From 2008 onward, and with increasing severity after 2014, South Africa entered a prolonged period of rolling blackouts. Electricity supply became unstable and insufficient for an energy-intensive economy dependent on mining, manufacturing, transport, healthcare, and public services. What began as episodic constraint hardened into a structural condition, shaping economic decline, institutional stress, and daily survival.

Public explanation for this failure narrowed rapidly. Responsibility for grid collapse was concentrated onto Jacob Zuma, whose presidency became the dominant frame through which energy insecurity was narrated. Liberal media coverage attached load shedding to his person, his governance style, and his private life, converting complex questions of system planning, capacity sequencing, and long-term infrastructure into moral indictment.

That narrowing of blame concealed a wider intervention. South Africa’s energy trajectory was redirected through sustained pressure applied by donor-funded non-governmental organisations, liberal media platforms, and aligned advocacy networks that shaped which policy options could be discussed, which could be pursued, and which were rendered politically toxic. The result was the removal of firm baseload planning from serious consideration and the imposition of an externally financed transition framework that has failed to resolve structural supply deficits.

State planning and the nuclear pathway

South Africa’s consideration of new nuclear capacity emerged from formal state planning processes responding to long-term constraints in the electricity system. The Integrated Resource Plan of Electricity 2010 to 2030, followed by subsequent iterations, identified nuclear energy as a potential source of large-scale baseload generation capable of sustaining grid stability beyond the operational life of ageing coal stations.

By the early 2010s, Eskom’s coal fleet was already showing declining energy availability factors, rising unplanned outages, and increasing maintenance backlogs. Demand projections linked to mining, metals beneficiation, petrochemicals, and heavy manufacturing required continuous, high-density power supply. Intermittent generation could not meet these requirements without complementary firm capacity. Nuclear energy entered planning as a response to system reliability, grid inertia, and long-term capacity security.

Within this framework, the South African government entered into intergovernmental cooperation agreements on nuclear energy in 2014, including with the Russian Federation through the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom. These agreements established cooperation on technology transfer, skills development, localisation, and potential procurement pathways. They did not constitute final procurement contracts and did not bind the state to a specific vendor outside lawful processes.

Litigation and the distortion of law

The nuclear pathway was interrupted through litigation brought by Earthlife Africa Johannesburg and the Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute. On 26 April 2017, the Western Cape High Court ruled that certain procedural steps taken in advancing aspects of the nuclear procurement framework did not comply with administrative law requirements, including public participation and parliamentary tabling.

The judgment addressed procedure rather than policy substance. It did not prohibit nuclear energy, remove it from national planning instruments, or prevent future procurement. The court identified administrative defects capable of correction through lawful re-enactment. The Constitutional Court issued no ruling barring nuclear procurement or excluding nuclear from the Integrated Resource Plan framework.

In South African administrative law, defective processes are routinely remedied through re-consultation, re-tabling, or legislative correction. The judiciary did not replace energy planners, nor did it adjudicate affordability models, grid stability, or industrial demand. Those responsibilities remained with the executive and Parliament.

What followed was political withdrawal shaped by pressure rather than law.

NGO mobilisation and narrative closure

Following the judgment, civil society actors moved rapidly to present a procedural ruling as policy finality. Public messaging framed the outcome as a decisive defeat of nuclear energy rather than an interruption requiring administrative correction. Makoma Lekalakala and Liz McDaid were awarded the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2018 for their role in opposing the nuclear process, elevating the campaign internationally and conferring moral authority on a position that had not engaged with system-level energy requirements.

This elevation reshaped the terrain of debate. Administrative non-compliance became equated with existential danger. Questions of baseload withdrawal, grid stability, industrial demand, and replacement sequencing disappeared from public discourse. The implications of accelerating coal retirements without equivalent firm capacity were left largely unexamined.

Liberal media as agenda-setting infrastructure

Liberal media outlets functioned as agenda-setting institutions that reinforced this closure. Publications such as Daily Maverick, News24, and Business Maverick framed the nuclear question through narratives of secrecy, corruption, and moral failure. Nuclear energy was rarely examined as an engineering or system-planning problem. It was rendered a governance pathology.

Marianne Thamm authored an extensive body of work framing the nuclear pathway as emblematic of authoritarian impulse and institutional decay. Headlines such as “How South Africans Thwarted Secret Putin Zuma Nuclear Deal,” “Another Bell Pottinger-Style Nuclear Charm Offensive,” and “Toxic Cloud of Secrets and Lies Over 2013 Zuma-Putin Nuclear Deal” pre-structured reader interpretation before any technical analysis could occur.

Karyn Maughan’s reporting, including her June 2, 2022 piece “Inside SA’s Dodgy Nuclear Deal with Russia’s Rosatom,” adopted a prosecutorial tone that assumed impropriety as a starting point. Coverage bypassed Integrated Resource Plan assumptions, Eskom system constraints, and comparative international nuclear deployment experience. Other journalists, including Ferial Haffajee, Stephen Grootes, Rebecca Davis, Kevin Bloom, and Greg Nicolson, reinforced similar framings across commentary, analysis, and opinion.

Through repetition, these narratives achieved saturation. Distinct issues such as procurement sequencing, executive misconduct allegations, historical scandals, and geopolitical anxiety were compressed into a single moral frame. Nuclear energy itself became politically inaccessible within mainstream discourse.

This constituted interference with sovereignty. Agenda-setting power was used to restrict the policy space available to a democratic state confronting structural energy constraints.

Zuma as vessel for moral transfer

Jacob Zuma became the figure through whom these pressures were channelled. Media coverage repeatedly transferred moral judgment across unrelated domains. Reporting on energy policy invoked his 2005 rape trial despite his acquittal in 2006 and the absence of any legal or factual connection to energy planning. References to the “shower” comment, caricature, and personal ridicule were recycled as symbolic shorthand for governance failure.

This destroyed a man in public life. It also delegitimised an entire policy direction by association. Engineers, planners, and analysts who raised concerns about baseload capacity were disciplined through reputational fear. Energy policy became inseparable from personal vilification.

The “Zuma Must Fall” campaign, strengthened by formations such as Save South Africa, consolidated this convergence. Media, NGOs, donor-aligned advocacy networks, and institutional actors moved in alignment. Energy planning became collateral in a broader political settlement.

The Just Energy Transition and enforced dependency

As the nuclear pathway was abandoned, the Just Energy Transition advanced as the dominant framework. Promoted through Western donor financing, concessional lending, climate diplomacy, and compliance regimes, the JET prioritised renewable rollout and accelerated coal phase-out without resolving firm capacity replacement.

Renewable energy capacity expanded through the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme. Intermittency, grid integration costs, and the absence of inertia limit the ability of renewables to support continuous industrial demand without complementary firm sources.

Honeywell Chief Executive Officer Vimal Kapur has stated that solar generation cannot sustain heavy industrial processes such as steel and cement production, which require uninterrupted, high-density power input. Similar concerns were raised within Eskom and by independent system analysts.

In 2025, former Eskom Group Executive and Acting Chief Executive Officer Matshela Koko published research on South Africa’s “2030 Electricity Capacity Cliff.” His analysis showed that approximately 9.5 gigawatts of coal-fired baseload capacity is scheduled for retirement within a compressed period, representing more than thirteen per cent of peak demand. The Cliff Intensity Index demonstrated that capacity removal is proceeding at more than twice the pace at which replacement capacity can realistically be integrated.

These findings were dismissed by institutions including the Development Bank of Southern Africa, not focused on technical rebuttal but through alignment with prevailing transition orthodoxy.

The result is an energy configuration that undermines industrialisation and locks South Africa into permanent consumer status. No serious economy functions on unstable, overpriced power. When energy supply collapses, factories close, skills erode, and imports replace domestic production. This arrangement protects industrial capacity elsewhere while constraining South Africa’s ability to compete.

Human cost and accountability

The consequences of sustained electricity scarcity extend beyond economics. Rolling blackouts from 2014 onward have contributed to preventable deaths and systemic harm. Hospitals and clinics operating on unreliable backup power have experienced equipment failure, delayed surgery, compromised neonatal care, and disrupted dialysis services. Power interruptions have affected oxygen supply systems, vaccine cold-chain storage, and emergency response.

Children have borne a disproportionate burden. Neonatal units without reliable electricity face life-threatening disruption. Informal settlements reliant on unsafe energy substitutes experience increased shack fires, carbon monoxide poisoning, and respiratory illness. Power outages disrupt water treatment, sanitation, and food refrigeration, producing cascading public health consequences.

These outcomes followed from policy decisions shaped under sustained narrative pressure. Journalists, editors, NGOs, and advocacy networks exercised agenda-setting power that impacted life, health, and economic survival while remaining insulated from consequence.

Cyril Ramaphosa also bears responsibility for consolidating this outcome. His administration accepted the closure of firm baseload planning, aligned with donor-driven transition frameworks, and presided over deepening energy insecurity.

But accountability cannot rest with politicians alone. Media institutions, named journalists, donor-funded NGOs, and advocacy coalitions interfered with sovereign policy space and helped shape decisions with lethal consequences. These outcomes were produced through power exercised without responsibility.

A commission of inquiry into media and NGO interference in energy policy, including its effects on public welfare and material harm, is warranted.

* Gillian Schutte is a South African writer, filmmaker, poet, and uncompromising social justice activist. Founder of Media for Justice and co-owner of handHeld Films, she is recognised for hard-hitting documentaries and incisive opinion pieces that dismantle whiteness, neoliberal capitalism, and imperial power.

** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media. 

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