Without decisive policies, the uneven benefits of electric vehicles may make the world's most unequal country even more unequal.
Although the adoption of electrical vehicles (EVs) is progressing slowly in South Africa, some observers are concerned that the rollout of charging stations is mimicking colonial divisions.
A map of the country's approximately 350 publicly accessible EV charging points reveals a pattern. In Johannesburg, stations are mostly concentrated in wealthy suburbs like Sandton, which has been dubbed "the richest square mile in Africa". In Cape Town, charging stations noticeably skirt around poorer districts and are located instead in well-off areas like Constantia.
South Africa is the most unequal country in the world, according to the World Bank. Energy experts fear that the spread of electric vehicles - and its benefits - is not just replicating divides between rich and poor but stand to deepen them.
"EV stations for now in South Africa are for the wealthy in malls, offices, and suburbs secured by armed private guards," says climate researcher O'brien Nhachi. "It's a mockery of equity, but unsurprising."
According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), transitioning from petrol vehicles to electric vehicles is "likely crucial" for reducing carbon emissions in the transport sector. Moving to greener vehicles also dramatically reduces air pollution, which is currently the second biggest threat to health in South Africa.
Promisingly, global sales of electric cars have risen sharply in recent years. The International Energy Agency reports that one-in-every-five cars sold worldwide in 2023 was an EV, up from one-in-every-50 cars five years earlier.
But their spread is highly uneven. Globally, 95% of electric car sales were in China, the US, and Europe. And within South Africa, EVs - and charging infrastructure - are the preserve of the most wealthy.
Charging or serving the public?
Nick Hedley, an energy analyst and founder of The Progress Playbook, an industry newsletter that tracks green transition milestones, says that part of the reason EV infrastructure is concentrated in rich areas is that uptake of electric cars remains so low. Last year, he says, just 0.3% of new cars sold in South Africa were fully electric or plug-in hybrids.
"EV charging companies will naturally follow demand, which is in rich areas," he explains. "It's a chicken and egg situation. Do you build the EV charging stations before there's demand for them, or do you wait until EV adoption picks up?"
Rian Moosa, a business development manager at infrastructure supplier EV Charge, echoes this. He suggests that only a tiny fraction of South African can afford EVs, giving companies like his a "hard business decision" to make.
"We can't do mass domestic production/importation of EVs and infrastructure at scale unlike Asia - we don't have a huge affluent population," says Moosa. "To make initial profits and hopefully lower prices, EVs and chargers will have to cater to a tiny base of affluent South African consumers first."
Hedley suggests that the government could address this inequality going forward by lowering import duties on EVs and offering tax incentives to charging station providers that target less well-off areas. "If done right, lower-income communities would benefit from the shift to EVs, as electric cars circumvent the inflationary impact of oil price increases," he posits.
For Bobby Peek, director of groundwork and a member of South Africa's Presidential Climate Commission, much of this debate misses the point. The concentration of EV infrastructure in the fanciest parts of towns and cities is part of a much deeper problem, he says. And giving tax breaks or subsidies to private energy companies and car owners would not solve this issue, but simply put more taxpayers' money into the hands of a few.
"[Under this approach] South Africa's economy will still be stuck in an economy based on environmental injustice, where the poor have to rely on fossil fuels and poor transport systems," says Peek. "The majority of poor people and people who are Black and Mixed will still be driving in very unsafe conditions with minibuses that are poor quality and running on gasoline, bearing the bad health consequences and jobs losses...as gasoline gets phased out."
For Peek, the solution is not to slightly widen the band of people who can afford EVs. Instead, he calls for radical changes to the transport system to bring the benefits of electrification to all South Africans.
"Yes, public money must subsidise electrical vehicle infrastructure but electrical vehicle infrastructure that serves the public," he says.
In a country where 35% of workers use public transport and 20% report walking to work - often due to high transport costs - that means investing in buses, minibus taxis, and trains. At the moment, South Africa's chaotic mass transit system relies heavily on often unsafe, uninsured, and highly polluting minibus taxis. Supporting a transition to vehicles that run off renewable energies would not just lower emissions and reduce air pollution but could eventually lead to lower energy costs for operators and commuters.
Under this approach, charging stations could be installed at petrol stations and bus ranks across cities, allowing existing petrol station workers to re-skill.
"If EV chargers are hosted at thousands of gasoline stations across the country, fossil fuel workers - overwhelmingly Black and low-income - would be kept in jobs as the fuel industry transitions," says Peek.
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Cautionary tales
This kind of sector-wide transformation may seem ambitious. But without intervention, vehicle electrification looks set to exclusively benefit the rich, adding another dimension to deep social divides.
This trend has already been seen in solar energy, which has recently skyrocketed in South Africa. As African Arguments reported this March, the quintupling of rooftop solar in the past two years has been driven by private uptake among the most affluent. This has led researchers to warn of an "energy apartheid" in which wealthy neighbourhoods turn to clean renewables, while the majority persist with frequent blackouts and soaring tariffs under the mainstream coal-fired grid.
Nhachi points to another cautionary tale: the Gautrain. This shiny high-speed express train, constructed at a cost of nearly $4 billion in time for the 2010 World Cup, travels around an 80km track. Its ten stops include OR Tambo International Airport and high-end areas like Sandton and Rosebank. But its tickets are out of reach for many, and its tracks bypasses the townships where the majority live and where transport problems are most severe. For many, the Gautrain is a symbol of a country that helps the rich and neglects the rest.
"I'm afraid EV chargers rollout in South Africa will mimic the Gautrain dilemma," says Nhachi.
Ray Mwareya is a freelance journalist in South Africa.
