An edited version of this article was published by News24 on 15 July 2026.
Lobbying in South Africa is currently under public scrutiny – receiving renewed public interest. That is welcome. But the debate too often centres on access to politicians or the possibility of money changing hands. These are legitimate concerns, yet they risk obscuring the much bigger issue. Democracies need policymakers to hear from all stakeholders: labour, civil society as well as business. The real danger arises when the most powerful private interests are able to shape public policy in ways that privilege their own commercial objectives over the country’s long-term developmental goals.
Few examples illustrate this more clearly than climate policy.
Just Share has spent years examining corporate lobbying on climate policy, culminating in our report The Obstruction Playbook: How corporate lobbying threatens South Africa’s Just Transition. Our research shows that sustained lobbying by powerful business interests has weakened key pieces of climate legislation over many years, with significant implications for South Africa’s economic resilience, environmental sustainability and international competitiveness.
While political scandals rightly expose the worst of lobbying, we cannot afford to wait for the next crisis to fix a system that is broken. The greater risk is that sustained corporate influence quietly reshapes legislation in ways that affect the country for decades.
Firstly, lobbying is not simply an ethics issue – it is a governance issue.
Most of the public discussion on lobbying focuses on potential corruption or undue access. But companies don’t need to bribe public officials to influence policy. They can achieve similar outcomes by persuading government to dilute regulations, delay implementation or introduce exemptions that favour private interests. When this happens repeatedly, the result is policy capture: legislation that reflects the priorities of the most influential stakeholders rather than the broader public interest.
Policy capture is rarely dramatic. It happens one consultation, one submission, one delay and one concession at a time.
That is exactly what Just Share’s lobbying work has documented. Over many years, industry bodies repeatedly advanced familiar arguments: stronger climate regulation would destroy jobs, undermine competitiveness and threaten economic growth. While these concerns deserve consideration, our evidence shows that sustained lobbying secured significant concessions and lengthy delays that substantially reduced the effectiveness of both the Carbon Tax Act of 2019 and the Climate Change Act of 2024.
This demonstrates that lobbying in South Africa is not episodic. It is strategic. It follows a well-established playbook that relies on persistence, resources and privileged access to influence policy over time.
Secondly, the costs of corporate lobbying are borne by everyone else.
Corporate lobbying is often framed as companies defending their legitimate interests. Business should absolutely have the opportunity to participate in policymaking. Every successful lobbying campaign creates winners and losers. When well-resourced interests succeed in weakening climate policy, taxpayers shoulder larger future costs, workers lose opportunities in emerging industries, communities continue to bear the burden of pollution, investors face greater transition risks and South Africa becomes less competitive in a rapidly changing global economy.
Lobbying is often described as companies “having a seat at the table”. But when only the best-resourced interests occupy most of the seats, the public ends up paying for the decisions that follow. The costs of delayed climate action do not disappear. They are simply shifted to society.
Thirdly, transparency is necessary but not sufficient.
Calls for lobbying registers, disclosure of meetings and declarations of interests are important and long overdue. Greater transparency would help South Africans understand who is attempting to influence public policy and on whose behalf.
But transparency alone cannot prevent policy capture.
Our research points to the need for a broader reform agenda. Alongside greater disclosure requirements, South Africa needs more inclusive policymaking processes that ensure a wider range of voices are meaningfully represented, rather than allowing industry associations to dominate debate. Government should also subject claims about economic impacts, job losses and competitiveness to rigorous, independent scrutiny before they shape legislation.
More Just Share research on lobbying: Corporate climate lobbying in South Africa: an introduction
South Africa has devoted considerable attention to regulating election funding and public procurement because we recognise that money shapes public decisions. Yet once legislation begins to take shape, there are remarkably few safeguards against concentrated corporate influence. As government considers legislation such as the Gas Bill, the need for those safeguards becomes even more pressing. Decisions taken today will shape South Africa’s energy system and economic trajectory for decades.
The question is not whether business should have a voice. It should. the question is whether any single set of well-resourced interests should have a louder voice than the public interest.
The greatest threat to good policymaking is not always corruption. Sometimes it is perfectly legal influence exercised quietly, persistently and largely out of public view. Until South Africa builds stronger safeguards against policy capture, our laws will continue to reflect not only the public interest but also the interests of those best placed to influence them.
Lara French is an anaylst at Just Share.