Joburg, Pretoria in government’s crosshairs

South Africa is considering whether to add its biggest urban area, which includes its largest city and capital, to key regions where it plans to tackle air pollution as pressure grows on the government to act against some of the world’s worst emissions. 

Adding Johannesburg and the City of Tshwane — which includes the capital, Pretoria — would broaden the focus of so-called priority areas to act against emissions of deadly pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and particulate matter by adding more than 8 million people to the targeted areas. 

Designating cities as priority areas will increase the government’s focus on enforcing often-flouted pollution limits and curb emissions of toxic substances that independent studies have said kill thousands of South Africans annually.

“We can extend our coordination and our ability to use the priority-area regulations to improve the quality of air,” Patience Gwaze, the national air-quality officer, said at a seminar on Monday.

“We have the ability to improve the quality of air in an area that is the most densely populated.”

In 2025, new limits on emissions from industrial plants will come into force, and the government will take steps to reduce the amount of lead in motor fuel used in the country.

Still, the government has been criticized for its inability to enforce its own laws. 

In 2022, it lost a lawsuit known as the Deadly Air case brought by climate activists over its failure to clamp down on pollution from coal-fired plants owned by Eskom and a petrochemical facility run by Sasol in the so-called Highveld Priority area to the south and east of Johannesburg. 

A High Court judge ruled that the government had breached the constitutional right to clean air despite it declaring the region as a high-priority area in 2007. 

The state gave the Vaal Triangle, an industrial zone to the south of Johannesburg, a priority designation in 2006. It still has some of the world’s worst particulate emissions, which cause respiratory disease and heart attacks.