Will Gwede Mantashe, South Africa’s (aspirant) Patriarch of Petroleum be headlining AEW 2024?

Responsible and well-informed financial institutions around the world are retreating from new investments in oil and gas development and the would-be champions of monetising Africa’s fossil fuel resources are turning up the heat.

Our Minister Gwede Mantashe is avidly supportive, even as he claims to have sought “to put an end to the polemic debate about energy sources” and encouraged industry to take a coordinated approach to energy development so that all may support his undefined “diversified energy mix”.

The most openly aggressive of oil and gas promoters in Africa is the lawyer/consultant NJ Ayuk, who has recently proclaimed the rallying cry of his African Energy Week (AEW) 2024 to be “Drill, baby, drill!”

Ayuk is chairperson and sole spokesperson of the Africa Energy Chamber – a nonprofit company initiated in 2018 – the outfit responsible for AEW 2024 in Cape Town from 4 to 8 November, to be graced by many African ministers.

Thanks to Daily Maverick’s Tim Cohen for his critique of Mantashe’s recent speech at the AOW conference (previously known as Africa Oil Week), in particular the “hallucinogenic episode of full-on rock star proportions” regarding the potential “economic growth” impact of investments in oil and gas discoveries and development, taking inspiration from tales of Namibia to suggest the prospect of 8% GDP growth!

Petroleum can indeed be intoxicating, particularly while the oil majors are banging – along with the rest of the military-industrial complex – with recent profits enough to make any uncle drool, even without proximity to the products. To a patriarch surveying the opportunities being laid before him by consiglieri such as Ayuk, any questioning of their developmental merits or long-term prospects is simply vexatious “polemic debate”.

The following line in Mantashe’s published speech illuminates this: “To ensure that South Africans enjoy maximum benefits from their national patrimony, their petroleum resources, we have established the South African National Petroleum Company (SANPC)…”

The term “patrimony” – literally what you inherit from your male ancestor – echoes previous insistence on using our “God-given endowment” of fossil fuels, invoking the authority of an Abrahamic God to bless the monetisation of oil and gas, regardless of the consequences.

If there is any dimension of inheritance to the presence of fossil fuels, formed from carbon-rich deposits long before the advent of human beings, the benefit bestowed is in the sequestration of carbon that was removed from our atmosphere over very many millions of years and stashed underground.

If the notion of patrimony is to be applied to natural resources, then extracting “our petroleum” for combustion – for a concentrated hit of energy with a planetary heating legacy over a century – should be recognised as a perversion that would make us diabolical ancestors.

The petroleum patrimony framing not only serves to dismiss debate on energy sources and their prospects for yielding a beneficial legacy, it supports his ongoing scapegoating of “foreign-funded lobby groups and non-governmental organisations (NGOs)” as the only hindrance (all legal challenges are deemed “frivolous”), as Mantashe eschews responsibility for the failure to facilitate legally robust processes for the issuing of rights and permits for oil and gas activities.

Bravely facing off what he calls “the crusade against oil and gas development” clearly feeds his denial of responsibility, including for coordinated energy sector development, inter alia through the Integrated Energy Planning required by law.

Mantashe lamented a lack of response when “the previous administration implored the energy industry, including organisers of the AOW… to deal with energy matters in a coordinated approach in one conference to enable delegates to talk about the energy sector comprehensively”.

This posturing as an advocate for a coherent approach to deliberation of energy investments is unconvincing. Furthermore, it is the logo of his erstwhile DMRE that features as the “Host Government” of both “AOW Investing in African Energy” and next month’s “Africa Energy Week” (Ayuk registered the name while the older outfit dithered over rebranding), both of which list various state-owned entities as sponsors, including the bankrupt Central Energy Fund (CEF).

Mantashe’s myopia – blind to resources that aren’t in the ground, and dispensed by the state – combines with a populist nationalism that dismisses market studies by the most respected international agencies (as servants of a European conspiracy to inhibit Africa’s development), even as he courts the oil corporations that were intrinsic to latter-day colonialism and perpetuate its practices; all in the name of Africa’s energy poor. (Attempts to deny this legacy include Chevron adding a strapline to its logo: “the human energy company”.)

Add his authoritarian streak that regards the justice system and communities who have recourse to it as a nuisance, while fantasising about mega-projects of biblical proportions, and we have a petroleum patriarch in the making, as Mantashe adapts to having his dominion in the energy system restricted to the extraction and processing of minerals, including petroleum, while assuming that Cabinet and then Parliament will approve legislation to mandate his SA National Petroleum Company.

Adopting the capitalists’ claim to be free of and transcend ideology – cast as a vice justifying dismissal of those who think otherwise – and the neoliberal conceit that “there is no alternative”, is apparently not a difficult shift for a 1980s-era communist, particularly with Russia promising big investments and still seeking to sell us gas.

And this patriarch has a loyal following among various political parties and trade unions.

With some civil society groups, including some unions, calling for a government boycott of AEW 2024, security arrangements will no doubt be as unrestrained as the marketing promises and networking events, which includes the youth-targeting “Just Energy Transition Concert”, featuring the acts: DJ Dollars, Morda and Uncle Waffles.

Why wouldn’t Mantashe be a headliner? DM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REeWvTRUpMk