the Iran conflict and the closure of the strait of Hormuz.
Emissions from coal continue to increase slightly.
The Global Carbon Project’s projections for fossil fuel and cement CO2 emissions in 2026 are preliminary, with a range that spans a fall of -1.5% to a rise of +0.6%.
This means a small increase in emissions can not be ruled out.
Emissions from land-use change, such as deforestation, are projected to rise in 2026.
This is primarily driven by peat fires and forest degradation in south-east Asia and is linked to the development of a strong El Niño event this year.
As a result, total CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and land use are projected to reach a record high of 43.3GtCO2 in 2026 – marginally above 42.8GtCO2 in 2025.
Research published alongside the report by the same team in Nature Climate Change finds that the growth in solar, wind and electric vehicles (EVs) now offsets around two-thirds of the emissions that would otherwise come from rising energy demand.
However, the deployment of these technologies is not yet enough to push global emissions into a sustained decline, according to the study.