South Africa’s Fossil Fuel Industry Is Cleaning Up Its Image With Sports
Riding high on national pride in the Springboks, South Africa’s favourite rugby players are now touted as part of the “Engen family”, aligning themselves with a major fossil fuel producer. This is a stark example of sportswashing as a distraction from the grim reality of fossil fuel extraction. “Clean money” for sports may be in shorter supply, but is helping these dirty companies trash the planet and our future worth the short-term income?
Politically Aweh, South Africa’s cheekiest satirical news show, have now launched a new collaboration with Badvertising, exposing the mechanics of sportswashing like never before.
Anchor host KG Mokgadi valiantly attempts to speak GenZee-lese, aided and abetted by comedy legend and long-time Politically Aweh staff writer, Angel Campey, in a side-splitting parody of online product review videos. But this time the products are South Africa’s favourite sportswashing “soap brands”.
The products in question? “Don’t Skip Ad” washing powder from Astron Energy, “Oh No” liquid detergent from Sasol, “Total Vanish” spray from TotalEnergies, and “Sunlite Reputation Laundering Bar Soap” from Engen.
“For fossil fuel companies whose pollution threatens the future of sport, using sponsorship to ‘sportswash’ their reputations is like tobacco companies sponsoring cancer clinics—these deals that pretend to be friendly are really smokescreens allowing harm to continue. Politically Aweh vividly exposes these underhand corporate tactics. With air pollution from fossil fuels alone killing between 5 and over 8 million people a year, it’s time to kick major polluters out of sports like football and rugby and stop them from exploiting games to launder their reputations.”
– Andrew Simms, Badvertising campaign
As climate change continues to have a profound impact on the lives of sportspeople, fans and industry professionals, it should be a no-brainer to not actively assist fossil fuel companies to burn through planetary limits. Unfortunately the smell of money has created a serious disconnect. Women’s sports especially struggle for funding, so are an ideal target for companies wishing to wash the impact of their activities. With few other options, many “take the deal” - such as Banyana Banyana with Sasol.
“While Sasol’s emissions drive up global temperatures, affecting women’s health especially, their new corporate social responsibility product called Always Lying To You Ultra, for extra heavy periods of bad news like this, is really effective.”
- Angel Campey reviewing Sasol’s “sportswashing product line”
When it came to Fifa’s major sponsorship deal with Saudi Aramco, which was announced in April 2024, this was a step too far for over 130 professional women players - from 26 countries, with over 2 700 caps between them - who released a statement that “Aramco sponsorship is a middle finger to women’s football”. Calling for an end to this deal, they argued that Aramco is:
“98.5% owned by Saudi Arabia, who have a track record of human rights violations against women and other minorities, including the LGBTQIA+ community… As the largest state-owned oil and gas company in the world, Saudi Aramco is one of the corporations which is most responsible for burning football’s future. Grassroots football across the world is being smashed by extreme heat, drought, fires and floods but, as we all pay the consequences, Saudi Arabia rakes in its profits, with Fifa as its cheerleader.”
The choice is simple. We need Siya Kolisi and his champion teammates to break up with Big Oil (in this case Engen) and protect the future of all the kids who look up to them. But it can be challenging for athletes to speak out against sponsors.
That’s what makes the letter to Fifa striking - and possibly a turning point in the conversation on fossil fuel sponsorships and sports. Ayisat Yusuf, a retired Nigerian pro footballer who has played in 3 Fifa Women’s World Cups, was one of the signatories to the letter. In a video message to Politically Aweh, she said
“I signed the letter to Fifa about the Aramco sponsorship because fossil fuel sportswashing has no place in our sport.”
Her message is particularly powerful when considering the athlete hails from a country that has been devastated by oil pollution in the Niger delta. Yusuf appears to be one of only a handful of African athletes who have so far felt able to directly challenge fossil fuel sponsorships of sports.
Further abroad, earlier this year British Olympic Gold Medallist Etienne Stott MBE told Politically Aweh viewers:
“Fossil fuel lobbyists [are] cynically exploiting the power and beauty of sport and it has to stop. Anyone who cares about sports — its fans and its participants — and in fact life itself, should be calling out greenwash. We need to kick out fossil money from sport, and it needs to happen today.”
With this movement gaining momentum around the world, it remains to be seen which professional South African athlete or sports federation will be the first to take a public stance against fossil fuel sponsorships in sports.
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