The Sunday Story: The Coal Life
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Am I shara? go. And this is a sunday's .

story on this episode .

we hear to south africa in the economic powerhouse on the african continent. For decades, south africa's enormous electric grid has relied on coal. Now the country is in the midst of a massive experiment to switch to renewable energy.

This change is expected to vastly reduce pollution, but IT may also ruin towns and lives in the cold built of south africa. For some workers, IT feels like the government is destroying their only foot hole to a stable life. Radio workshop is a podcast that collaborates with youth reporters at radio stations across africa. Host sent A U for porter, along with a senior producer, to a town and the heart of the built, to ask the question, what will happen to people who built their lives around coal?

Just my Caroli and the Green salads.

It's sunday lunch at .

the coast at home.

non doggers layer out a feast for her family, her two children and her husband, adam, who loves the program.

And by our two.

when .

my wife.

This clusters live in clear in the north east of south africa. Clear is a small town in an area considered the coal belt region. Its biggest employer is the coal industry.

Look up any images of creel on the internet, and you'll see lots of pictures of huge power plants spewing smoke. The son has live a modesty yet comfortable life here. They owe a charming bedroom house. They have a large family car, their kids are in school, they're not struggling to make ends meet, and they owe IT all to coal.

My parents of very hot workers, especially my dad, also my mother.

fersa ga, is eighteen years old, and she's the first person in the kosa family to attend the university. It's a huge expense and so there's a lot riding on her. But physica isn't interested in a korean call. Like so many other Young people in this region. SHE believes that one day she'll be a successful lawyer.

It's something that are always want, need to do because I didn't see myself as living in creel forever.

But when physica s mom non togo was the same age, SHE was thrown to get a job in .

the coal industry. IT was like, for me, I was very like another sub of the people, neither, never, never, never working. Their insights lives.

None dog are moved to create in the early two thousands, all the way from a rural village called in the province of gasoline l, where well paid jobs for black people are hard to come by. At that time, crill was among the fastest growing towns in the country. There were plenty of jobs in the coal mines or at the handful of cofie power stations in the area.

IT only took on dog's of a few months to land a job at clear power station, which is Operated by south africa's state owned power utility. Esco lon dog was was hired as a cleaning supervisor. SHE also clearly remembers the day and exact time SHE made her husband adam, while working at the plant .

twenty years ago. The .

really, really 谢谢。 And say hi, my name is boy.

Back then, adam went by boy, that's his first name. But now as a father of two, he prefers to be called by his middle name, adam. Adam was born in creel on a farm on the outskirts of town in great tin. He dropped out of high school. He was nineteen then, but he easily found a job at the cruel power station in one thousand hundred and eighty four as a film at a maintained and service to the station's .

water treatment equipment. Eight years years old now, and i'm still working at three bus station.

But that could be over pretty soon. A sweeping changes about to engulf all of creel and south africa and the rest of the world. This is a radical transition coming to the energy industry. And so I didn't take long for the cosine a sunday lunch conversation to shift from food to the closure of the power station.

The proposal that is closing down twenty. So how many is seven years come? The government is signal the newspapers.

South africa is the biggest polluter of Greenhouse gases on the african continent. Nearly eighty percent of the emissions come from energy. But if all goes according to plan, the entire energy sector in south africa will be required.

Renewable able energy will replace coal, a transition intended to dramatically reduce carbon emissions. And it's inevitable coal is going away. But what happens to the people who have built their lives on coal?

The world is watching to see how cruel and families like this cosan nz are going to do IT. In the best case scenario, south africa's drive towards renewable energy will deliver new and bitter jobs. It'll protect the environment.

It'll make energy cheaper. People will have their has heard and some of the woods we've suffer in the past will be healthy. Experts call that adjust transition, but adam doubts the transition will succeed. He says that there won't be new jobs.

What do you think we will happen to this town if the coal mines in the power stations shut down?

It's gonna be a courtown Adams.

not alone in thinking this. A lot of people are worried that theyve already been forgotten. I'm list in moqui. This is radio workshop to tell the story, produce a doshin, moody and reporter. Cm ova spent several days in creal, and they had one central question in mind during their reporting.

what do you think would happen to your family without coal?

If I can even and eat crazy, our life is is is surrounded 白色。 Yeah, it's going to be very hard. It's going to be very hard.

Every morning for decades before he is for work at the power plant, adam puts on his P, P, E. That's personal protection equipment.

which is the guns, socks is a and and he grabbed .

the bus, arrived a few minutes early, has a cup tea, puts on his heart hat and loves, and start to work at seven A. M. Adams had a lot of different jobs at the power plant.

After a few years in one division, he'd get a promotion. A few years later, he'd get another. Today, he works with coal ash. That's one of the by products from burning coal, its Adams jobs to prevented from escaping into the .

atmosphere because we're not supposed to pollute a lot of ash.

When cruel power station was completed in nineteen seventy nine, IT was celebrated as the first of the new generation of giants. IT was the largest covered power station in the southern hemisphere. IT was equipped with six of five hundred meti units that could power over a million homes for a year.

Adam loves working at the clear power station. The work may be hard and he knows its bad for the environment, but his job is well paid. He also receives good benefits for his family.

Are you good to job?

I like my job. I know I know my job as I know myself.

I know my job as I know myself, adam says.

As this costan has mentioned earlier, the plant where they work is slated to close in twenty thirty in just seven years. In fact, the plant is already shrinking its Operations and other plants in the region have already closed. The government promises adjust, transition. They say new jobs will be created in renewable energy projects to replace the coal plants, but the communities worried won't happen. And adam says people are already moving away.

How many people .

do love to and where do .

they go?

Some, almost. They're going to keep, keep down free state overseas nowadays they are going to australia or three years. Lin, the government .

has hosted dozens of community meetings to explain the just transition, but we found some residents don't show up because they held in middle of the day. Others don't trust the government and refuse to go. And Frankly, a lot of people who spoken to hadn't even heard the term just transition, including adam.

What does the just transition mean to you?

That way is that actually is a new. New week to me about there. I annoy this one is is a difficult for me to to answer.

Were we the first people to tell you about just transition where you heard .

IT before annoy us my first time?

What impact do you think it's gonna have a you and your family with this just transition going through?

I really done now. I really done now.

Adam also doubts whether renewables will work, but he thinks the country should give us a shot.

I think that they can try, try this in your, in renewable. I know coal, carbon is affecting our lives. What I can say, maybe let them try to accommodate both of them, baLance them and see if it's going to work or not.

Unlike just taking cold away on the spot, that one is going to affect A A lot of people because people are going to the h lose their jobs as they are lose their jobs right now and where are they going to act? That's that's the biggest problem we are facing, right? Now.

and daughter says the just transition could be a good thing for the environment, but tens of thousands of people will lose their jobs. SHE worries about finding work to support her family. Her mom no longer works and her dad will have to retire in seven years.

They will have to rely on me and i'm in school. I, that means i'll have to drop out and get a job in. Steve states he.

You're listening to the sunday story will be right back.

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We're back with the sunday story. We're listening to the macleay and her team at radio workshop in south africa tell the story of a family from a mining town east of johannesburg. The family and the town are trying to understand their future as the mine prepares to close amid the country's transition away from fossil fuels. Here's the said .

adam hopes the just transition will force the coal mining industry to give back. The land is appropriated and coal was in high demand for generations. Adams family lived on a huge farm on the outskirts of creel. He offers to take us there.

So where are we going?

And we are going on a farm. Now, those one teen fum seven into one. A S. The name of the far in the number.

How often do you make this drive to the farm? How often do you go?

Maybe pay once that I will go there twice, three times?

The farm or what's left of IT is at the end of a long dirt road that's completely inaccessible with a regular car. Fortunately, adam has a foreby four S V.

Goes up there to to this other trees day. You need all around, all around, all around the farmers.

a pet of land fencin by rusty barbed wire surrounded by hick tares of rolling grass lands, cattle room about in the distance. And there's a one tree beneath IT, a corrugated iron shack that serves as housing for farm workers. IT has no piped water, oil, electricity.

Even though adam has access to the area is no longer his family's land. It's owned by a coal mine. When Adams family lived here, they were considered labor tenants.

They worked in exchange for a portion of the land. They raised cattle group crops and build their homes. But when a mining company bought the land, this question, as will never made part of the deal the land worked so hard for, was simply taken away.

okay? Empty land, that's what we call home.

We are, we are now at home.

Adam was raised on the farm by his parents and extended family. He remembers seeing his uncles, aunts and grandparents every day.

It's one, one, two, three, four, five, seven, seven houses from our family.

Many of his ancestors are also .

buried here too. Sophie sophie cosa. He says, my kant father, his name is jang gese cosa. He did seventy five. This one is brother.

There are so many graves, some are marked with tom stones, others are not. What IT shows is a connection to this area dating back to the eighteen hundreds. That's six generations of Adams family who've lived in creel.

Some of them were the first farmers and heard us in the area. Adams's father was a farmer. Before becoming a contract worker at a scam, he poured concrete to both the foundations of the town's .

power stations again. Setting from here, somewhere around here, who was a kitchen and he IT was my father's room. IT was a dining room. IT was my sister's room. Yeah, someone. yeah.

You can see IT on his face. Adam longs for that time in his life. He wants to go back to living on the phone, but when the coal mine bought the land, they heavily blasted at the area to reach the coal underneath. And as a result, his family's modern brick houses cracked and collapsed.

How does that feel being here?

You know, I remember how the buildings were hates is is painful. It's paint.

The land where this. OK, it's a little big mixed now, but this is still are to be.

In front of me, i've got the documents, a concerning the claim of the farm to find something into one I S. V. We were born in bread.

Adam says adjust transition will mean the return of his land. But that fight has been going on for almost half his life.

The proof that I have, I think, is this one the first laim that has been done. The first one was in nineteen six.

Adam believes he has all the necessary paperwork to prove his family's claim.

It's just that my papers are mixed up known.

He even hired a lawyer to make the case, but adam says whenever he spoken with representatives at the minds, they deny his ownership.

The man said, no, they don't know as they only farm.

So the mind is saying they don't argue anything.

That's what they see. That's correct.

Thousands of miles from crucial anas cosas, france, germany, the united kingdom and the united states, along with the european union, are backing south africa's d carbon zing efforts. They are committing eight point five billion towards the first phase of transition to renewable IT. Sounds like a lot, but it's only a fraction of what the country needs to turn off call and shift to renewables.

A lot more money is needed to create jobs to absorb the layoff. S that will happen in coal. Money will be needed to consult with communities and provide social welfare for those who needed.

And money will be needed for one more thing. In south africa, we call IT restorative justice. So people like adam get back what was taken from them.

And that's where we saying, no. How do we deal with the history, goal, justice, gay law and muslim?

Clear is a senior economist at trade and industrial policy strategies. It's a research institute that supports the development of economic policies, gale, or leads their work on the just transition and restoring justice.

And is something that come very strongly in the second context, which doesn't feature in the global north context. They don't talk about restorative justice in the global north.

gilo wrote parts of south africa's just transition framework that's government's planning tool l he says, in a perfect world, the plan is to leave no one behind.

Leave no one behind. Hello, most people are behind. They are already behind. They are also a mineral. So just about leaving the one behind, we have to bring everyone already to some level before we can take them along, you know.

which means a just transition would need to address those past injustices while tackling new ons. That's a big, nearly impossible task, he says. Take adam's land claims case.

IT was launched almost two decades ago. Nothing has much of IT is due to the backlog of claims and the lack of staff and resources to process IT claims. Go on for years to to disputes, fraud and corruption. Gale says he witnessed the frustrations with government first hand. At a public stakeholder meeting in a court town, he watched residents grab the mike to raise all kinds of complaints, from housing to water.

IT was all about daily issues. You know, that was like, your thing feels very distance to me right now because I can't put bread on the table. I don't have what, I don't have electricity. You're going to me about just transition.

We wanted to know about the future of career and the future of jobs. Will they be enough? We approached local politicians in clear.

We reached out a few academics working on renewables. We made several attempts to speak to a scum, the state owned power utility. None of them were willing to talk to us. So we asked gail, all renewable energy create enough jobs to replace ninety thousand coal jobs in south africa?

Yeah, I I mean, no, there's no civil blood to that. No is not no single industry is going to replace all those jobs. And on top of that, then we would end up with the same pattern, another kind of mono economy, not what we want. We need to look at diversifying the economy of the province.

It's rewble.

So renewable energy will play apart. But let me be clear, the notion that everyone employed in coal must not work in renewable energy make no sense.

none on whatsoever.

the very different type of jobs, very different type of skills, very different locations.

Gay law says only two percent of renewable jobs will be created in and around creel. And those jobs are not on power with coal jobs. But gale says they still hope. In his view, IT starts with shutting down coal mines immediately and then hiring those retinal coal workers to rehabilitate the land.

And minor rebilitate can create lot of jobs, jobs that cannot be created any else because they have to be on the mind. IT doesn't take ultimate skills, and IT can really just start to create virtuous cycles in terms of revenue thinking. The land, the water galois .

other opportunities exist for town's like creel, from manufacturing to agriculture and tourism. Even coal ash, the byproduct of burning coal, can be used to make bricks and fertilizer, he says. These major job opportunities, once government starts to think out of the box.

let's do things. We'll get IT wrong. But let's do things. You know, let's start. If you wait for the perfect plan of perfect project that takes all the boxes, you know, yeah, I never gonna get anything done. But now I feel like we're waiting for that unique one.

So my room and my room, I consider my room the best room in the house.

back at home with this customers and physical shows us her bedroom. There are few photographs from high school teddy bear on the bed, a small desk built by her dad, and then on a shelf above her window where I can be missing andle or broken SHE keeps her most Priced position.

Yeah, all collection is up there. I can't take IT down. I really love the drought.

then. We are also these ones here. But in these ones, I love them because they change colors. I I just love the road.

Before deciding to study law, physa considered following in her dad's footsteps to work in the minds. He wanted to be a geologist, but SHE changed her mind.

The law is a very broad career. That's when I was interested in the mall. I heard my dad saying, i'm going to look at this lawyer because of this matter. I'm going to look at this lawyer. Another trial was, well, why receive .

justice? SHE thinks it's fair that he gets his land back, but the government process takes so long that people die while waiting for their land claims to be settled. And in the midst of all those delays and justice, Young people are looking outside creel for opportunities to succeed. And physica fears the worst.

Do you think traill will become a ghost town?

Definitely, if that happens.

definitely physica s moon doggie isn't certain that law is a good career choice for fazakas s personality, but he is certain that he wants her daughter to keep away from jobs in mining.

No, no, no, I don't want him. No, no, not is only not IT only because its minds are are are getting close, then not currency IT understand what is going to do after that. So you must take the the stable one, something that you definitely show the g is gonna there for a long time.

Nona also doesn't see a future for physa and her son's puella a if they stay.

like them to leave, great. At the same time, I don't want cause I mixed, I 再 穿 呢。

What happens to you? And adam.

in the beginning, he trust.

as in two of us. And the the end .

is gonna yeah.

you must let .

them go.

The power station closes. And if the coal mines go away, hey, where will you go?

We have no choice. Is crazy. Is original from curry. Is original from clearly. So we have to go peed to the farm.

OK next. O, K, next time. Okay, thank you. So IT is .

time for the family to drive physical back to university. It's a long ride several hours. They only be back by night four. And so I report to sir and duson, saving a goodbye to the remember.

So we will never forget .

you is IT.

我 因为 是 去 找。

你 就会 but as our team.

we leaving, they were left thinking about something, adam said.

So if you your family story started as farmer.

and then .

the second story is so cold, what's the what's the next story?

okay. As they are talking about this renewable, maybe maybe i'm not terrible and correct. Maybe they will be lay and physical.

Maybe this can be low. Maybe that's the .

new family business. IT can be.

This story was reported for radio workshop by C, M, ga, a youth reporter from malini F, M, one of the many community radio stations we support. This story was produced by our senior producer, daron mooly. Joe Jackson is our managing rob roster, and I edited this podcast music by commonly sambo and edible audio in k town, additional music by blue dot sessions, sound engineering by joe Jackson.

And mike felt this episode and the work of radio workshop would not be possible without the support of bloomberg philanthropies, the african climate foundation, the climate emergency collaboration group and the earth journalism network. Find out more about what we do and support our work on radio workshop. That oak.

This episode of the sunday's story was produced by Andrew mambo and edited by gene mmt. If you would like to see photos from the store, you can find them at in P, R, dub or back. Flash up first our team closely on a sim's um and judy and I read gucci is our executive producer.

If you like the deep dives you get on the sunday story, check out M P R S. Consider this podcast this week. Consider this brings you and look at what the doubling of child poverty rates means for families already struggling. A doctors take on a new booster and a new era for coffee and what that means for the world now that the war ukraine has brought north korea and russia closer. Listen to consider this wherever .

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