ABSTRACT
The South African government was democratized in 1994, but since then has not responded effectively to either inherited or new environmental injustices. The era of neoliberalism since 1994 affected both global and local elite strategies for environmental governance: 'market solutions for market problems'. The combination of neoliberal economic policies and resource-extractive dependency left Africa much more exposed than it should have been, by the time of the commodity price downturn. The framing for environmental injustices that best reflects the South African economy's and state's power in Africa is the theory of sub-imperialism. After 1994, instead of offering cessation and reparations to the region, the new ANC rulers in Pretoria mainly amplified existing sub-imperial power relations. The South African Government Communications and Information Service conceded that in the state's most thorough self-assessment, a dozen years after liberation, there was "a general decline in the state of the environment".
