OLIVER METH | The stink is hard to ignore ― fuel shortages don’t justify Sapref’s revival

Right now, with fuel shortages biting and prices rising, it is easy to panic and reach for quick fixes.

For many people the government’s plan, spearheaded by eThekwini municipality, of reopening Sapref (Shell & BP) in South Durban might sound like common sense, like a way to stabilise supply and bring some relief. But I cannot shake the feeling that we have seen this story before, and we know exactly how it ends, not with relief, but with communities once again carrying the cost of decisions made far away from where the real impact is felt.

And now, added to this moment of crisis, is a deal that should concern all of us — the sale of Sapref to the state, through the Central Energy Fund, for just R1.

On paper, it may sound like a strategic move to take control of critical infrastructure, but when you look closer, it raises more questions than answers.

This seemingly simple transaction came with the reported release of Shell and BP from environmental and clean-up liabilities, effectively allowing them to walk away from decades of pollution while handing over a refinery that requires massive rehabilitation and maintenance costs just to function again.

I think about my hometown in South Durban, not as a policy debate but as a place where people live their daily lives under the shadow of industry, where the smell of sulphur is not unusual, where children grow up knowing what it feels like to struggle for breath, and where parents worry every day about what the air is doing to their families. Sapref was part of a long history of environmental injustice that treated our black working-class communities as if their health and dignity were expendable.

For years, people in Merebank, Wentworth, Clairwood and surrounding areas have spoken about burning eyes, chest pains, constant coughing and high rates of asthma among children.

This is not just anecdotal, it is backed by research, including work by UKZN’s Prof Rajen Naidoo, which shows that air pollution in South Durban has long-term and even generational health impacts, affecting lung development and overall life chances, meaning the damage does not stop when emissions stop. It carries on in people’s bodies and in their futures, forming what can only be described as a lasting environmental legacy.

If we are serious about moving forward, then the conversation cannot just be about restarting old infrastructure. It has to be about reimagining what energy security looks like in a country like ours, about investing in cleaner, safer alternatives that create jobs without destroying people’s health, and about accountability, making sure those who caused harm are part of fixing it, not walking away from it.

So when we are told that reopening Sapref could help solve today’s fuel problems, I struggle to accept that framing, because it ignores the full cost of what is being proposed. It ignores the fact that this refinery comes with a history of harm that has never been properly addressed, and overlooks the reality that the public has effectively inherited both the risk and the bill, while private companies have been let off the hook.

This is where the idea of a Just Transition becomes important, because more than just a slogan, it is supposed to mean that we do things differently, that we do not repeat the same patterns of harm in the name of progress, that we centre the people who have suffered the most.

Yet reopening Sapref in its current form feels like the opposite of that. It feels like a continuation of the same logic that says some communities must sacrifice so that others can have stability.

If we are serious about moving forward, then the conversation cannot just be about restarting old infrastructure. It has to be about reimagining what energy security looks like in a country like ours, about investing in cleaner, safer alternatives that create jobs without destroying people’s health, and about accountability, making sure those who caused harm are part of fixing it, not walking away from it.

The danger of reopening Sapref is not just what it does today, but what it signals for the future. It tells us that when things get tough, we fall back on the same harmful systems, that justice can be postponed, and that the voices of affected communities can be sidelined yet again.

We are at a moment where the choices we make will shape the kind of country we become, and while fuel shortages are real and urgent, they cannot be used to justify decisions that deepen inequality and environmental harm, because if we do that, then we are not moving forward at all, we are simply repeating the past, and calling it progress.

Oliver Meth was born in Wentworth, south of Durban on the fenceline of the oil refinery. He is a political and development communications strategist