Coal and South Africa's complicity in the genocide in Gaza

Mail & Guardian

5 days ago

Exporting coal to Israel contradicts South Africa's stance on that country's genocide in Gaza.
South Africa has rightly earned praise across the world for taking a principled stance against Israel's genocidal assault on Gaza. But we cannot claim the mantle of global moral leadership while continuing to do business as usual with an apartheid regime now engaged in open genocide. Our ongoing export of coal to Israel — an arrangement that materially supports the very war effort we have condemned at The Hague — is a glaring contradiction in our otherwise principled positions.
According to two new briefings — one from the Palestinian Youth Movement and another from researchers working to align our foreign policy with our public commitments — South African coal continues to fuel Israel's energy grid, including its military installations, surveillance infrastructure and illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. Worse still, our role has grown more central since Colombia, formerly Israel's largest supplier, issued a decree in August 2024 banning coal exports to the Israeli state.
Colombia has honoured contracts signed before its decree, but it has committed to ending future shipments. South Africa, by contrast, has yet to take any meaningful action. A number of corporates continue to sell South African coal to Israel. Glencore, a company globally notorious for unethical conduct, is the dominant player but others, such as African Rainbow Minerals are also complicit.
This raises an urgent question: How can a country that seeks to halt genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) be one of the top energy suppliers to the regime perpetrating that very genocide?
The ICJ case, supported by a growing number of Global South countries, has shifted the diplomatic terrain. The South African government has also co-chaired The Hague Group, a new alliance of countries seeking to defend international law against systematic violations in Gaza.
These steps matter. But our ports — especially Richards Bay — have remained open to the same coal shipments that sustain Israel's military occupation.
Since Israel launched its genocidal assault on Gaza on 7 October 2023, at least 11 coal shipments from South Africa have arrived in Israel, according to vessel-tracking data. These shipments total more than 1.4 million tonnes — about 25% of Israel's coal imports during this period.
The majority of these shipments were loaded at Richards Bay and docked at the ports of Hadera and Ashkelon — home to the Orot Rabin and Rutenberg coal-fired power stations. These plants provide about 17.5% of Israel's electricity. Coal has a central role in sustaining both civilian infrastructure and military operations in Israel.
That includes electricity powering command centres, settlement expansions in the West Bank and Israel's chilling artificial intelligence systems — algorithms that sort Palestinians by 'suspicion level' and determine targeting for drone strikes.
Israel does not produce its own coal. It is entirely dependent on imports to run its coal-fired plants and is, therefore, vulnerable to coordinated boycotts.
The Stichting Onderzoek Multinationale Ondernemingen — Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations — has shown that when states supply energy that directly supports illegal occupation or genocide, they are in violation of international law. It explicitly recommends that states 'end the supply of coal to Israel where there is no means of ensuring it does not end up supplying electricity to settlements'.
We have no such guarantees. And even if we did, they would be impossible to verify. The only ethical and lawful option is to end coal exports entirely.
If South Africa is to retain credibility in its international legal claims, its domestic trade and industrial policy must be consistent with those claims. This is not simply a question of ethics; it is a question of coherence in governance. A state that seeks provisional measures at the ICJ to halt genocide cannot continue to facilitate that same genocide through commodity flows. This contradiction not only undermines South Africa's legal arguments, it also weakens the ability of Global South countries to use international law as a terrain of struggle.
There is no neutral trade in the context of genocide. Every shipment of coal exported to Israel either contributes to or withholds material support from a war machine. If we claim to stand with the victims, our policies must withdraw complicity from the perpetrators.
Of course, any conversation about South Africa's trade policy must begin with the recognition of the severity of our economic crisis. With nearly half the population unemployed and millions pushed into crushing poverty, the social cost of job losses is devastating. For working-class people and their families, even small disruptions to income can be catastrophic. The crisis of mass unemployment — a structural failure rooted in both apartheid and post-apartheid economic mismanagement — hangs over every policy decision.
This is why it's important to approach this issue with care and clarity. Before acting, we need to establish, with precision, whether a coal boycott would lead to any actual job losses. Academic and NGO researchers should work alongside government and trade unions to produce a shared and verified understanding of the scale and scope of South Africa's coal exports to Israel — and what risks, if any, exist for workers should those exports be halted.
If there is a real risk to jobs, the next step must be to find alternative markets. This is not an impossible task. South Africa's coal sector is vast and the volume exported to Israel remains a tiny fraction — less than 1.2% of coal exports and just 0.02% of GDP. Redirecting those shipments is a logistical challenge, not an economic impossibility. If there is political will, viable alternatives can be found.
This is not about asking workers to carry the cost of a moral position. It's about building the political and practical basis to ensure that our country can act on its principles without deepening the hardship of the poor. The trade union movement has already made this clear.
In a powerful statement issued in August 2024, trade union federation Cosatu declared its support for the call on Glencore to stop sending coal to Israel, stating that 'fuelling apartheid and genocide is a crime'. But the federation also rightly called on the government to ensure that a boycott protects jobs.
Trade policy in a democratic state is not the exclusive domain of multinational firms or economic ministries. It must be subordinate to the constitutional obligations of the state and to its commitments under international law. South Africa's Constitution affirms the importance of human rights and dignity. Its diplomatic stance affirms the urgency of halting genocide. The question now is whether its trade policy will follow suit.
Dr Imraan Buccus is senior research associate at ASRI and a research fellow at the University of the Free State.