South Africa's Youth Want Clean Air. Their Leaders Keep Burning Coal.

Ask a young South African what the future looks like and you will often get a shrug. Ask what the future should look like and you will get a clear answer: clean air, working power, jobs that do not depend on a dying mine, and a country that does not sacrifice their lungs and their prospects to keep old men's contracts alive.

The COP31 South African Youth Statement puts those demands on paper. It speaks for young people across the country who want a cleaner, greener future. Their voice matters more than any communiqué drafted in a hotel conference room. They are not asking for charity. They are asking for a government that stops betraying them.

Let us be honest about what they are up against.

South Africa generates roughly 80 percent of its electricity from coal, most of it through Eskom, the state utility that has become a symbol of everything wrong with African governance. Its power stations are old, poorly maintained, and in many cases run far beyond their design life. The result is a grid that fails people every week. In 2023, South Africans endured load-shedding on hundreds of days. Hospitals lost power. Small businesses closed. Families cooked over paraffin and candles in homes that were supposed to have electricity. Every blackout is a lesson in what happens when a state monopoly is run for the benefit of those inside it rather than the people who pay for it.

The Zondo Commission, which examined state capture across the public sector, found that Eskom was systematically looted. Procurement was rigged. Contracts were awarded to connected companies. Coal supply deals were padded with inflated costs. Billions of rands were siphoned away while the lights kept dimming. When a utility is captured, the first casualty is the truth, and the second is reliability. The third, always, is the poor.

Now consider the youth. A young person born in 2008 has spent most of her life watching an energy system fail. She has been told that coal is a necessity, that the transition is a luxury, that jobs must be protected at any cost. She has seen the cost. She knows that the coal-dependent regions she grew up in have produced little beyond sick children and abandoned towns. She is not anti-worker. She is anti-theft, and she has the evidence in front of her every evening when the power cuts out.

South Africa signed up to the Just Energy Transition Partnership in 2021, with international partners committing around US$8.5 billion to help move the country away from coal. That money was meant to be a bridge. Too much of the debate since then has been about who gets the contracts, who gets the consultancy fees, and who gets to delay. Meanwhile, the emissions keep rising from a country that is among Africa's largest carbon emitters, and the communities closest to the power stations keep paying the price in respiratory disease and lost livelihoods.

Here is the uncomfortable question no minister wants to answer. If the government cannot keep the lights on with coal, why is it so determined to keep coal in the mix?

The answer is not mysterious. Coal is an entrenched interest. It employs organized labor, it feeds political patronage networks, and it funds the lifestyles of people who have every reason to resist change. Renewable energy threatens that arrangement, because solar panels and wind turbines can be built by private companies, financed by private capital, and connected to a grid that does not belong to a single captured monopoly. That is precisely why the old guard fights it.

This is not only a South African problem. Across the continent, we see the same pattern. Governments announce ambitious green targets at summits while approving new fossil fuel projects at home. They court foreign investors who promise jobs and then deliver extraction without accountability. They take loans for power plants that serve political allies rather than citizens. Africa contributes a small share of global emissions, yet bears a disproportionate share of climate damage, from floods in the Sahel to drought in the Horn. Our leaders demand climate justice in Geneva and Dubai, then sign deals that lock our children into dirty energy for another forty years.

We should be clear: the youth are not the problem. They are the cure. They are the generation that will live with the decisions being made now, and they are the first to see through the hypocrisy. When a youth statement calls for a cleaner future, it is also an indictment of every official who treats climate policy as a branding exercise.

So what should happen?

South Africa must unbundle Eskom and separate generation, transmission, and distribution so that independent producers can compete on a level field. The state should stop acting as a monopolist and start acting as a regulator. Transmission networks need to be opened for private wheeling so that factories, municipalities, and households can buy clean power directly from producers. Independent power producers should be procured through transparent, competitive auctions with published bids and independent audit, not closed-door deals awarded to friends. Every rand of the Just Energy Transition funding should be tracked publicly, down to the contract, so that citizens can see where it goes.

Africa already has proof that this works. Morocco built the Noor Ouarzazate solar complex, one of the largest concentrated solar power facilities in the world, by combining clear policy, competitive tendering, and private investment. Kenya has built a substantial share of its electricity from geothermal energy, showing that a developing economy can move away from imported fuels when the institutions are willing. These are not miracles. They are the outcome of rule of law, predictable regulation, and governments that understood their job was to serve the public rather than extract from it.

Civil society has a role too. Journalists must follow the money in energy procurement with the same rigor they once applied to state capture. Youth organizations should be given seats at the table in every energy planning process, not invited to photo opportunities after decisions have been made. The private sector, especially in mining and manufacturing, should be encouraged to buy renewable power directly, which lowers costs, improves reliability, and reduces political dependence on a failing utility.

And citizens must demand more. Demand that your municipality publish its electricity procurement. Demand that your member of parliament explain every coal contract. Demand a timeline for retiring the oldest plants and a plan for the workers and towns that depend on them. Demand that the word "transition" be backed by numbers, deadlines, and consequences for failure.

The youth of South Africa have done their part. They have written a clear statement of what they want. Now the adults who run this country must answer for what they have done with the power they were given. You cannot ask a generation to inherit a dying grid and call it leadership.

We are running out of excuses and running out of time. Every year of delay is another year of blackouts, polluted air, and stolen futures. Call your representatives. Demand audited energy contracts. Support the journalists and youth groups doing the hard work of exposing failure. Because the future South Africa's young people are asking for is not a favor. It is their right, and it is long overdue.

Based on reporting by SAIIA