A war thousands of kilometres away is hitting South African motorists and industries at the pump and the government's response reveals just how exposed the country truly is.
Image: INTERNAL
A war thousands of kilometres away is hitting South African motorists and industries at the pump and the government's response reveals just how exposed the country truly is.
Over the past two months, petrol prices have surged by R6.29 per litre and diesel by a staggering R12.60 per litre, a direct consequence of chaos in global oil markets triggered by the US-Iran war that erupted on 28 February 2026. The conflict's most economically damaging consequence has been the closure of the Strait of Hormuz (the narrow waterway through which 20% of the world's oil supply normally flows). With the war now entering its fourth month, global oil prices have broken and held above $100 a barrel, reaching $125 at points, and economists are revising their forecasts upward for the rest of the year. For South Africa, a country that imports the vast majority of its refined petroleum, the fallout has been immediate and severe.
The government's short-term response has been a fuel tax cut, a R3.00 per litre reduction on petrol and R3.93 per litre on diesel, announced jointly by the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources and National Treasury. It is a meaningful intervention, and consumers will feel the relief. But the key word is "temporary." At least half of those tax cuts are scheduled to be reversed from July, meaning the relief window is narrow and the underlying pain will return. Minister Gwede Mantashe, in his budget vote speech on Tuesday, was candid about this limitation. The tax relief buys time. It does not buy solutions.
What Mantashe's address made plain is that South Africa's fuel price problem is not simply a function of global events, it is a function of policy decisions accumulated over decades. The country's refinery capacity has been in slow decline for years, and South Africa has increasingly come to rely on imported refined petroleum products rather than processing crude oil domestically.
"The reality confronting us," Mantashe said, "is that South Africa remains overly dependent on imported refined petroleum products. It is neither sustainable nor just for a country with significant mineral and petroleum potential, such as ours, to remain exposed to external supply shocks in this manner."
It is a pointed admission. South Africa sits on meaningful mineral and petroleum resources yet finds itself almost entirely at the mercy of international supply chains, exchange rate fluctuations, and, now, Middle Eastern conflict. Every time a crisis occurs somewhere in the global oil system, it lands disproportionately hard here.
Mantashe's proposed solution is the South African National Petroleum Company, the SANPC. The Bill to establish this entity would create a state-owned company empowered to participate directly in the upstream oil and gas sectors and, critically, to expand the country's domestic refining capacity. It is, in essence, a reversal of the trajectory of the past decade: instead of winding down refining infrastructure, the state would rebuild and extend it.
The minister is pushing for the Bill to be fast-tracked, and his urgency is understandable given the current climate. But the proposal has not gone unchallenged. Environmental groups have raised serious concerns not only about the climate implications of investing in new fossil fuel infrastructure, but about the health risks associated with refinery operations in communities near industrial zones. These are not fringe objections. They sit at the intersection of South Africa's energy policy, its climate commitments, and the wellbeing of its most vulnerable citizens.
Mantashe's response has been direct: "Petroleum security is not a theoretical debate, but an economic necessity and a national imperative." He is not wrong that energy security matters. But dismissing environmental concerns as "pressure from certain lobby groups" risks closing off a conversation the country genuinely needs to have — about how it builds resilience without locking itself further into fossil fuel dependency at a moment when the global energy transition is accelerating.
For now, South Africa's fuel supply is stable, and the minister has assured the public there is no immediate shortage. But the current crisis has done something useful: it has stripped away any remaining ambiguity about the risks of import dependence. The question is not whether South Africa needs a longer-term energy strategy. It is whether the strategy it chooses will solve one vulnerability without creating another. That is the harder conversation and it is just beginning.
Written by:
*Chloe Maluleke
Associate at BRICS+ Consulting Group
Russia & Middle East Specialist
**The Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of Independent Media or IOL.
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