Between energy and politics: Ruin, renewal, and the contours of state power in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

South Africa’s energy system is in the midst of significant change and disturbance. On the one hand, a decrease in available generational capacity means that planned blackouts, known as load shedding, have increased to record levels over the last few years; on the other, the country has instituted an ambitious agenda to decarbonize its energy infrastructure. These processes have both caused upheaval across the country’s cities and raised questions regarding the politics of infrastructural provision and development. This article contributes to these debates by exploring the confluence between infrastructure, urban development, and (geo)politics. In particular, we put concepts from critical infrastructure studies (ruin, renewal) into dialogue with Gramscian traditions of political economy in order to analyze what the ongoing breakdown of South Africa’s energy system reveals about shifting power dynamics within the state apparatus. Likewise, we ask whether multi-scalar processes of infrastructural renewal will produce more equitable energy futures. We posit that the energy crisis is creating the pressures and policy space for a considerable reorganization of South Africa’s governance, largely taking the form of decentralization wherein large cities attempt to attain significantly more autonomy vis-à-vis the central state. Nevertheless, as the crisis engenders movements and counter-movements, renewal is likely to be a protracted, and contested, process.