Paper short abstract:

Amidst the ruinations of the entrenched minerals-energy-complex, Limpopo´s regional government is pushing an industrial megaproject north of Makhado. Taking up debates on extractivism, this paper turns to the (un)making of futures in the contestations over this dreamscape of modernity.

Paper long abstract:

The southern site of the Musina Makhado Special Economic Zone (MMSEZ), which is backed by Chinese investors, is proposed to consist of several mineral beneficiation plants – and, originally, a coal-fired power plant. The plans for the MMSEZ are connected to recent projects of expanding the resource frontier of industrial mining towards the province Limpopo.

In this paper, I argue that the imagined future of the MMSEZ haunts the present as the continuation of an ancestral catastrophe.

This metallurgical cluster of the MMSEZ, planned to be situated along the N1 between Musina and Makhado, is contested by various actors.

While the architects of this dreamscape of modernity promise ´the liberation from the shackles of poverty and unemployment´, environmental NGOs anticipate the effects of currently unfolding circuits of extraction to be environmentally ruinous. However, the alliance against the MMSEZ is characterized by – in Isabelle Stengers formulation – ´interests in common which are not the same interests´.

Although these processes occur as industrial mining itself is facing ruination, the proposal of the MMSEZ illustrates the durability of the interaction of an extractive governmentality and racial capitalism.

Based on an interrogation of Elizabeth Povinelli´s distinction between ancestral and coming catastrophe, I analyse how these histories are folded into the interests within the alliance against the MMSEZ – particularly in the responses to its Environmental Impact Assessment.

This paper is based upon preparatory fieldwork in the context of my PhD project in 2022, as well as on an analysis of the ongoing lawfare.