Despite the context of the climate emergency and debates on a ‘just’ and ‘green’ energy transition, it is evident that coal continues to play a key role in global energy geopolitics. South Africa is the largest carbon emitter in the region, and the 13th in the world, with a heavy reliance on coal energy production. In 2021, COP26 established a Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) with South Africa to accelerate its transition from coal. However, the debilitating and escalating national energy crisis has been used to extend the life of coal-fired power stations and bring online new coal, nuclear, and gas energy. In this context, the Waterberg coalfield with South Africa’s largest remaining coal reserves and the toxic Medupi coal-fired power station is a site of contested coal development. Coal continues to be identified as a fuel of the future, crucial for energy security and development in a situation of energy crisis, while fossil fuel catastrophe in the region forecloses possibilities of habitable futures and causes premature death for those living around the coal-fired power stations. This paper reflects on the different enduring and contradictory attachments to coal, not only from political elites and mining and energy corporations but also from ordinary residents and workers as a means to a good life in this coalfield. In so doing, the paper explores the complex entanglements of coal and its affective, temporal, and place-based dynamics and how this shapes the politics and imaginaries of a just transition.