Solar panels are seen near the cooling towers of a retired coal-fired Komati Power Station, operated by Eskom, near Komati village, in the Mpumalanga province in South Africa, on May 9.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

The story so far: South Africa’s President, Cyril Ramaphosa, signed into law a piece of legislation that will impose mandatory curbs on the emissions from large, fossil-fuel heavy industries and, require climate-adaptation plans from towns and villages. The President said this would enable South Africa to meet its emissions reduction commitments under the Paris agreement.

What is the significance of this law?

The Climate Change Bill was approved by South Africa’s National Assembly last November. South Africa relies on coal as its primary fuel source for electricity generation and is one of the world’s top 15 greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters. According to an official estimate, net emissions in 2017 were estimated at 512 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e), an increase of 14% from 2000. In 2022, this fell to 405 Mt CO2e, a 3% fall from 2021, according to Statista. It is unclear if these numbers are strictly comparable and if the fall was linked to the worldwide, temporary dip in emissions following COVID-19. The energy sector represents roughly 80% of gross emissions, with energy industries (~60% ) and transport (~12%). Being an economy which is dependent on agriculture and tourism, South Africa has faced increasing Western pressure to accelerate its transition away from fossil fuel.

What steps has South Africa taken?

Every country submits Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), which are time-bound commitments to lower emissions. South Africa submitted its first NDC in 2016 and its updated NDC in 2021. The updated NDC commits to 31% reduction and a fixed target for GHG emissions levels of 398-510 MtCO2e by 2025, and 350-420 MtCO2e by 2030.

Also Read: How climate change is making the world sick

The NDC outlines an approach for a ‘just transition,’ — or the sustainable movement to jobs away from fossil-fuel dependent industries — to achieve targets, focusing on agriculture, forestry and other land use, energy, industrial processes and product use, and waste sectors. South Africa has estimated that it requires $8 billion per year by 2030. It has set an internal goal of reaching ‘net zero emissions’ by 2050 in its Low-Emission Development Strategy submitted in 2020. In addition, the Presidential Climate Commission released its Just Transition Framework in 2022, which aims to inform policy making at the nexus of climate and development to enable deep, just transformational shifts. These were the actions that preceded the signing of the Climate Change Bill.

What about India?

India does not have a comprehensive legislation on climate change. Priyanka Chaturvedi, the Rajya Sabha parliamentarian, had moved a Private Member’s Bill, called the Council on Climate Change Bill, most recently in 2022. This proposed setting up a Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, for advising the Union government on all matters related to climate change but there has been no significant movement on this so far. However, climate change features in multiple Acts and subordinate legislation. These include the Environmental Protection Act, Forest Conservation Act, Energy Conservation Act, Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act among others.

Also Read: The trend in climate change jurisprudence | Explained

Are these enough?

In April this year, the Supreme Court ruled that citizens have a “right against the adverse effects of climate change,” and referred to the fact that India did not have an omnibus legislation on climate change. “Despite Constitutional guarantees that give the citizens equality before the law and right to life and personal liberty, it was now necessary, in the Court’s view, to explicitly link the impact of climate change as something which impedes these rights of liberty, life and equality.” Prior to the UN Conference of Parties in Dubai last year, India communicated that the intensity of its energy emissions had reduced by 33% from 2005-2019, 11 years ahead of target. It also committed to revising its emissions intensity to 45% by 2030 in the updated set of NDC. Emission intensity refers to the total amount of GHG emitted for every unit increase of GDP. It is different from absolute emissions. India has also committed to source 50% of its electricity in 2030 from non-fossil fuel resources.

South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa (CL) and his wife Tshepo Motsepe (CR) arrive ahead of Ramaphosa’s inauguration as President at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on June 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: VIA REUTERS

Cyril Ramaphosa was sworn in for a second term as South Africa’s president on Wednesday in a ceremony in the administrative capital, Pretoria, with help from a coalition of parties for the first time in its 30-year rule.

Mr. Ramaphosa is now set to appoint a Cabinet in a new coalition government after his African National Congress party lost its parliamentary majority in an election last month. He was reelected president by lawmakers on Friday after the main opposition party and a smaller third party joined the ANC in an agreement to co-govern Africa’s most industrialized economy.

He will have to guide the first coalition government in which no party has a majority. At least three parties will make up what the ANC is calling a government of national unity, with more invited to join.

Mr. Ramaphosa was administered the oath of office in a public ceremony at the Union Buildings, the seat of government, by Chief Justice Raymond Zondo.

King Mswati III of Eswatini, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu, Zimbabwe President Emerson Mnangagwa and former Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga were among many dignitaries who attended the inauguration ceremony as Mr. Ramaphosa begins what promises to be a tough final term in office.

The ceremony included a 21-gun salute by the presidential guard and a flypast by the South Africa Air Force over the Union Buildings. South African musicians and cultural dancers entertained thousands of citizens who attended the swearing-in.

Addressing the nation, Mr. Ramaphosa said that the people had spoken and their will would be adhered to.

“The voters of South Africa did not give any single party the full mandate to govern our country alone. They have directed us to work together to address their plight and realize their aspirations,” he said.

The newly elected head of state said that the people of South Africa “have also been unequivocal in expressing their disappointment and disapproval of our performance in some of the areas in which we have failed them.”

Mr. Ramaphosa also recognized that South African society “remains deeply unequal and highly polarised” which could ” easily turn into instability.”

“The lines drawn by our history, between black and white, between man and woman, between suburbs and townships, between urban and rural, between the wealthy and the poor, remain etched in our landscape,” he said.

He also promised that the new government would create new work opportunities to face the crippling unemployment as well as work on providing people with basic services like housing, healthcare and clean water.

While Mr. Ramphosa’s words were meant to reassure an already economically strained population, the new administration could prove challenging to lead.

It is made up of parties that are ideologically opposed and don’t see eye to eye on how to address the country’s many challenges, including land redistribution policies and proposed solutions to the country’s crippling electricity crisis, as well as their contrary views on affirmative action.

Major players such as the Democratic Alliance and the Inkatha Freedom Party have already joined the coalition, and others like the Patriotic Alliance, the GOOD Party and the Pan Africanist Congress are widely expected to follow suit.

However, the third largest party led by former president Jacob Zuma, the uMkhonto weSizwe Party, and the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters party have refused to be part of it.

It is unclear when the formation of the new cabinet of South Africa’s seventh administration would be announced.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa was reelected by lawmakers for a second term on June 14, after his party struck a dramatic late coalition deal with a former political foe just hours before the vote.

Mr. Ramaphosa, the leader of the African National Congress, won convincingly in Parliament against a surprise candidate who was also nominated — Julius Malema of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters. Mr. Ramaphosa received 283 votes to Malema’s 44 in the 400-member house.

The 71-year-old Mr. Ramaphosa secured his second term with the help of lawmakers from the country’s second-biggest party, the Democratic Alliance, and some smaller parties. They backed him in the vote and got him over the finish line following the ANC’s loss of its long-held majority in a landmark election two weeks ago that reduced it to 159 seats in Parliament.

During a break in what turned out to be a marathon parliamentary session, the ANC signed the last-minute agreement with the DA, effectively ensuring Mr. Ramaphosa stayed on as the leader of Africa’s most industrialized economy. The parties will now co-govern South Africa in its first national coalition where no party has a majority in Parliament.

The deal, referred to as a government of national unity, brings the ANC together with the DA, a white-led party that had for years been the main opposition and the fiercest critic of the ANC. At least two other smaller parties also joined the agreement.

Mr. Ramaphose called the deal — which sent South Africa into uncharted waters — a “new birth, a new era for our country” and said it was time for parties “to overcome their differences and to work together.”

“This is what we shall do and this is what I am committed to achieve as the President,” he said.

The ANC — the famed party of Nelson Mandela — had ruled South Africa with a comfortable majority since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994.

But it lost its 30-year majority in the humbling national election on May 29, a turning point for the country. The vote was held against the backdrop of widespread discontent from South Africans over high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment.

Analysts warn there might be complications ahead, though, given the starkly different ideologies of the ANC, a former liberation movement, and the centrist, business-friendly DA, which won 21% of the vote in the national election, the second largest share behind the ANC’s 40%.

For one, the DA disagreed with the ANC government’s move to accuse Israel of genocide in Gaza in a highly sensitive case at the United Nations’ top court.

The DA leader John Steenhuisen was the first to confirm the agreement.

“From today, the DA will co-govern the Republic of South Africa in a spirit of unity and collaboration,” he said as he stepped away from Friday’s proceedings for a speech carried live on television in which he said a deal was signed and that the DA lawmakers would vote for Mr. Ramaphosa for President.

The Parliament session started at 10 a.m. in the unusual setting of a conference center near Cape Town’s waterfront, after the city’s historic National Assembly building was gutted in a fire in 2022. The house first went through the hourslong swearing-in of hundreds of new lawmakers and electing a speaker and a deputy speaker.

The vote for president started late at night, with the results announced well after 10 p.m. Mr. Ramaphosa finished his acceptance speech as the clock ticked past midnight and into June 15.

Former President Jacob Zuma’s MK Party boycotted the session but that did not affect the voting as only a third of the house is needed for a quorum.

ANC Secretary-General Fikile Mbalula said the party was open to talking with anyone else who wanted to join the unity government. There are 18 political parties represented in Parliament and he said the multi-party agreement would “prioritize the country across the political and ideological divide.”

Some parties, including Mr. Malema’s EFF, refused to join.

The two other parties that joined the coalition deal were the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Patriotic Alliance, which has drawn attention partly because its leader, Gayton McKenzie, served a prison sentence for bank robbery.

Mr. McKenzie said he had been given a second chance in life and that South Africa also had one now, a chance to solve its deep socioeconomic problems.

The ANC had faced a deadline to strike a coalition agreement as Parliament had to vote for the president within 14 days after election results were declared on June 2. The ANC had been trying to strike a coalition agreement for two weeks and the final negotiations went on overnight June 13 to June 14, party officials said.

South Africa has not faced that level of political uncertainty since the ANC swept to power in the 1994 first all-race election that ended nearly a half-century of racial segregation. Since then, every South African leader has come from the ANC, starting with Mandela.

The new unity government also harked back to the way Mandela, South Africa’s first Black president, invited political opponents to be part of a unity government in 1994 in an act of reconciliation when the ANC had a majority. Ramaphosa had played a key role in those negotiations as a young politician.

This time, the ANC’s hand was forced.

“The ANC has been very magnanimous in that they have accepted defeat and have said, ‘let’s talk’,” PA leader Mr. McKenzie said.