EXCLUSIVE: Seriti Green’s Jasmin Pillay on the just energy transition in Mpumalanga
Jasmin Pillay joined Seriti Green as Chief People Officer a month ago, holding enterprise and social development alongside the internal organisation. Speaking to ENN, she argues that the just energy transition in Mpumalanga rests on communities participating in it rather than receiving it, and that the capabilities the projects need already exist locally.
“Business growth and community opportunity go hand in hand,” Jasmin Pillay says of why enterprise and social development sit in the same job as the internal organisation at Seriti Green. “What happens inside the company or the organisation and what happens outside really are closely connected.”
Most businesses measure success by growth, she says, and Seriti Green does too. “But more importantly, how do we measure how people and communities participate in that growth?” Holding both responsibilities, she argues, is what lets her see the whole picture, connecting the capabilities the business needs internally with the opportunities being created in the surrounding communities.
Mpumalanga carries that question harder than most places. Coal has held up local economies and livelihoods there for generations, which Pillay takes as the starting point rather than the obstacle. “Many of the skills that we need in renewable energy already exist in these coal communities.”
A credible offer to those workers has to be an opportunity, she says, not a description of one. “People must be able to see a realistic place for themselves in the future economy.” Transition creates uncertainty and questions about the future, and the answer sits in skill development, employment pathways and enterprise development. The test she applies is whether it feels practical and achievable to the person being offered it.
Seriti Green runs job seeker and vendor platforms in the province, and Pillay reads them as two lenses, one on the opportunities and one on the support people need to reach them. “There’s no shortage of willingness or ambition in the local communities. It’s there in abundance.” What the data shows is who is looking and where experience, capability or readiness is missing, which is the point at which the company can act.
The scale she has joined is already set. Ummbila Emoyeni’s first 155MW phase entered commercial operation in August, a R5 billion build between Bethal and Morgenzon generating around 525 GWh a year, with a third of the output running Seriti Resources’ own mines and the balance wheeled to corporate customers. Two further phases have reached financial close, taking planned investment to R25 billion across a programme of 900MW.
She came to Seriti Green from Microsoft and PETRONAS, one reinforcing innovation and capability at scale, the other long-term thinking and working with complexity. Asked what she has had to unlearn, she declines the premise. “I haven’t reached that point yet where it’s okay, I’ve really got to unlearn something.” What she is holding instead is a caution that what worked before will not lift and shift into a new industry. “It’s really just about listening, learning, adapting, and bringing forward trying and testing, trying, testing, failing, trying again.”
A month into the job she was driven out to Ummbila Emoyeni with chief executive Peter Venn and saw wind turbines for the first time in her life. “There’s a point where you sort of just come over the hill and then you start to see the turbines emerge. It was absolutely majestic. You’re looking at something that will be part of South Africa’s future for decades to come.”
Three years out, she names participation, progress and opportunity as her measures. More local people taking part in the transition instead of watching it happen to them. More people moving into skills pathways and sustainable careers. More local businesses growing into enterprises able to compete independently.
“They really do need to feel that they have a genuine stake and be able to say, yes, this is a place for me. I can see my future and I can see my kids’ future in this particular place. They have to be able to see the reality in the commitments that we’re making today.”
