Coal and the steam engine did not determine the story, and besides the dates are all wrong […] One must surely tell of the networks of sugar, precious metals, […] indigenous genocides, and slavery, with their labour innovations and relocations and recompositions of critters and things sweeping up both human and nonhuman worker of all kinds. The infectious industrial revolution of England mattered hugely, but it is only one player in planet-transforming, historically
haraway, 2016, 51–52situated, new enough, worlding relations. The relocation of peoples, microbes, plants, and animals; the leveling of vast forests; and the violent mining of metals preceded the steam engine.
1 Introduction1
The term Anthropocene2 suggests that all humans are geological agents insofar as their use of fossil fuels causes climate change, and that they have made indelible impacts on the planet’s stratigraphic record. The dominant scientific narratives suggest the onset of this period coincides with the invention of the steam engine in 1784. But as Donna Haraway (2016, 51) implies, ‘The relocation of peoples, microbes, plants, and animals; the levelling of vast forests; and the violent mining of metals preceded the steam engine […]’ and were underway long before the extraction of coal began. According to Merchant (1980), in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in Europe the understanding of humans’ relationship with the Earth changed in nature from one of a holistic, organic cosmos to a mechanistic and exploitative approach driven by ideals motivated by ideas of human ‘progress’. Structural violence and an extractive relationship disentangled humans and the non-human worlds. The thinking and power of scientific and Cartesian revolutions separated the domain of human relationships in the web of life into dualisms embedded in concepts such as ‘Civilisation and Savage’ and ‘Society and Nature’ (Moore, 2014; 2015b; 2016; 2017; Patel and Moore, 2020). Within this Cartesian dualistic thinking, elements of Western European civilisation assumed the position of ‘masters and processers of nature’ (Descartes in Moore, 2014, 288). Conquest, productivity, and plunder became common sense and commonplace (Patel and Moore, 2020). Cartesian dualism shaped emergent knowledge regimes and ‘the modern logics of power as well as thought’ (Patel and Moore, 2020, 63).
Koch et al. (2019) suggest that land use changes in the sixteenth century significantly increased carbon stored in the land, resulting in cooling phenomena. Their research concludes that the Columbian exchange3 contributed to earth system change before the industrial revolution did so (Koch et al., 2019, 30).
Moore (2015b) states that the Anthropocene discourse is embedded in the well-worn dualism that has separated human relations from the web of life in binary conceptions such as ‘Civilisation and Savage’ and ‘Society and Nature’. Patel and Moore (2020) capitalise the S and the N of society and nature to reflect the abstractions that both describe the world and make it. Moore (2015b, 3) describes how ontologically, a dualist frame organises ‘Nature’ as something to be ‘coded [and] quantified […] to serve economic growth, social development, or some other higher good’. Patel and Moore (2020) refer to these abstractions or generalisations as statements of ontology and epistemology. They are invisible, and their violence is hidden in the dualisms embedded in an ontology of separation, extraction, and domination (Mignolo, 2019; Haraway, 2016; French et al., 2020).
Moving beyond the sources of the pollutants of the Anthropocene, Moore (2015a, 2) states, ‘[f]rom this perspective, the problem is not the “Age of Humans” but the “Age of Capital”. Not Anthropocene, but Capitalocene’. Further declaring that Anthropocene describes ‘what’ is the cause of global warming but does not describe ‘how’ it came about: capitalism as world-ecology
In the Anthropocene discourse, ‘man’ as the ‘good Anthropocene’4 may be—based on post-nature, utilitarian, and eco-modernist ideas of high-technology advancements—considered to have ‘good’ intentions in terms of the human mastery necessary to address the climate crisis. Some of the chief ideas of the ‘good’ Anthropocene discourse relevant to the present chapter are 1) economic growth and the expansion of consumer culture are important so that everyone can be affluent, 2) major scientific and technological fixes and inventions, including engineering climate and life, will be needed, and 3) the need to embrace a scientific planetary managerial mindset with regard to the climate crisis through mitigation and adaptation approaches (Crist, 2016, 15). As Crist puts it (2016, 16), ‘And while history might just see the human enterprise prevail after overcoming or containing its self-imperiling effects, the course toward world domination should not (or cannot) be stopped: history will keep moving in that direction, with the human enterprise eventually journeying into outer space, mining other planets […]’. Furthermore, she stresses, ‘Anthropocene supporters expect (or hope) that this forward movement will keep materialising variants of progress such as green energy [and] economic development for all […]’ (Crist, 2016, 17). All other relationships and values, including ecological, spiritual, cultural, or aesthetic, are disregarded (Crist, 2016; Szeman and Wentzel, 2021). This notion of the Anthropocene discourse, as Crist (2016, 25) notes, offers ‘a techno-scientific pitch for its rationalization […]’. It fails to make space for alternative framings of humanity and the place of humans and their actions in the web of life (Crist, 2016). This discourse overlooks modernity’s social relations and ‘how new connections between
In South Africa, the domestic manifestation of the ‘good’ Anthropocene discourse in ‘green’ energy developments is apparent in the South African government’s energy policy and renewable energy programme. In 2011, the government released the country’s electricity plan, the Integrated Resource Plan for Electricity (irp) 2010–30 (Department of Energy, 2011), which announced the introduction of renewable energy into the country’s energy mix with the goal of increasing renewable energy capacity to 17,800 gigawatts by 2030. The policy also announced the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (rei4p), a new policy imperative for electricity generation from renewable energy sources. This was a significant undertaking and political decision given that the country’s reliance on cheap and abundant supplies of coal-derived electric power is at the heart of South Africa’s political, social and economic history (McDonald, 2009). Implementing the rei4p was also a demonstration of the country’s commitment to climate change mitigation. According to the government the rei4p is intended to contribute to job creation, social upliftment and a broadening of economic ownership (Department of Energy et al., 2016). The introduction of independent power producers (ipps) would expand electricity markets through the introduction of a competitive bidding process whereby such producers would obtain 20-year contracts to sell electricity to Eskom (South Africa’s electricity utility) as the single buyer. The high-technology, large-scale wind and solar infrastructure of the rei4p is organised as a public−private partnership (ppp).
This chapter analyses the material nature of the rei4p and the public−private partnership investment conditions based on a case study of the Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm (tcwf) in the Eastern Cape. It argues that the capitalist neo-liberal5 logic of alternative ‘green’ energy interventions in investment models such as the rei4p is embedded in the machinations of the extractivist productivist model through ‘new’ forms financialisaton for capital accumulation. The first section provides a literature review and theoretical underpinnings critical of the Anthropocene discourse. The purpose of this literature review is to show scholarly work on the emerging tensions of the capitalist neo-liberal logic in renewable energy projects, particularly wind energy developments in Mexico, where several large-scale wind farms have been implemented. The second section provides the background and context
2 Conceptual Inspirations and Literature Review
We are living with the consequences of a civilization built on cheap energy, a reality verified by climate change. The global political economy of cheap fuel has not only wrought immense human suffering in its extraction but also, of course, remade planetary ecology.
Patel and Moore (2020, 22) refer to ‘cheapness’ as a strategy that is not only about price, but is also ‘a practice, a violence that exploits human and animal, botanical and geological work with little or no compensation’.
moore, 2015b, 28
World-ecology is a method of bounding and bundling the human/extra-human/web of life relations—a manifold and multi-layered relation that encompasses everything from the micro-biome to the biosphere. And it is a framework for theorizing manifold forms of the human experience past, present, and future.
The basis of capital accumulation by appropriation is unpaid work that arises out of the rate of exploitation, but it ‘depends upon the fruits of appropriation derived from Cheap Natures, understood primarily as the “Four Cheaps” of labour-power, food, energy, and raw materials’ (Moore, 2015a, 10). Moore’s use of appropriation offers a useful context for the study that differs slightly from that of Marx (1818–83) that deployed appropriation with the exploitation of wage-labour. Moore (2015a, 10) explains that appropriation and accumulation is based on ‘those extra-economic processes that identify, secure, and channel unpaid work outside the commodity system into the circuit of capital’. Patel and Moore (2017) expand this to ‘seven cheap things’: nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives. Capitalism as world-ecology entwined with power, profit, and life relates to values of domination and appropriation both of humans—including women, slaves, and indigenous and black/brown peoples—and of extra-human nature such as forests, soils or rivers for capital accumulation (Moore, 2014; 2015a; 2015b; 2016). Thus, appropriating the unpaid work of uncommodified human and non-human natures territorially and in symbolic forms into labour productivity and commodity production is underpinned by ‘cheapness’ and profit accumulation (Moore, 2014; 2015a; 2015b; 2016; Patel and Moore, 2020).
Globally, the fixation on ‘green’ economic growth and notions of the ‘good’ Anthropocene regard renewable energy technologies as a lucrative investment opportunity that will stimulate job creation and improve the well-being of people and the planet, particularly in ‘developing’ countries (International Energy Agency, 2017; unep, 2017; undp, 2016). I couch the term ‘good’ Anthropocene as synonymous with green growth (a.k.a. green capitalism) and draw attention to the burgeoning ‘green’ neo-liberal agenda in renewable energy transitions through a world-ecology approach. A closer interrogation of the renewable energy policies and processes that insert a neo-liberal agenda under the mantle of climate mitigation is critical to illuminating novel forms of capital accumulation in the present-day world order (Vargas,2020; Dunlap, 2017; 2021; Howe, 2011; 2015; 2019; Gabor, 2021).
A considerable literature exists on the neo-colonialism and neo-liberal consequences of renewable energy transitions in Mexico, where the isthmus
Howe’s (2015, 232) analysis of Latin American energy transitions and climate change mitigation raises a fundamental and critical question: ‘If energy production continues to prioritize destructive and displacing megaprojects, can governments, energy developers, and communities balance the needs of local populations against the development desires of neo-liberalismo verde?’ Similar approaches are seen in other parts of the world. For example, wind energy development in Norway affects the indigenous Saami community (Normann, 2020). While ancestral reindeer herding is protected by international law, large-scale wind turbines are dispossessing herders of their pastural lands, a practice the Saami peoples have termed ‘green colonialism’ (Normann, 2020). Howe (2015, 234) emphasises critical concerns about ‘international economic investments that purport to enhance ‘sustainable livelihoods’ may be beneficial, both locally and globally but they must also be understood against a backdrop of enduring economic and political interventions. She stresses that these renewable energy initiatives could have the same impact as colonial and corporate extractivism, which have benefitted ‘affluent patrons and regions’ under the guise of ‘clean development’ (Howe 2015, 234).
Existing and planned wind farms in South Africa are not on the scale of wind farms on the isthmus of Tehuantepec in Oaxaca, where one wind park alone contains hundreds of turbines. However, these wind farms have in common that ‘their value has been carefully metered in terms of both their profits and their greater ethical possibilities in the global reduction of greenhouse gases’ (Howe, 2014, 382). Increasingly, alongside growing interest in renewable wind energy, the use-value of wind and its powers has become a desire for technological management (Howe, 2019). As put by (Howe, 2019, 25) ‘while the wind may have always mattered, it has now come to matter in different ways’.
Land and spatial concerns are emerging as one of the key political ambiguities of renewable energy (Burke and Stephens, 2018). Large tracts of land are required to host renewable energy infrastructure and harvest wind and solar energy. But the implications of how renewable energy transitions will affect spatial reconfigurations of social, political and economic processes that co-produce patterns of relations to power and production within nature remain under-considered. Huber and McCarthy (2017) highlight that the spatial and material conditions for the maintenance of fossil capitalism are immense. The
Most rei4p projects are situated in rural areas of South Africa where there is high solar and/or wind intensity, on farmland appropriated under colonialism and apartheid. McEwan (2017, 3) notes that the rei4p has largely overlooked historical land occupation and land appropriation, writing that ‘the discursive erasure of land within public debate about renewable energy is particularly notable given that the South African land question is of great political sensitivity […]’. The most capital-intensive commercial agricultural land is optimally located for both wind and solar energy generation, making it financially viable for commercial farmers to lease their land out for renewable energy infrastructure. Parenti (2016, 170) reminds us that ‘the modern state makes and delivers “nature” through place-based property regimes, its production of infrastructure, and its geographical forms of biopower’. The subset of biopower that Parenti (2016, 171) calls ‘geopower’ is the ‘statecraft and technologies of power that make territory and the biosphere accessible, legible, knowable, and utilizable’.
McEwan (2017, 5) explains that ‘ipps thus need to secure agreements with landowners on transfer of ownership or lease rights for rei4p projects; as a consequence of prevailing land ownership patterns, these agreements serve the interests of commercial (mainly white) landowners’. These renewable energy ppps create new income generating opportunities on commercial agricultural land.
Baker (2015a, 256) raises concerns that while these ppps contribute to the diversification of the energy mix, ‘their introduction still contributes to an electricity-intensive model [predicted in increased demand], with issues of affordability for low-income households unresolved’. Under the rei4p, all renewable energy is transmitted directly to the central grid and thus does not reach the 30 per cent of people not connected to the grid (Baker, 2015a, 257). Access to and affordability of electricity for marginalised communities are not addressed. This is true in both South Africa and Mexico, renewable energy transition projects generally bypassing access to power for communities situated where these very same renewable energy infrastructures are located. In the case of Mexico, mining companies and other commercial operations
3 Background and Context of the tcwf
3.1 Situating the Case Study
The tcwf is situated in a small area called Witkleibos6 in South Africa’s Eastern Cape (Figures 11.1 and 11.2). The Tsitsikamma Mfengu’s land claim, which was settled in 1994, is often referred to as a successful land restitution and re4ip project because it involves reclaimed land (Jannecke, 2006; 2008; McEwan, 2017, 5). Six thousand hectares were reclaimed altogether, including Witkleibos, and three more Tsitsikamma Mfengu community areas, called Snyklip, Doriskraal and Nuweplaas. Some Mfengu community members also live in a settlement called Clarkson, which was historically a Moravian mission station. People that previously lived in Doriskraal presently live in a location called Ekuphumleni (popularly called Guava Juice).
Map locating the Tsitsikamma geographical area in South Africa
source: author, adapted from tsitsikamma travel
Physical map of part of the south-eastern Cape
source: author, adapted from wego.here
The tcwf is particularly interesting and differs from other renewable energy projects in South Africa in noteworthy ways. The initiator of the wind farm, the late Michael Mcebisi ‘Mike’ Msizi was born in Witkleibos and lived in exile in Denmark during apartheid. There he became inspired by wind turbines and captivated by the idea that wind power could bring affordable electricity to the Tsitsikamma community and enable it to sell surplus electricity to the central grid. When he returned to South Africa in the mid-1990s, he shared his vision with the Tsitsikamma Mfengu7 community who had resettled on the land. The first distinction of this wind farm is that the idea for it occurred before the South African government had a formal renewable energy policy in
Mike Msizi was very influential in the community; he was a political exile and worked for the South African Congress of Trade Unions (satcu) and African
Most importantly, Msizi needed to finance the wind farm. Initially it was hoped that the financing could be obtained from Denmark. The Danish Embassy’s Development Counsellor paid for a feasibility study (Young, 2016). Young, pointed, out ‘in Denmark many wind farms are wholly owned by farmers or co-operatives’ (2016, 171). As the Embassy was interested in ‘community upliftment’ and the land on which the tcwf would be built was community owned, the Danish Embassy’s Development Counsellor in 2009 considered funding the project (Young 2016). While the Danes were supportive, uncertainty reigned over the future of renewable energy in South Africa, and there were no guarantees that Eskom would deploy an optimal buy-back policy for the electricity that could be generated by the wind farm. Exxaro, South Africa’s second largest coal company, through their ‘clean energy’ initiative obtained
My fieldwork in 2016 and 2017 immersed me in the materiality (configuration of the material matter) of relations in the making of the tcwf. I focused on the patterns of material nature of the land (the soil, typography, vegetation among other material elements and relationships to the land) on the wind farm, the stories and narratives gathered in conversations with community members and interviews with the key energy actors involved, including the government and the corporation, and on the material nature of the rei4p as an energy policy. Particular attention is paid in this study to ‘silent’ actors and voices—those rendered invisible and/or non-credible and subjects of capitalist machinations (de Sousa Santos, 2006); that is, community members and the land. I employed mixed methodologies, using archival research, oral narratives, interviews, photo stories, embedded ethnography (immersive fieldwork and participant observation) and workshops. Consent forms were signed by all interviewees. Government officials preferred to remain anonymous.
When the Tsitskamma Mfengu reclaimed the land in 1994, many people moved back in anticipation of returning to their small holdings, four-and-a-half-morgen (3.87 hectare) plots.
Wittekleibosch Tsitsikamma didn’t look like it is now. Then we used to plough our fields, we depended on working the land, cutting crops and all that stuff; people didn’t have to work that time, we worked for ourselves. The land was beautiful and rich at that time, so whatever you planted grew up nicely. So we were, each and every one, all had their
Witkleibos, 8 June 2016four-and-a-half-morgen piece of land. We had livestock, cattle, goats and, you know, chickens, pigs … whatever.
We had cattle, we had everything … we had a four-and-a-half-morgen piece of land. The water was different then, it was clean straight from the ground. Now the water we get in Wittekleibosch is not clean. The ground was fertile and we used cow manure, and the land was very rich, so it was easy to grow vegetables.
Witkleibos, 15 June 2016
But because the land of the amaMfengu claim incorporated 15 forestry farms and 19 privately owned dairy farms (Jordan, 2014), the beneficiaries of the land had rights but no decision-making power over the land (Jannecke, 2008). The only option for this community was to enter into a capitalist productivist relationship through a joint venture with the commercial farmers who had purchased the land from the apartheid-era government and had chosen to remain. This partnership was initially meant to last ten years but has been renewed on a continual basis.
The people that chose to return were allocated space in the vacant lands of the dairy farms. They received a government housing grant to build rdp (Reconstruction and Development Programme) houses. These tiny, poorly constructed brick houses were initially intended to be built on 50-meter square plots of land. The community members were unhappy with this proposal and the tdt negotiated with the government to extend the portion of land available for individual houses. The idea of creating an agricultural village was put forward, but this was rejected by the government. The compromise was that beneficiaries were offered rdp houses on slightly larger plots of land (Figure 11.3). But these were still only a fraction of the size of the plots—of almost four hectares per family—that people had lived on before they were displaced.
The beneficiaries were promised an income from the dairy farms’ land rentals and a portion of the 50 per cent dividend from the farms’ profits. But those who returned live in grim conditions. The houses consist of a lounge and kitchenette and two other rooms, many had no electricity, and some have asbestos roofs without a ceiling lining. By the time the claim was settled, the land was largely deforested and had become monoculture pine forest and pasture for the dairy farms. The soil is degraded, making it challenging for people
rdp houses in Witkleibos
source: author, 2016
Entrance to Witkleibos following rainfall
source: author, 2016
The houses that do have electricity were only connected in 2008, 14 years after South Africa became a democratic state. This community’s connection to the grid was brought about mostly through intense lobbying of Eskom by the late Mike Msizi. Because the community was categorised as low-consumption it is charged a flat rate with no service charge and in addition receives its first 50 kWh/month free of charge. Although low-income households receive this free initial electricity and pay no service charge, tariffs are higher than those paid by wealthy suburbanites (see McDonald, 2009, 24). Low-income households are forced to use proportionally more of their income for electricity,
Energy policy in South Africa followed neo-liberal prescriptions, and energy liberalisation and various forms of electricity privatisation strategies were adopted (McDonald, 2009). The neo-liberal policy shift in the 1990s—when ‘user pays’ cost recovery and cost-reflective tariff policies were introduced—had huge implications with regard to access and affordability for many low-income households (McDonald, 2002; 2009; Greenberg, 2009). Furthermore, as McDonald (2009, 16) highlights, because millions of people in low-income households simply did not have a regular income with which to ‘buy (enough of) the electricity’ even when they did have access, people were forced into making ‘tragic choices between buying electricity, water, food or clothing’.
Prepaid electricity meters were introduced in 2007. These became very popular with utility managers because they can be used to preclude non-payment problems altogether by forcing households to pay for their electricity in advance. As McDonald (2009, 26) argues, ‘This system avoids the costly (political and financial) procedures of cut-offs while effectively downloading the act of cut-offs to households themselves, with people discontinuing their
An electricity meter in a house in Snyklip
source: author, 2016
You can switch it on even if it is with R10 [10 rand], and it finishes, there is not much to it, because the stove and things like that use a lot of electricity. You see, we have these small boxes, and you cannot use the four-plate stove, it uses a lot of electricity, and it also makes the electricity trip, so we use the small ones—well I do, I have the small one and most of the time I can use the gas.
3.2 Establishing the Wind Farm under the rei4p
In 2009, Msizi’s dream of a community wind farm almost came true, as representatives of the Danish government met with several other partners at a project launch ceremony in Witkleibos. The signatories were Exxaro, Watt Energy, dong, European Energy, Vestas, the Danish Embassy, and two financial institutions—Export Credit Agency, which is Danish, and the Investment Fund for Developing Countries (Young, 2016, 175). Exarro agreed to finance the entire project in anticipation that the government would implement a viable renewables policy. With the publication of the Department of Energy’s Integrated Resources Plan (Department of Energy, 2011) on 22 October 2010, the key element of which was that South Africa’s energy future would include renewable energy, the tcwf had a guaranteed buyer for its electricity.
Two of the major developmental components of the rei4p are ‘community upliftment’ and black economic empowerment (bee).8 The bidding process criteria for rei4p institute measures to improve the lives of communities situated within a 50 km radius of a project, including job creation, enterprise development and socio-economic development. They outline that ‘Bidders must assess the needs of communities within a 50 km radius of project sites and prepare strategies covering how these needs will be met with contributions from the project’s revenues. Socio-economic development plans must be prepared by bidders and submitted with proposals’ (Eberhard, Kolker and Leigland, 2014, 30). The economic development criteria in particular contain several components that the bidder must deliver, each category having a certain weighting (see Table 11.1).
Economic development scorecard weightings
Economic development category |
Weighting |
|---|---|
Job creation |
25% |
Local content |
25% |
Ownership |
15% |
Management control |
5% |
Preferential control |
10% |
Enterprise development |
5% |
Socio-economic development |
15% |
The rei4p has mandatory provisions for communities to hold equity of or exercise a degree of ownership over wind and solar farms, the required figure being between 2.5 per cent and 5 per cent (McDaid, 2014). The government
Through its economic inclusion policy, the government has encouraged communities that were designated subaltern to enter into a system of capital accumulation on the premise of economic wealth creation for black people. In the case of the twcf, the tdt holds a 9 per cent share on behalf of the community. These shares were purchased using a usd 3.87 million (zar 45 million) bank loan taken out by Cennergi/Exxaro. A larger shareholding would mean a larger dividend would be paid out to the tdt and thus, theoretically, to the beneficiaries of the land. The investor emphasised that the best part of the tcwf story is that
The Tsitsikamma Development Trust or the landowner has a 9 per cent shareholding […] 2.5 per cent of that 9 per cent is interest free, and the rest is repayable carried interest. So, we gave all the money, and we acted like a bank, and they must give it back to us over time.
In our bid, we promised to spend 2.1 per cent of the money on socio-economic development [sed] and enterprise development. So, 1.5 per cent is sed and 0.6 per cent is enterprise development. So, to give you an idea of that, it’s 20 000 rand [approximately usd 1,700] per day for 20 years.
The assumption behind the rei4p is that by including criteria for local economic development and social economic development, enterprise development, and local ownership, which should be met from contributions from the project’s revenues, local well-being will be improved as will climate mitigation. However, reviews carried out by Bode (2014) and McDaid (2014) of current rei4p projects highlight several concerns in the socio-economic development dimension.
At the beginning of the investment, Exarro’s clean energy subsidiary Cennergi was in an equal partnership with Tata, an Indian corporation that has significant experience in wind energy, and the two constituted the major investors in tcwf, owning 75 per cent of shares. The tdt as the community trust held 9 per cent, and the remaining partner was Watt Energy, which owned 16 per cent (see Figures 11.6 and 11.7). Watt Energy was acrimoniously liquidated following Mike Msizi’s death in 2012 (Carlisle, 2015), and at the time of my fieldwork the purchase of this 16 per cent of shares was unresolved.
Initial structure of the Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm
source: author
Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm signage
source: author, 2016
This shareholding arrangement has gone through several changes since its inception, and these are discussed further in section 4 of this chapter.
What is, however, overlooked amid just energy transitions, energy democracy, and ‘green’ energy growth prospects is the trajectory of techno-capitalist development that instead works to facilitate the inclusion of people in capitalist developments (Dunlap, 2021). These local economic development projects do not allow for ‘perspectives outside the dominant culture of modernity, industrial development and universal ideas of human rights’ (Dunlap, 2021). The politics of ‘inclusion’ largely ignores a politics that recognises the agency of the ‘the other’—invisibilised, marginalised, depoliticised—and engagement with the more-than-human world10 (de Sousa Santos, 2006; Gibson-Graham, 2007; Gibson-Graham, Hill and Law, 2016). Modernity’s dualisms, as stressed by Patel and Moore (2020, 202), not only ‘describe and categorize the world but [have] served practically to dominate and cheapen the lives of nearly all humans and the rest of nature’. Understanding capitalism as a world-ecology of power, capital, and nature helps us see how deeply each half of the society and nature dualism is embedded in the other, and how mightily the powerful have worked to police and sharpen the boundaries between them (Patel and Moore, 2020, 202).
As stressed by Patel and Moore (2020, 202), what remains intact is ‘cheapness’ as a ‘set of strategies to manage relations between capitalism and the web of life by temporarily fixing capitalism’s crises’. ‘Cheapness’—from a geo-cultural perspective related to the ethical-political devaluation of cheap lives and the labour of woman, nature and colonies—is central to thriving capital accumulation (Moore 2021). Moore (2021) also stresses that sexism and racism are used as geo-cultural strategies of devaluation in the interests of driving down labour costs. What becomes visible is the race and class divide historically constructed in nature and society abstractions, where the work of the black peoples is laborious and exploitative. Salleh (1996, 156), a Marxian
4 Illuminating the Neo-liberal Nature of the rei4p
4.1 Creating Favourable Conditions for Investors: Strategies for Addressing Surplus Capital Accumulation in ‘Development’ Financing?
During the 2008 Copenhagen climate change negotiations, South Africa pledged a 34 per cent reduction in its carbon emissions by 2020 and a 42 per cent reduction by 2025 (Baker, 2015a). Since 2007 South Africa has experienced a worsening power crisis resulting in extensive power cuts. This is the result of ageing coal power stations and delays in completing the two key large-scale coal power stations of Medupi and Kusile, and of a crisis at Eskom. In this context, the government requires immense financing levels for South Africa’s energy transition and infrastructure.
The introduction of ipps into the renewable energy systems is widely celebrated in terms of climate change mitigation, the generation of additional electricity, and attracting private sector involvement to address energy market ‘inefficiencies’ (Rennkamp et al., 2017, 216; wwf-sa, 2015, 12). The government, investors, some non-governmental organisations and some academics consider the rei4p a watertight vehicle for capital investment in renewable energy technologies that guarantees return on investment and eliminates the risks of corruption (Eberhard in McEwan, 2017). The rei4p has been hailed for attracting a huge amount of direct foreign investment and is considered a success by the government, with 5,243 megawatts of renewable energy provided
The price has come down dramatically from bid window 1 to bid window 4; [t]he price is now 69 c[ents] per kWh [kilowatt-hour], [which is a] 67% [fall]. It was R2 [2 rand] something and coal is ranged at 82 c[ents] per kWh so it is cheaper than coal. And we would not have had this if we didn’t take the risk and offer those terms to attract the investor. The thing is, because of the policy uncertainty in the country we are not really a prime destination for foreign investment.
Personal communication, 2016
South Africa has become a prime investment opportunity for renewable energy operators (Baker, 2015b). Energy Minister Jeff Radebe has signed contracts with 27 new renewable energy ipps. He considered these new contracts to be the biggest ipp procurement by the department between 2016 and 2018, representing a total of almost usd 4.5 billion (zar 56 billion) in investment (Khumalo, 2018). Favourable conditions created to attract investment range from access to land to guaranteed payments to fiscal measures to reduce investment costs, amongst others. Thus, as pointed out by Le Billon and Sommerville (2016), governments would have to marshal narratives about both attractive returns for financiers and supposed social benefits. These authors also point out that one of the key contradictions is that the government often misrepresents investments as public revenues and compensation for disruption in local communities (Le Billon and Sommerville, 2016). Making investable projects attractive also requires reforms at the institutional level in the form of changes to regulatory regimes and corporate governance that contribute to securing investor access (Le Billon and Sommerville, 2016, 220). As pointed out by Gabor (2021), the development of ‘investable’ projects requires a two-pronged strategy: first, the reorienting of the fiscal and monetary arm of the state in order to de-risk development asset classes so that there are steady cash flows for investors, and second, the re-engineering of local financial systems in the image of US market-based finance to allow portfolio investors easy entry into, and exit from, new asset classes (2021, 431). In an era in which ‘cheap natures’ are being depleted and becoming more expensive, capitalism finds new financial
Baker (2015b) raised concerns that South Africa’s renewable energy sector is likely to ‘rest increasingly with financial investors as shareholdings become tradable financial assets’ (2015b, 148) because of the structure and finance mechanisms of the rei4p. She also notes the complex ownership structures ‘involving international, national, private and public players, black and local community shareholders’ (Baker, 2015b, 150) (see Figure 11.8).
The structure of project finance under the rei4p
source: author, adapted from baker (2015b)
Baker (2015b, 147) is particularly concerned about the implications of ‘on-selling’ shares given the trend of financialisaton in the South African economy. She questions whether on-selling—including to pension funds, insurers and other institutional investors—will potentially contribute to a trend of capital flight through financial institutions listed in South Africa but with their headquarters situated abroad (Baker, 2015b, 155). She also clearly suspects the crisis of accumulation will lead to the circulation of excess money in the system and
Gabor stresses (2021, 434) that ‘the inclusion of institutional investors, from hedge and pension funds to insurance companies and sovereign wealth funds, and asset managers as critical stakeholders, upgraded the de-risking renewables strategy into a full-blown, ambitious ‘development as de-risking’ paradigm’. In this way, risk is transferred to the balance sheet of the state (Gabor, 2021). According to Gabor (2021) the development as de-risking paradigm puts states ‘under pressure to institutionally codify risk-proofing arrangements, guaranteeing private financial profits in the name of aligning sustainable projects with the preferred risk/return profile of institutional investors’ (Gabor, 2021, 453).
A Treasury official, during an interview regarding the introduction of independent power producers, told me, ‘[…] Bringing in private providers, it has shown that everything is better—the rate of return and all the risk has been passed on to the private partner, and they are still doing it cheaper than Eskom’. The same official went on to explain how ‘an advantage of the shift to the ipps is that you are purchasing the product, which is electricity. While Eskom owns that asset, it is not about ownership of the asset anymore’. This shift from state capitalism to neo-liberal capitalism ostensibly reduces the state’s financial responsibility for infrastructure development, which is now borne by the private sector via ppps. The official also pointed out that ‘delays in Eskom generation are huge compared to the ipps—they [the ipps] deliver [and] reduce cost’. So, for the Treasury, ‘It is about passing the risk; with Eskom, the risk unfortunately is on us as the fiscus and the taxpayer at the end of the day. If you contract a private provider, the risk is on them’.
The rei4p, constructed as a ppp, was introduced in South Africa in 1998. Gabor (2021, 430) explains that in ppps ‘the private sector commits to finance,
4.2 Questions Concerning the On-selling of Shares in the twcf
Baker (2015b) has raised concerns over the on-selling of debt purchased through loans. Investors consider on-selling as a mechanism by which returns can be redistributed, creating a secondary market in debt and equity that in turn generates further investment in renewable energy in order to reduce capital costs (Baker, 2015b). With this in mind, we now return to the unresolved matter of Watt Energy’s 16 per cent share in the tcwf. These shares were bought in October 2020 by Kruger International, an asset management company in partnership with gaia Fund Managers (gfm), an investment manager specialising in agriculture and infrastructure12 (Cairns, 2020). These shares were incorporated into the investment holding company gaia Fund 1 (gf1), a
A 2020 Citywire article praises unit trust access to infrastructure projects, saying that one of South Africa’s economic imperatives is to encourage more private investment into infrastructure projects. As the government has run out of money to finance this kind of development, capital has to be sourced from elsewhere (Cairns, 2020). Keen to understand this purchase of shares in the tcwf, I consulted a finance expert, who was able to explain the complex financial engineering involved in the new structure of the twcf (see Figure 11.9). While it would be possible to further elaborate on this matter, for example by examining more closely the vehicles used for selling and buying the shares on the stock exchange, such elaboration is beyond the scope of this chapter.
The current structure of the tcwf
source: author, based on the consultation of a finance expert
In summary, re Times, which is essentially a shell company, acquired 16 per cent of the tcwf. Msizi’s widow and son own 70 per cent of re Times and the other 30 per cent, which was previously owned by the minority shareholder, Watt Energy, has been put into the tcwf Investment Special Purpose Vehicle (spv). So, there is 11.2 per cent bee ownership and community ownership is 9 per cent, meeting the bee ownership criteria. It was also critical for Cennergi, as the main investor in the tcwf, to fulfil the bee criteria of the rei4p following Mike’s death to meet legal requirements. Despite all these arrangements, meanwhile, for the Mfengu communities living in poverty-stricken conditions improved well-being and the benefits of the monetisation of their reclaimed land are both yet to be realised. This situation raises concerns about the illusion of bee, and Baker (2015b, 254) notes that the ‘bee has primarily resulted in the enrichment of an unproductive black elite with limited trickle-down potential, rather than a tool for genuine socio-economic transformation’.
The rei4p is considered a success in that it attracts investment for renewable energy transitions. But it is essentially an investment frontier for surplus private finance (cheap money) underpinned by productivity and practice that put nature (both human and non-human) to work as cheaply as possible. Since accumulation through ‘cheap natures’ is diminishing and becoming expensive, surplus capital requires new vehicles, and new places for new investments to
By expanding across new frontiers, capitalism controls a wider set of life-making relations. These frontiers are sites where power is exercised, and not just economic power. But capitalism’s strategies of cheapness and profit constitute ‘a practice, a violence that mobilises all kinds of work − human and animal, botanical and geological − with as little compensation as possible’ (Patel and Moore, 2020, 22). The vision of providing electricity for the Mfengu communities and selling the excess to the grid was deferred because the wind farm could only be implemented within the framework and the investment conditions of the rei4p.
5
The Anthropocene discourse situates the birth of this new planetary epoch during the Industrial Revolution and is primarily interested in replacing fossil fuel energy generation ‘resources’ with renewable energy. But as Moore (2014, 596) observes, ‘the erasure of capitalism’s early-modern origins, and its extraordinary reshaping of global natures long before the steam engine’ is largely overlooked in the Anthropocene discourse. Patel and Moore (2017) are clear—at the heart of this crisis lies modernity’s dualism, which has not only organised the world but has served to dominate and cheapen the lives of nearly all humans and the rest of nature. Using a world-ecology framing to analyse the material nature of the rei4p has exposed the ongoing structural violence of capital, despite the ‘noble’ intentions of addressing climate change and improving community well-being. The material nature of the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme reveals the invasiveness of modernity’s alienating of social relations, an invasiveness apparent in patterns of accumulation, ways of the thinking, and the strategies that foster ‘cheapness’ and profit. The Tsitsikamma Community Wind Farm—although conceived of prior to the launch of the rei4p, and raising the prospect of donor funding from Denmark and eventually being funded by Exxaro—became enmeshed in the de-risking parameters of the rei4p. As this chapter has shown, the rei4p, organised in the form of a paradigm of de-risking, can be characterised as a frontier, but not only in the sense of a settler−colonial frontier with regard to land appropriation. As Patel and Moore (2017, 30) explain, it also constitutes a ‘place [that] encounters all kind[s] of nature—humans included’ and is about reducing the cost of doing business. These same authors also stress that ‘a frontier is a site where crisis encourages new strategies for profit’ (Patel and Moore, 2020, 18–19). Frontiers are important in these processes because they offer new sites where ‘cheap things can be seized—and the cheap work of humans and other natures can be coerced’ (Patel and Moore, 2020, 22). In essence, renewable energy technology ‘fixes’, with their planetary management aspirations, become a ‘fix’ for ensuring ‘cheap’ money a place to land. The sophisticated strategies of financial engineering revealed in this chapter point, in the words of Patel and Moore (2020, 88), to an ‘outcome of centuries of accumulation[s], each with its distinctive ways of organizing capital, power, and nature’.
This chapter is based on my PhD research.
The term Anthropocene was popularized by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer and expresses the capacity of the human species to transform planetary elements and how this has reached an unprecedented scale, to the extent that human beings ‘have collectively become the “geological agent” capable of changing the global climate through our emissions’ (Jonsson, 2015, 55).
Koch et al. (2019) state that ‘The Great Dying of the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas resulted in a human-driven global impact on the Earth System in the two centuries prior to the industrial revolution’ (p. 13), and that ecocide, genocide and diseases ‘led to the abandonment of enough cleared land in the Americas that the resulting terrestrial carbon uptake had a detectable impact on both atmospheric co2 and global surface air temperatures in the two centuries prior to the Industrial Revolution’ (p. 30).
Stengers (2015) problematises the Anthropocene discourse that makes humans the responsible agent and geological force the cause of climate disorder. She questions current responses to climate change, particularly those in which humanity considers how it might use its powers to master a ‘good’ Anthropocene. Bonneuil and Fressoz (2016, 87) raise similar concerns that human mastery might be articulated as the ‘good’ Anthropocene to address climate change.
Capital accumulation in late-stage capitalism predominately occurs through neo-liberal strategies of capitalisation, financialisaton and trade liberalisation, facilitated by the mechanism of international investment rules (Harvey, 2004; Moore, 2015b).
Many community members refer to ‘Wittekleibosch’, so I use ‘Witkleibos’ to refer to the area but repeat the ‘Wittekleibosch’ used by interviewees.
I am learning basic Xhosa but have no command of the Xhosa language. Peires (2011) explains that the ‘word “Mfengu” derives from a verb, ukumfenguza, which means “wandering around homelessly looking for work”’. Peires uses ‘amaMfengu’ to describe the people and ‘Mfengu’, without the prefix, as an adjective. Peires points out that ‘revisionists tend to prefer “Fingo” to demonstrate their conviction that the term was coined by the British colonist’. In this study, I use the English construction of the terms ‘Mfengu’ and ‘Xhosa’. I use ‘Tsitsikamma Mfengu’ to refer to the community.
South African state policies promote redistribution through the economic inclusion of the historically marginalised under the auspices of ‘inclusive growth’ to ensure greater market ownership by the black population. In the postcolonial and post-apartheid era, government-facilitated capital accumulation encompasses ways of incorporating the previously marginalised through market shareholding and ownership, procuring services from black-owned businesses and practicing other forms of black economic empowerment (bee) as forms of active participation in the economic matrix and redistribution. The South African government favours economic growth and ‘inclusive economic development’ as a means of redistributing the ‘wealth’ of the country, considered to be largely in the hands of the white minority (National Development Plan, 2012).
Interview with a Treasury official, 9 November 2016.
It is a term used to counter and surpass the dominance of the colonial modernist humancentric worldview underpinned Society and Nature dualisms, which separate humans from nature. David Abram coined the phrase “more-than-human world” as way of referring to earthly nature.
‘Quant’ is shorthand for quantitative analyst, so, someone expert in the analysis and management of quantitative data, particularly that of a financial nature (See Read, 2012).
I consulted a finance specialist to help me understand and explain changes in the shareholding arrangement of the twcf. Kruger International is a unit trust fund and bought the shares in October 2020. While Kruger International bought the issued preference shares in gaia Fund 1, those shares (along with gaia ordinary shares) trade on the stock exchange, and so may have changed hands.
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