Five civil society organisations — the Housing Assembly, Foxglove, Open Secrets, Research + Action and Planetary AI Collective (with legal analysis by Open Secrets and the Legal Resources Centre) — have submitted their joint report to the South African Human Rights Commission on the human rights impacts of the country’s data centre boom.
South Africa is experiencing the fastest data centre expansion on the continent. The country already hosts more than 60 known facilities with a disclosed capacity of roughly 500 MW — equivalent to more than a quarter of Cape Town’s peak electricity demand. It now faces a pipeline of new, ‘hyperscale’ facilities that would more than triple the sector’s electricity demand. Yet, no regulator sees its full footprint, and no rule requires operators to disclose what their facilities consume.
Some of the reports key findings include:
- By the industry’s standard cooling method, the approved Equinix facilities in Cape Town would consume over 4.4 billion litres of water a year — the annual water use of more than 18,000 South African households. Eight of every ten litres would evaporate, lost.
- The industry says data centres will fuel South Africa’s green energy transition. In practice, Eskom’s hard-won ±6 GW surplus — generated overwhelmingly by coal — is being marketed to data centre operators as a supply option. Nothing requires operators to build new clean generation to match their demand.
- Data centres are among the least efficient job creators per rand invested. The Wall Street Journal has reported on the “Job Creation Bust” of data centres in the US, and the Financial Times has done the same for the UK, saying: “There might be good reasons to build data centres in Britain. Job creation isn’t one of them”.
- Most operators in South Africa are US-owned, and a large share of the benefits is expected to flow out of the country — while the water, electricity and land costs stay.
- No law requires any of this to be disclosed. There is no public register of data centres, no mandatory reporting of water or electricity use, and no regulator that sees the sector’s full footprint.
In response, the organisations have urged the Commission to consider four measures:
- First, a national public inquiry into the need, scale and impacts of data centre development, as the foundation for a national regulatory framework rooted in constitutional rights. The framework should reconcile the patchwork of laws that currently apply to the sector and requires, among other things: mandatory disclosure of every facility’s water and electricity use, a public national register of data centres, binding community-benefit obligations of the kind already required of the mining and renewable-energy sectors, and human rights due diligence.
- Second, an independent assessment of the sector’s human rights, ecological and economic costs and benefits, to establish the factual baseline that is currently missing.
- Third, that government consider a temporary pause on new hyperscale approvals and expansions until that inquiry, framework and baseline are in place, as Singapore, the Netherlands, Ireland and New York have done.
- And fourth, create an independent panel to monitor facilities’ water, electricity and land use and their compliance with the law, with real penalties for operators who flout the rules.
Kashiefa Achmat, Housing Assembly, said: “The Housing Assembly has been fighting for decent housing for all for more than fifteen years. That fight is about land: who gets the well-located land in this city, close to work, to schools, to transport. Our people have been pushed to the outskirts since apartheid, and we are still waiting.“Now that same well-located land is being handed to data centres, and the water and electricity our members queue for goes with it. We are not against development. We want investment and we want jobs. But it must not come at the expense of the poor. Community participation cannot be a tick-box – nothing about us, without us.”
Ariella Scher, head of legal, Open Secrets, said: “South Africa has an extensive constitutional and legislative framework which centres affected persons and communities and the protection of their rights. However, we need to move swiftly to ensure the sustainability of that regime in the face of an expanding tech sector and the expected proliferation of data centres. We have therefore asked the SAHRC to consider the need to develop a framework law for data centres which recognises the risks they pose and responds appropriately, thereby safeguarding people over profit.”
Martha Dark, co-executive director, Foxglove, said: “We have seen this playbook from US Big Tech companies again and again: turn up in a community, tell them as little as possible about the huge harm a data centre can cause, then leave the people living there to pick up the pieces. Other countries swallowed Big Tech’s PR spin, didn’t realise the extent of the damage until it had been done, and are only now scrambling to catch up with regulation and bans on new AI data centres. “South Africa still has the chance to learn from other countries’ mistakes and force Big Tech companies to set out the full cost before these huge power and water hungry facilities are built – but that window is closing fast.”
