Act now: A new action for our UCT campaign

We have a significant opportunity for YOU to help progress our campaign asking UCT to start divesting its endowment fund from fossil fuels THIS YEAR, to start to foster a genuinely socially responsible investment industry in South Africa. 

Please ask your department, school or organisation to write to the new UCT Council, urging it to start divesting the UCT endowment from fossil fuels this year, in partnership with other institutions.

A quick overview

We’re now asking UCT departments, Cape Town schools, supportive environmental organisations, NGOs and individuals to write to the newly appointed Council in support of UCT adopting a programme of accelerated leadership on fossil fuel divestment. 

Specifically, we are calling on the new Council to ensure that THIS YEAR:

• UCT diverts R300 million, less than 5% of the current endowment, to seed-fund a new fossil-free and socially responsible investment fund, as a first step towards total divestment over five years.*

• UCT writes to other leading SA universities with endowments, as well as leading philanthropies and retirement funds, asking them to partner in seed-funding further fossil-free and socially responsible investment funds, to help kickstart a truly climate-responsible and ethical investment sector in SA.*

Your support now can also help us in an upcoming event:
On 21 October, we will be formally presenting the case for divestment to the UCT panel on responsible investment. We’d like to be able to point to very broad community support – your organisation’s support – for this initiative on that occasion.

Get the UCT campaign letter template & email addresses now >

More about the campaign

You can continue to keep up to date with the campaign at fossilfreesa.org.za/uct.

As you probably already know, the world is in a climate emergency caused mostly by carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. Despite overwhelming agreement by governments that carbon emissions must be cut urgently, fossil fuel companies continue to extract coal, gas and oil in enormous quantities. They are destroying a human-friendly climate on Earth, they create deadly air pollution that kills millions of people prematurely every year; they destroy valuable land and wildlife, foster great corruption and foment resource wars. Their products cause economic instability and the likely decline of their industries risks huge damage to investors. Overwhelmingly, the first to suffer climate and pollution damage are poor people, marginalised people, and Black and brown people.

All too many of us, whether we like it or not, indirectly give strength to fossil fuel companies via our investments in retirement funds, or via the savings and investments of institutions we support, such as churches and universities.

One of the most powerful strategies for taking on these companies is called divest-reinvest. It means withdrawing investments in companies like Sasol, and finding more sustainable ways to reinvest that money. Around the world, hundreds of institutions are taking steps to divest, ranging from cities like Cape Town and London, to pension funds and philanthropies. Funds worth a total $14 trillion have already taken decisions to divest to varying degrees. 

"Fossil Fuels cause economic instability and the likely decline of their industries risks huge damage to investors. One of the most powerful strategies to change this is to divest-reinvest."

But despite the particular urgency of the climate threat to Africa, and despite having been asked to divest repeatedly over seven years, UCT has still not taken decisive action. This is particularly tragic because the university has it in its power not only to divest its own endowment of R6-7 billion, but also to foster a genuinely ethical investment industry in South Africa, by encouraging other institutions with social missions to follow suit and create not just one, but several fossil fuel-free and socially responsible (‘fossil-free ethical+’) funds.

With the support of many partners, the Fossil Free UCT campaign has been running for seven years, and has secured the creation of a university panel on responsible investment at UCT, a first for an African university. Yet the university’s efforts appear to have lost momentum. They risk becoming a fig leaf for business as usual, where rhetorical commitments far exceed real changes in practice. 

"UCT has it in its power not only to divest its own endowment of R6-7 billion, but also to foster a genuinely ethical investment industry in South Africa."

This would echo what has happened – or not happened – in the broader SA investment industry. Despite fifteen years of supposed progress on responsible investment in SA, UCT’s own researchers have written of how, ‘[SA] investors’ commitment to responsible investment appears to have exerted little influence on corporate behaviour and short-term investment trends.’

Where the Fossil Free SA UCT campaign stands

After seven years of campaigning (see below), earlier this year we again wrote to the Vice Chancellor, pointing out the worsening climate emergency. We asked her to listen to Convocation, and lead a coalition of SA universities diverting small portions of their endowments to creating fossil fuel-free ethical investment funds. 

We took pains not to focus on UCT’s slowness and inaction to date, but to rather frame this as an opportunity to build the university’s reputation and improve its investment strategy. We also asked the university to meet with three fund managers we know are willing in principle to open fossil fuel-free funds.

The response was very disappointing. The UPRI declined to meet with fund managers willing to help seed new fossil free and ethical funds. The Vice Chancellor declined our requests to put our case directly to Council and the Joint Investment Committee. The chair of Convocation has not responded to requests to meet to discuss the implementation of the motions passed by Convocation. The chair of the UPRI refused to even check the minutes of our most recent discussion.

We simply cannot understand how, while Australia, and the Amazon, and the Arctic burn, as locust plagues descend on East Africa, as methane begins erupting from the Antarctic sea floor, as the world’s biggest asset manager embraces divestment, UCT can be so lethargic on this issue.

We believe we have now nearly exhausted all reasonable internal channels of appeal within the university. 

But we’re not giving up.

You can help

Initiate a departmental, organisational or company letter to the new UCT Council in support of accelerated action on divestment, asking the council that THIS YEAR:

• UCT must divert R300 million, less than 5% of the current endowment, to seed-fund a new fossil-free and socially responsible investment fund, as a first step towards total divestment over five years.*

• UCT writes to other leading SA universities with endowments, as well as leading philanthropies and retirement funds, asking them to partner in seed-funding further fossil-free and socially responsible investment funds, to help kickstart a truly climate-responsible and ethical investment sector in SA.