Last month took to the stage at the Green Hydrogen Summit in a denim two-piece and a butter-yellow graphic tee.
It was not the formal wear that summits of this nature typically call for, and that was the point.
The summit itself was a moment of optimism.
Six priority green hydrogen projects were launched that will form part of the National Green Hydrogen Deal Book, building on last year’s anchor investment of R300 million (part of a R656 million joint pledge with the Development Bank of South Africa and IDC) into the SA-H2 Fund and additional pledged to the tune of USD 170 million (R2.7 billion) led by Phelan Green Group’s $100 million equity stake.
The T-shirt I wore told another story.
The design comes from the South African History Archive, circa 1989.
The Chemical Workers Industrial Union produced it at the height of apartheid, and it reads, boldly: Divest on our terms. In 1989 the chemical workers were organising for progressive working conditions for men and women alike, at a time when that was itself a radical demand.
In the same breath, they were engaging in the international call for boycotts, sanctions and divestment.
But they did so with a clarity that is easy to forget. Workers were not simply cheering companies out of the country.
They were insisting that if capital was going to leave, it would not leave on its own terms, abandoning the people whose labour had built its profits.
That insistence was grounded in bitter experience. When several multinationals announced their withdrawal from South Africa in the 1980s, many did not really leave.
They sold local operations to management, kept licensing, technology and supply agreements intact, and continued to profit while claiming the moral credit of having “disinvested.”
Workers were often neither consulted nor compensated. The unions had a name for this: corporate camouflage.
This history matters now, because we are contemplating another great restructuring of our economy.
Too often the just transition is discussed as though it concerns mine workers alone.
It does not. The shift away from fossil fuels will reshape the motor industry, steel, and the chemical sector, the very industries whose workers understood in 1989 what it means when capital moves and people are left behind
Green hydrogen is being positioned as the bridge that will carry these industries into a low-carbon future.
It may yet become that. But we should be honest about where we are. Green hydrogen remains prohibitively expensive to produce and many of the proposed projects still depend on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) in some form.
Regionally, it would cost between R89 and R143 a kilogram to produce green hydrogen, and up to R300 delivered.
Relative to the cost of producing hydrogen with fossil fuels which is R18 to R29, it is precisely because of this gap that LNG has been touted heavily by fossil fuel companies as a transition fuel, a reality which must be contested.
Methane has a global-warming potential over a 100-year period, it carried a 28 times more potent effect than carbon dioxide.
Over a 20 -year period, that figure jumps to 80 times.
A Cornwell Study found that once we factor in processing, methane leaks, and shipping, LNG would be 33% worse for our climate prospects over a 20 year period.
A project that relies on fossil gas while wearing a green label is not a transition. It is camouflage.
Last month, the Constitutional Court blocked Shell Exploration and Impact Africa’s environmental authorisation, ending their plans for the Wild Coast altogether.
As one of the campaigners involved in the Sustaining the Wild Coast case during my time at Greenpeace Africa, I do not say this lightly: the ruling affirmed that communities’ rights, livelihoods and relationships to land and sea are not obstacles to be managed but interests the law must weigh.
Its implications will be felt in the pending judgments on other exploration blocks, including the Orange Basin off the West Coast.
The chemical workers of 1989 did not reject change.
They demanded that change be accountable to the people it affected.
That is the standard we should hold green hydrogen to.
After all, the pension funds of teachers, nurses and police officers are being invested in a gas cliff, without the necessary architecture for social protections in the event that our gassy ambitions don’t pan out.
Where projects meet the bar, with meaningful community consent, fair benefit-sharing, credible decarbonisation and real protections for workers, they deserve our support.
But where they do not, where “green” is a label rather than a reality and communities are expected to absorb the costs while others collect the returns, we should not be shy.
We should boldly call for divestment. And, as the workers taught us, we should insist that it happen on our terms.
Thandile Zonke is a Commissioner on the Presidential Climate Commission and co-chair of its Youth Leaders Caucus. She writes in her personal capacity.
