Consensus or cheap talk? The discursive politics of South Africa’s just energy transition

The just transition concept has been hypothesised to serve as a unifying framework for designing socially accepted fossil fuel phaseout policies. Whether the concept actually moves actors towards political consensus remains contested. Using South Africa as an example and leveraging text-as-data approaches, the authors map public debate of just transitions and examine whether introduction of the Just Transition Framework and Just Energy Transition Partnership re-orients or reinforces existing actor positions. The paper analyses nearly 2,300 South African news articles published between 2008 and 2023. It then deconstructs just transition narratives, which are classified into three distinct political stances: skeptics, realists, and opportunists. The authors find that while just transition policies foster a common commitment to climate and social concerns, they do not resolve underlying political tensions. More generally, this analysis demonstrates how observable changes in discursive shifts can indicate feasibility conditions within policy formulation stages.