Mantashe’s Fracking Agenda Could Threaten Lives, Land and Climate
17 July, 2025
[South Africa] The Climate Justice Coalition Energy and Mining Working and Legal Working Groups are appalled to hear of Minister Gwede Mantashe’s renewed calls to lift the moratorium on fracking in the Karoo and his abject disregard for people and the environment. Mantashe’s recent statements in Parliament, suggesting that opposing gas and shale exploration is akin to “not wanting to save ourselves”, are reckless, profit-hungry and dangerously out of touch with the climate crisis facing South Africa and the world.
The minister’s comments that “we can’t kill mining for fresh air” are particularly provocative, especially given that fresh air is not a luxury that we can do without. By continuously pitting people and the environment against the economy, he continues to ignore that there is no economy or a future without fresh air, clean water and a liveable climate.
Minister Mantashe’s remarks are in direct contravention of the Constitution of South Africa, which guarantees all citizens an environment that is not harmful to their well-being. Clean air is a vital element of that right, as the millions who die prematurely and or sickened by air pollution each year can attest to. To suggest that South Africans must choose between economic development and the right to breathe clean air is not only manipulative, it is morally bankrupt. This is the kind of false choice used to justify the oppression of people and the exploitation of nature. It reflects a colonial mindset that sees communities, especially rural and marginalised ones, as expendable in pursuit of profit. But South Africa’s democracy was not built on the sacrifice of its people for corporate gain; it was built on a vision of dignity, justice, and participation. The minister’s remarks betray that vision. True leadership in this moment requires imagination and courage: the courage to leave behind extractivist models that have failed our people and the imagination to build an economy rooted in sustainability, care and public good. We do not need more fossil fuels. We need a government that listens to its people and honours their right to shape their own future.
It is no surprise though that Mantashe should so blatantly contravene the constitution in his remarks. His tenure as minister of Mineral Resources and Energy and now Mineral and Petroleum Resources has been marked repeatedly by ignoring and violating the rights of South African citizens in order to serve the profits of rapacious extractive corporations. It is deeply cynical for Minister Mantashe to take advantage of South Africa’s unemployment crisis and use it as a benchmark to justify this kind of destructive development. Weaponising people’s desperation to push extractive agendas is not a plan for transformation, it is exploitation dressed up as progress. Instead of addressing the root causes of unemployment through inclusive, sustainable economic models, the minister continues to dangle fossil fuel projects as a false promise of jobs, despite mounting evidence that such industries automate, externalise costs, and leave behind environmental devastation. Fracking may line the pockets of a few, but it will not deliver long-term employment, dignity, or justice for the many. South Africa deserves better than development that pollutes the land, poisons the air, and leaves future generations with nothing but toxic legacies.
As the working groups of the Climate Justice Coalition, we stand by our position that fracking is not a solution, it is a threat. It contaminates water, releases methane which is a toxic and potent greenhouse gas that is 80 times worse than carbon dioxide over a 20 year period, causes earth tremors, and wreaks havoc on our ecosystems. Even more importantly, it violates the rights of the communities who live in the Karoo and depend on its land and water to survive.
We cannot stand by and allow the Karoo to be sacrificed at the altar of fossil fuel expansion under the false banner of “energy security”. In reality, there is no shortage of alternatives to fossil fuels, which can much better deliver energy security. What we need is the political will to transition to a just, renewable energy future with no worker or community left behind.
We reject the false narrative that fracking is the answer to energy poverty. The answer to energy poverty is a just energy transition that centres frontline communities and workers, that protects the environment and moves us away from fossil fuel dependency.
This joint statement was drafted and endorsed by the Legal Working Group and the Energy and Mining Justice Working Group of the Climate Justice Coalition.
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Shaazia Ebrahim
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comms@climatejusticecoalition.org
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