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The death of Nelson Mandela on 5 December 2013 was in a sense a wake-up call for South Africans, and a time to reflect on what has been achieved since ‘those magnificent days in late April 1994’ (as the editors of this volume put it) ‘when South Africans of all colours voted for the first time in a democratic election’. In a time of recall and reflection it is important to take account, not only of the dramatic events that grip the headlines, but also of other signposts that indicate the shape and characteristics of a society. The New South African Review looks, every year, at some of these signposts, and the essays in this fourth volume of the series again examine and analyse a broad spectrum of issues affecting the country. They tackle topics as diverse as the state of organised labour; food retailing; electricity generation; access to information; civil courage; the school system; and – looking outside the country to its place in the world – South Africa’s relationships with north-east Asia, with Israel and with its neighbours in the southern African region. Taken together, these essays give a multidimensional perspective on South Africa’s democracy as it turns twenty, and will be of interest to general readers while being particularly useful to students and researchers.

These essays give a multidimensional perspective on South Africa's democracy as it turns twenty, and will be of interest to general readers while being particularly useful to students and researchers.

INTRODUCTIONOil is the master resource that fuels the world economy, providing 33 per cent of global primary energy supply, supplying 95 per cent of the energy powering global transport systems, and providing feedstock for the diverse petrochemicals industry (IEA 2013). Since the Second World War, growth in the world economy has been strongly correlated with growth in oil consumption. Similarly, demand for oil products in South Africa has grown in step with the economy, and our passenger and freight transport systems depend overwhelmingly on petroleum fuels. In the apartheid era, the nationalist government's approach to liquid fuel security in the face of international sanctions was to build expensive, capital intensive coal-to-liquid and gas-to-liquid synthetic fuel plants to compensate for South Africa's lack of indigenous oil reserves. Since 1994, by contrast, the democratically elected government has pursued reintegration with the world economy, and South Africa's growing liquid fuel demand has been met almost entirely by rising imports of crude oil and – in recent years – refined fuels as well. The country currently relies on imports to meet at least 70 per cent of its liquid fuel needs, and is therefore vulnerable to global oil price hikes. There are both short-term and long-term threats to global oil supplies and prices which, if not mitigated, could have very serious effects on our economy and society.This chapter provides a brief overview of a complex set of issues related to the risks inherent in South Africa's dependency on imported oil. Section 2 deals with the global oil outlook, highlighting projections of demand for oil, conventional oil supply, unconventional oil resources, world oil exports, energy return on investment for oil, and the implications of these trends for international crude oil prices. Section 3 focuses on South Africa's liquid fuel-related vulnerabilities and the likely implications of pursuing a business- as-usual path. Section 4 considers the main alternatives to imported petroleum, including options for domestic liquid fuel production and a shift to electrified transport systems. The concluding section interprets the oil dilemma from the perspective of a societal transition toward greater sustainability.

The issues of energy, food, and water security have recently risen to global prominence as they affect increasing numbers of people in an interconnected world. All individuals and societies rely on energy, food, and water to survive and prosper, and yet there are hundreds of millions of people who lack reliable access to these basic necessities in sufficient quantities and at adequate quality levels. Globally, some 1.3 billion people lack access to electricity, over 780 million people do not have reliable access to safe drinking-water and sanitation (World Bank, 2013), and it is estimated that 805 million people experience chronic

The past two decades have witnessed an unprecedented globalisation of trade in goods and services. This process has been driven, inter alia, by technology, ideology and the availability of relatively cheap energy. By extrapolating this trend, one may expect further integration of world markets and increasingly unhindered international trade. However, there is mounting evidence of significant risks to global trade, at least in goods and possibly in certain services as well. Three main risk areas are identified here: (1) fossil fuel depletion, in particular a possible peak in world oil production within the next five to ten years; (2) climate change, and especially its effects on agricultural production, transport and financial risk; and (3) instability in the world financial system caused primarily by the US's unsustainable twin deficits. The paper explores some possible implications of these risks for the South African economy and its foreign trade in particular. It argues that South Africa's trade policy should take due cognizance of these threats, and advocates adaptation and mitigation strategies designed to improve self-sufficiency and to protect the poor in sensitive areas, especially food and energy security.

This paper investigates the relationship between labour productivity, average real wages and employment in South Africa's manufacturing sector, using cointegrating VAR and VECM econometric techniques. A long-run equilibrium relationship was found between real wages and productivity, with an elasticity of 0,38 indicating that productivity has grown more rapidly than wages. However, the econometric tests proved to be highly sensitive to specification and sample period. Nevertheless, the main result is consistent with the finding that labour's share of gross output has been shrinking over the past three decades, which has negative implications for income distribution. These trends may plausibly be explained by capital intensification and possibly the adoption of labour-saving technology. The implication is that growth in the manufacturing sector cannot realistically be relied upon to create significantly more jobs for South Africa's millions of unemployed. Policy-makers are urged to consider alternative strategies which promote local economy and protect key labour-intensive sectors.

More ominously, the hostile war of words between Western powers and Iran over the latter's nuclear programme continues unabated. The Israeli leadership is still threatening a \"pre-emptive\" military strike on Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities. Meanwhile, the US and Europe have imposed stringent economic sanctions against Iran, whose economy and populace are now clearly suffering. Should this situation spiral into another regional conflagration, it will have devastating economic consequences for the globe as a whole and for SA in particular - around half of our oil imports are sourced from Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran has vowed to respond to an attack by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the world's pre-eminent oil \"choke point\"through which one third of the world's seaborne oil is shipped. If current mind-sets, values and policies prevail, the answer is probably \"yes\". Exceptional socio-economic circumstances call for real paradigm shifts and radical policy innovations. SA needs to abandon its narrow obsession with GDP growth and adopt the broader goals of economically, socially and ecologically sustainable development.

The Department of Energy's \"Integrated Electricity Resource Plan 2010\" (IRP2010) aims to guarantee security of energy supply, diversify the country's energy mix and reduce carbon dioxide emissions over the next 20 years. After a round of public consultation, the DoE presented a revised plan to cabinet, which approved it on March 17. Thus, whether sourced from home or abroad, the coal needed to feed new - and possibly old - thermal power stations will become increasingly expensive and at some point simply unavailable. This flies in the face of the RBS' projection that coal costs will decrease from R300 to R200 a ton. First, the levelised costs of the various energy sources change significantly. Taking into account the likely trend of rising coal prices, as well as incorporating the external costs of coal, means that coal-fired electricity is no longer a cheap option. Power from OCGTs will quickly rise off the scale of affordability. Incorporating full life-cycle costs into nuclear calculations would substantially change its economic profile.

Total domestic consumption of coal in 2009 was degrees million tons (Mt), of which 123 Mt (69 percent) was burnt by Eskom in its power stations, while Sasol consumed about 40 Mt (23 percent). Industry and small consumers accounted for the remainder. Coal exports shrank slightly last year to about 66 Mt. An article by local geologist Dr Chris Hartnady, forthcoming in the SA Journal of Science, uses [David Rutledge]'s data and methods based on Hubbert's analysis to forecast a peak in South Africa's coal production in 2020 at about 285 Mt a year. This is supported by research by two American professors, Tadeusz Patzek and Greg Croft, published this year in the journal Energy. Recognising that, over time, the quality - and energy content - of mined coal deteriorates, they estimate that South Africa's coal production from existing coal fields, when measured in energy units, peaked in 2007.

Over the past couple of years the world has begun to wake up to the reality of \"peak oil\": the empirical fact that global oil production will inevitably reach a maximum rate - a peak - and thereafter decline inexorably due to the depletion of this finite resource. A comprehensive survey of academic research and industry reports on peak oil published last October by the UK's Energy Research Centre concluded that \"there is a significant risk of a peak before 2020\". This follows the publication in February of a report entitled \"The Oil Crunch\" by the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security. The taskforce - whose membership includes Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group - stated that \"We must plan for a world in which oil prices are likely to be both higher and more volatile and where oil price shocks have the potential to destabilise economic, political and social activity.\"