By Tulani Ngwenya for Oxpeckers
South Africa’s latest coal-fired power station, Kusile, took decades to finish building, cost hundreds of billions of rands, and became one of the most controversial infrastructure projects in the country’s energy history.
Now, finally fully operational, it is being celebrated as a solution to a power crisis – even as the country has formally committed to ending its dependence on coal, the fossil fuel that powers it.
The completion of Kusile’s sixth and final unit in 2025 marked the end of a construction programme that began in 2008, ballooned from an initial budget of around R80-billion to an estimated R161-billion, and became a byword for state capture, contractor corruption and engineering failure. For years, partially built units sat idle and completion dates were missed repeatedly.
When it entered commercial operation in September 2025, national utility Eskom declared the end of its multi-decade build programme. Load shedding – the rolling blackouts that blighted homes and businesses for more than a decade – had already eased significantly, and Kusile was held up as proof that the country had turned a corner.
During an April 2026 visit to the power station, based near Witbank / Emalahleni in the Nkangala District of Mpumalanga, President Cyril Ramaphosa described it as “the backbone of South Africa’s electricity supply”, together with Medupi power station in Limpopo. Both stations are designed for an operational lifespan of 50 years.
This means that Kusile will only retire in 2060, three decades beyond government commitments to phase down coal by 2030 in order to contribute to international efforts to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.
The president’s visit to Kusile in April signalled that the country’s ambitions to wind down coal are slipping.
As the latest data collated and shared by the Oxpeckers #PowerTracker mapping tool shows, 14 coal-fired power stations in Mpumalanga and Limpopo still anchor the national grid, with nearly 38,000MW of installed capacity. The tool also identifies 16 coal mines in both provinces, producing about 125-million tonnes of coal annually.
According to the Integrated Resource Plan of 2019, which set out the country’s energy mix and procure generation capacity, more than 11,000MW of coal capacity was expected to be retired by 2030. However, Eskom has delayed the shutdown of several ageing stations due to electricity supply risks.
Only one power station has been closed so far. As of April 2026, only Komati near Bethal had been retired, ending its generating capacity of 1,14MW. According to #PowerTracker, “Eskom envisions that the Komati site will eventually provide 370MW of solar, wind and battery storage power to the grid”.
Other power stations including Hendrina, Camden and Grootvlei are now expected to operate beyond previously determined timelines, with some units likely to remain online beyond 2030. Duvha, Kendal, Kriel and Matimba power stations will only be decommissioned between 2035 and 2040.
The consequences are not only global – they are local.
South Africa’s minimum emission standards regulate pollutants such as sulphur dioxide and particulate matter. Many older coal plants cannot meet these standards without costly retrofits. In 2025, the government granted time-limited exemptions that allow several plants to continue operating beyond compliance deadlines.
Environmental organisations argue that this prolongs exposure to harmful air pollution.
A report released on April 22 2026 by Greenpeace Africa, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, and non-profit organisation groundWork estimates that delaying the phase-out of coal could result in 32,000 additional premature deaths between 2026 and 2050.
Pictured above: A local resident collects coal from an unrehabilitated coal mine near the Duvha Power Station.
Image source: Ihsaan Haffejee
This story was produced by Oxpeckers Investigative Environmental Journalism and shared with Scrolla.Africa as part of a content partnership. Read the full investigation on Oxpeckers.org
