An update on the UCT divest-reinvest journey

Including our letter to UCT and their response.

On 8 October 2023, Fossil Free SA sent a letter, also signed by UCT students and staff, to UCT leaders. The letter requested updates on UCT's commitment to climate leadership and fossil fuel divestment and reinvestment since they first made their divestment commitment in March 2022. The letter was sent for consideration and discussion ahead of their Council meeting on 14 October. 

FFSA received a response from UCT interim Vice Chancellor Daya Reddy on 31 October, stating that “a report on the status of progress with regard to fossil fuel divestment at UCT falls within the authority of the Board of Trustees of the UCT Foundation”, and that “the Foundation has made a submission to Council in relation to implementation of the Council decision on divestment”.

Reddy further expressed that whilst our letter could not be considered at the October UCT Council meeting, it will be on the agenda of its next meeting. Reddy also graciously said that he acknowledged “the good work of Fossil Free SA on the existential issue of climate change”.

For more information, read our full letter to UCT below. And watch this space for further campaign updates, as we work to support UCT in holding firm to its original groundbreaking commitment.

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Our letter to UCT leadership

Dear leaders of UCT,

UCT’s commitment to climate leadership and fossil fuel divestment and reinvestment

Over the past 10 years, as the Fossil Free UCT campaign (later, as Fossil Free South Africa), together with generations of students and with support from academic staff, we have had multiple and substantial engagements with Professor Max Price, Professor Mamokgethi Phakeng, former Council Chair Babalwa Ngonyama, the University Panel on Responsible Investment, and its predecessor, the Ethical Investment Task Team (established by Dr Price in 2015) on which we served. We have brought three votes on divestment to Convocation, all of which were overwhelmingly supported by members of Convocation. At the invitation of Professor Phakeng, we presented the case for divestment directly to the UPRI in 2020 and to UCT’s Leadership Lekgotla in 2021.

We have publicly welcomed and applauded UCT’s historic March 2022 commitment to the principle of fossil fuel divestment, to full implementation of that commitment by 2029, and subsequent reports that significant progress has already been made on divestment and reinvestment of some of UCT’s offshore investments. However, through our  campaigning for divestment by both Wits and Stellenbosch Universities, we are sad to report that some senior officials at those universities have privately told us they doubt UCT is fully committed to its own decision.

It was our hope following the divestment commitment that UCT would show ongoing leadership on the issue, with, for example, regular updates to both the media and Convocation on progress. Yet in the 18 months since the original March 2022 decision, there has been no further public communication on the issue, that we are aware of, from the university. 

We are of course aware that the university has faced formidable governance challenges of late and are sympathetic to the impact that this will have had on your time and attention. 

It is our understanding that the issue of divestment will be on the Council agenda again in some form at its planned meeting on 14 October. At the request of Professor Mark New of ACDI, we recently supplied a round-up of the very substantial – and mounting – evidence that divestment does not impair financial returns. Though we should all be mindful that a focus on returns is short-sighted when stacked against the overwhelming current imperative of accelerating rapid decarbonisation to avert the worst possible climate outcomes.

In the light of all these circumstances, please allow us to request that university leadership now takes the following steps, of which the first two at least, we believe, are very manageable:

1. Following the October meeting of Council, please issue a news or press release noting the current state of the climate crisis and describing progress to date on the divestment commitment as part of UCT’s response. 

2. Given the three past votes of Convocation in favour of divestment, please undertake to provide a report to Convocation this year on progress on the divestment commitment. 

3. We are also cognisant of the great example set when UCT launched the UPRI publicly in 2021 via a very public and high profile event with notable speakers from around the world. We propose that you now convene a similar event focusing on UCT’s divestment commitment, how that commitment came to be, progress made so far, and prospects for its advancement, with invitations extended to the executive leadership of other SA universities. (We would be happy to serve as co-convenors of such an event.)

Why this matters now more than ever: fossil fuel companies are reversing climate commitments

As you are no doubt aware, the past few months have unfortunately brought much distressing news from around the world of record-breaking temperatures on both land and at sea, and reports of accelerating natural disasters. We write with thoughts of the appalling catastrophe during Storm Daniel on Saturday 2 September in Libya top of mind. Over 11,300 people are reported dead following the collapse of dams near the city of Derna. Climate scientists have little doubt that Storm Daniel’s intensity – 100 times the usual monthly rainfall – was likely accelerated by climate change. 

This tragedy offers a textbook example of the fossil fuel resource curse – a high unemployment petrostate with an authoritarian government that collapsed into civil war, repeated foreign military interventions, and civic fragmentation is now experiencing some of the worst possible effects of the compounding vulnerabilities that attend excessive dependence on and use of fossil fuels. Yet the response of fossil fuel companies has been to double down on extraction, not least here in South Africa, where the oil and gas industry is racing to find new opportunities (sadly, with the red carpet being rolled out regularly for it at the CTICC). 

Given our already fragile governance, allowing these demonstrably amoral industries expanded influence in our economy and politics would be a disaster even without climate change. We have, in recent shareholder engagements with coal companies Thungela and Exxaro, personally witnessed how these companies resist even disclosing the barest minimum of information on their lobbying efforts, and Wits academics have described to us how Exxaro is rolling back their climate commitments.

The former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Christiana Figueres, has publicly declared that after years of optimistic engagement with the fossil fuel industry, she has now abandoned hope that it will ever voluntarily reform itself. Former US Vice President Al Gore, in a recent TED talk, details exactly how shamelessly fossil fuel companies, even in the midst of obvious universal peril, are walking back their commitments.  

It is therefore clear that truly responsible investors like UCT  must take an uncompromising  approach to these corporate human rights abusers as they deepen climate apartheid, inflicting death, poverty and danger on women, children and vulnerable peoples around the world while continuing to enrich elites under cover of the lie that fossil fuels can still foster sustainable human development.

We very much hope that our requests are constructive, and look forward to your earliest response.

Best regards, 

Thando Lukuko - Chair, Fossil Free South Africa

David Le Page. -Coordinator, Fossil Free SA & UCT alumnus

Sarah Robyn Farrell - Campaigner, Fossil Free SA & UCT Masters Student 

James Granelli - Campaigner, Fossil Free SA & UCT Honours Student.

Daniella Mhangwana - UCT Green Campus Initiative Chairperson, 2023. 

James Irlam - UCT Senior Lecturer: Evidence Based Health Care & Environmental Health

Stephen Horn - Country Director, Clean Creatives South Africa, alumnus - BA (Hons) 2015 - Nonhlanhla Nyusile + GCI Member

Cecile Matabaro - UCT Finance student and finance coordinator at African Climate Alliance

Hannah Wolpe - Masters of Public Health student 

Rae Ragoobeer - UCT Studying student 

Naeema Warasally - UCT Green Campus Initiative Transformation Project leader 2022/23

Lyn Horn - UCT PASS staff member

Malaika Delport - UCT BA FAM Student 

Sasha Rodenacker - UCT Student 

Unathi Maake - UCT student + GCI member