Contents lists available at ScienceDirect The Extractive Industries and Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/exis Original article Unconventionally contentious: Frack Free South Africa’s challenge to the oil and gas industry Jasper Finkeldey Essex Business School, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Energy policy South Africa Hydraulic fracturing Social movements Contestation ABSTRACT Exploration applications that could lead to unconventional gas exploitation in large parts of South Africa have encountered sustained opposition by social movements. This article looks into Frack Free South Africa's (FFSA) challenges to the government-supported development strategy of shale gas as a supposed means to create jobs and ensure energy autonomy. Adding to discussions in social movement scholarship this article contributes by exploring political, spatial and organizational opportunities afforded by FFSA's activist campaign. The article concludes that in order to grow the movement needs to embrace more inclusive campaign strategies. 1. Introduction Since the first applications for exploratory drillingwere lodged in 2011, South Africa has witnessed sustained challenges to hydraulic fracturing from social movements. Debates over fracking in South Africa are since marked by “sharp confrontations” between proponents and opponents (Ingle and Atkinson, 2015, 539). In the US context, where hydraulic fracturing has the largest footprint, social movement resistance to the drilling technique has found remarkable scholarly at- tention in recent years (Ladd, 2018; Pearson, 2017; Buday, 2017; Dokshin, 2016; Vasi et al., 2016; Derrickson et al., 2014). Studies on the prospects of hydraulic fracturing in South Africa still lack systematic inquiries into social movement action however. This paper contributes by looking at the political opportunity structures (cf. Tilly and Tarrow, 2015; Tarrow, 2011; Kriesi, 2004) afforded to Frack Free South Africa (FFSA in the following), a social movement formed in late 2015. Opportunities are not merely afforded by the political system that the movement confronts. By adding to the existing literature on op- portunity structures, I offer a discussion of spatial as well as organiza- tional opportunity structures in which FFSA navigate. Spatial oppor- tunities highlight the potentials afforded by the social geography of places. Communities previously impacted by mining are less likely to form sustained opposition to new applications for example. Organizational opportunities point to the potential of social movements to attract followership. Gauging the political, spatial and organizational opportunities will help to understand mobilization against fracking and thinking through the specificities of current mobilization dynamics in South Africa. Activism of FFSA is particularly active in the Eastern parts of the country, with core participants being conservation-minded white professionals. This article also shows how this support-base limits the potential for mobilization. Opinions on the prospect of hydraulic fracturing 1 in South Africa are fractured. The governing African National Congress (ANC) repeatedly insisted that it considered unconventional gas development via hy- draulic fracturing a “game-changer” for South Africa. Proponents in- cluding the outgoing President Jacob Zuma and former Minister of Mineral Resources highlighted the potentials of hydraulic fracturing for energy security and autonomy, cheap electricity, and job creation. President Cyril Ramaphosa who will stand for his first election in 2019 offered his sympathy to new renewable energy procurement and stalled new nuclear energy provisions. Ramaphosa’s stance with regard to fracking is anyone’s guess. However, the newly appointed Minister of Mineral Resources Gwede Mantashe voiced his support for the drilling technique as early as 2014 and renewed his approval for the drilling more recently (Infrastructure News, 2014). In pro-unconventional gas speeches, ANC politicians often relied on corporate-funded studies suggesting strong corporate-state entangle- ments in the newly emerging industry. The energy sector of South Africa has long been revolving around the “mineral-energy complex” (Fine and Rustomjee, 1996) of which oil and gas could be a new https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2018.08.006 Received 15 March 2018; Received in revised form 14 August 2018; Accepted 14 August 2018 E-mail address: J.finke@essex.ac.uk. 1 Evensen et al. (2014) have argued that the term “fracking” evokes negative connotations and should be further qualified in discussions. In this article, I will refer to “fracking” as a term mainly, but not solely, used by activists. When the potential merits and risks were debated in parliament in Cape Town for instance, the debate was tabled as “fracking and other means of gas extraction with reference to application for exploration licences”. Activists use the term “fracking” in a pejorative register, while “shale gas” or “tight gas” are terms mainly used by corporations like Shell. The Extractive Industries and Society 5 (2018) 461–468 Available online 16 October 2018 2214-790X/ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. T