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

Municipalities are uniquely poised at the forefront of South Africa's just transition, as their constitutional mandate is to provide basic services, encourage social and economic development, and to promote inclusive governance.

- ZIMASA VAZI

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 through initiatives like resilient 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. In effect, at the municipal level is 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, infrastructure deficits, service delivery backlogs, and ingrained inequalities.

As 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' central role in infrastructure development. Municipalities are tasked with addressing aging energy infrastructure, including substations and distribution networks, which is a crucial transition challenge for smaller municipalities. The current ailing municipality renewable energy procurement programme are heavily reliant on Eskom for electricity supply, with limited capacity to invest in renewable energy initiatives.

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