‘South Africa’s First Post-Apartheid City’? Lephalale’s Contradictory Lessons for a Sustainable Future in South Africa

Lephalale in the Limpopo province currently has an estimated urban population of only 56,000 but has big ambitions to become South Africa’s ‘First Post-Apartheid City’ and ‘South Africa’s energy hub’. The coal-fired base of its development in the context of the global climate emergency, stubborn spatial, social and governance legacies of apartheid, and the local environmental injustices this development model entails call into question the positive spin. In this article, we deploy Gabrielle Hecht’s concept of ‘residual governance’ and an environmental justice lens to analyse the contradictions of coal-based development within both a national and global context of imperatives for a ‘just transition’. We highlight the resistance and alternative visions ongoing on the ground in the municipality and nationally, as a means to imagine sustainable futures beyond extractivism, and in support of gender and environmental justice.