The critical role of municipalities in South Africa's Just Transition

MUNICIPALITIES are uniquely poised at the forefront of the South African Just Transition, as their constitutional mandate is to provide basic services, encourage social and economic development, and to promote inclusive governance.

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Local governments also play a crucial role in climate action, developing and implementing plans to mitigate and adapt to climate change at the local level, often driving initiatives like renewable infrastructure, emissions reduction, enabling economic development, and community resilience programmes. By their actions, they are strongly determined by national fiscal, regulatory and policy contexts in which they are embedded, but it is at the municipal level where the real test of the just transition will play out.

Despite these responsibilities, municipalities often struggle to facilitate socioeconomic environments that are marked by a lack of funding, characterised by financial constraints, ageing infrastructure, service delivery backlogs, and ingrained inequalities.

Municipalities are foundational to the country’s service delivery and governance and are charged with ensuring and fostering social and economic development, creating safe and healthy environments, and encouraging public participation.

To achieve a just transition, municipalities’ control of infrastructure development. Municipalities are tasked with addressing ageing energy infra-

structure, including substations and distribution networks, which is a common challenge across smaller municipalities. The current ailing municipality renewable energy programme are heavily reliant on Eskom for electricity supply, with limited municipal capacity to invest in renewable energy initiatives.

Municipalities are particularly burdened by their ties to Eskom and struggle with revenue generation.