Connecting the Red, Brown and Green: The Environmental Justice Movement in South Africa

This 34-page study examines the environmental movement in South Africa via two environmental case studies involving mass mobilisation: the Coalition Against Water Privatisation and the Steel Valley Crisis Committee. The central research question this paper addresses is whether there is a single, coherent environmental movement that is mobilising under the comprehensive banner of environmental justice. The paper argues that there is no single, collective actor that constitutes the environmental movement in South Africa and no master "frame" of environmentalism. According to the author, the environmental movement has no coherent centre and no tidy margins; it is an inchoate sum of multiple, diverse, uncoordinated struggles and organisations. However, the paper further argues that a nascent environmental justice movement is emerging which has the capacity for mass mobilisation.

The research involved site visits, focus groups, participant observation, interviews with 30 key informants selected for their expertise on environmental activism, a literature review of secondary sources and documentary analysis of the Iscor court case (editor's note: for background on this case, click here), and environmental publications such as those of the Environmental Justice Networking Forum (EJNF), Groundwork, Earthlife, the Endangered Wildlife Trust, and the Wildlife and Environmental Society of Southern Africa.

The environmental network in South Africa is described by the author as a web-like universe made up of highly interconnected networks clustered around a few key nodes or hubs, namely EJNF, Groundwork, and Earthlife. It is characterised by a radical decentralisation of authority, with no governing body, official ideology, or mandated leaders, and with minimal hierarchy and horizontal forms of organising.

According to the report, this small environmental justice movement is bridging ecological and social justice issues in that it puts the needs and rights of the economically poor, the excluded, and the marginalised at the centre of its concerns. It is located at the confluence of three of South Africa's key challenges: the struggle against racism, the struggle against poverty and inequality, and the struggle to protect the environment, the natural resource base on which all economic activity depends. The author notes that the movement is stratified in a complex layering involving national networks, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and local grassroots groups. Within this multiplicity of organisational forms, the vitality of the movement flows from the bottom up, being driven by the unemployed and lower working class. According to the author, this social base is distinctively different from the middle-class composition of the mainstream environmental movement that focuses on curbing species loss and habitat destruction - that is, on "green" issues.

The report concludes that environmental organisations are part of significant new patterns of grassroots mobilisation that are emerging in post-apartheid South Africa which involve a mix of "red" (social justice), "brown", and "green" issues. The anger and energy of these struggles generally comes from the crises experienced by economically poor, vulnerable communities without access to jobs, housing, land, clean water, and sanitation. EJNF and other organisations constitute key nodes in this growing environmental justice movement.