Sunsetting 64 Megatons

“On many levels, the sessions with Anton have been dense, focused, and highly inspiring. He approaches 'Sunsetting 64 Megatons' from multiple angles, drawing on a profound understanding of industry gained from his bold career shift from engineering to documentary photography. This background allows him to move effortlessly between (visual) languages, differing logics, and fields of inquiry, fueled by a restless drive to investigate the urgent issue of the world’s largest single-site carbon footprint – the Secunda plant in South Africa.

His work goes beyond surface-level observation; he uses the Secunda plant as a lens to examine a complex web of economic, (post)colonial, and ecological consequences, hence demanding a multi-layered thinking and the ability to translate this artistically. Following his ambition to create a profound, well-researched artistic monument that challenges existing policies for the sake of a better life on this planet, this Artist Feature is just the beginning…

During our conversations, we focused on conceptual complexities and positioning the project within the artistic field – navigating references, platforms, grants, and collaborations. While these elements are standard in photography curricula, Anton as career-shifter relies solely on his own research. With my insights of the photographic ecosystem (network & methodologies), this is where I can provide the most meaningful contribution to his journey." (Caroline von Courten)

The Secunda plant sits on the Mpumalanga Highveld in South Africa. From a distance, its smokestacks do not stand out from the other coal infrastructure that litters the region. The plant is unique, however: it was born of the apartheid regime’s isolation. When the global community imposed oil embargoes in the nineteen-seventies, energy independence became a state priority. The drive for autarky was framed as Afrikaner nationalism, a survivalist ethos deeply rooted in Dutch Protestant colonial history.

South Africa has a geological problem: it has no oil, but significant coal deposits. The reality linked the apartheid regime directly to the industrial ambitions of nineteen-twenties Germany. Facing a similar resource deficit, Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch, German chemists working at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Coal Research in the 1920s, developed a process, in 1924, to convert coal into synthetic fuel. When Hitler rose to power, in 1934, he recognized the process as the lifeblood of the German war machine and invested heavily in its optimization.

The technology was a spoil of war. While the Nazis refined the process for tanks, post-war America exported the industrial know-how. The U.S. engineering firm Fluor won the contract to build Sasol II and III, constructing the world’s largest coal-to-liquid complex. Today, it remains the single largest point-source of carbon dioxide on Earth emitting up to sixty-four megatons annually.

In the nineteen-nineties, the transition to democracy revealed a paradox. The African National Congress, which had plotted to sabotage Sasol II in the early eighties, found itself governing a state addicted to it. Today, the dependency is absolute. Sasol generates roughly five per cent of the G.D.P., anchors government pension funds, and injects hundreds of base chemicals from fertilizer to fuel into the national supply chain. It is a petrocultural knot that resists simple excision.

Does the plant work for us, or do we work for the plant? I served the plant. In 2018, I worked as a contractor, deploying A.I. to predict and reduce mechanical failures. The proximity revealed the scale of the entanglement. The facility is not a discrete object but a viscous force, leaking its history into the soil and its chemistry into the air. It creates a petrochemical debt, a burden that is not merely abstract finance but a physical accumulation of decay that the land and its people are forced to carry.

To offset a single year of Secunda’s emissions, one would need to plant a forest the size of Finland. The carbon dioxide accumulates, trapping heat in the atmosphere. The plant is reaching its end of life, yet it remains profitable only when Brent crude exceeds fifty-five dollars. As prices hover near the threshold, the capital required to heal the landscape evaporates. The question is historical: Will South Africa mimic Germany, the inventor of the process, where billions have been spent on an exit that still requires pumps to run in perpetuity to keep the land from drowning? Or can the nation find the collective resolve to prioritize the biosphere it inhabits?

Anton Bossenbroek took part in our Face-to-Face educational feedback program with Artistic Director Caroline von Courten.