For motorists in Gauteng, filling a tank now means confronting a number that has never appeared on a South African pump before: R30.95 per litre of petrol. That all-time high, set after the most recent monthly price adjustments, is the daily reality behind the political deliberations unfolding in Johannesburg. It is also the burden President Cyril Ramaphosa says the government is working to ease.
Speaking during an ANC engagement with the media in Johannesburg on Monday, Ramaphosa said the National Treasury is “giving consideration” to potential interventions that could soften the cost-of-living squeeze weighing on South Africans, a squeeze driven mainly by geopolitical turmoil and rising global oil prices. Options that might be announced at Wednesday’s medium-term budget policy statement could include fuel levy measures.
The president was careful not to promise relief without cost. Providing major fuel subsidies or cutting the fuel levy, he said, would take substantial revenue away from other critical government programmes and public services. “You must remember that when the fuel price rose a few months ago, the government intervened and poured into a subsidy system about R24bn. Now that is R24bn that we are removing from other programmes,” he said in response to a question from Business Day. “It does actually eat into our country’s reserves and our country’s fiscal position. We’ve got to consider the impact of anything we do.”
The pressure behind those words is visible at every fuel station in the country. Petrol prices have leapt nearly 50% and diesel prices 72% since domestic prices began spiking in response to constrained global oil supply triggered by the US-Iran conflict. South Africa is particularly exposed because it is a net importer of oil. “The issue of the fuel price is a problem globally. We’re not the only country affected by rising fuel prices, and of course there are various responses by various entities and governments and businesses, and we are giving serious consideration to what needs to be done,” Ramaphosa said.
Meanwhile, that consideration is being demanded loudly from within the ANC’s own alliance. Cosatu, the labour federation and a key ally of the ruling party, has pushed the National Treasury to bring back the general fuel levy reprieve that was implemented from April to June to soften the initial price shock. That earlier intervention came just before the first steep increase in petrol and diesel prices in April, when the Treasury cut the general fuel levy by R3 per litre, caving to pressure from Cosatu, Business Leadership South Africa, the DA and the Fuel Industry Association. The Treasury said at the time that it was forfeiting R17.2bn in revenue by slashing the levy, money that funds expenditure such as healthcare, education and policing.
The arithmetic of any new relief is therefore unforgiving. Offering more protection from the fuel price surge would further limit the fiscal space available to finance minister Enoch Godongwana, who is already contending with the Treasury’s withdrawal of a planned tax increase worth R20bn. For households absorbing the pump price, the answer will come only on Wednesday. “Now that [the fuel price] has gone up again, everyone in the world is giving consideration to what they should do, so are we. We are now giving consideration. It’s a budgetary issue,” Ramaphosa said, adding that South Africans would have to wait for Godongwana’s medium-term budget for a clear way forward.
There is, however, a brighter thread in the fiscal picture. Indications suggest 2026/27 revenue is running ahead of targets, with Bank of America predicting it will overshoot February assumptions by R70bn, driven largely by stronger corporate tax collections in the gold and precious metals sectors.
On the spending side, the Treasury has been broadly holding the line, according to Patrick Buthelezi, an economist at Sanlam Investments. “The wage bill, one of the biggest expenditure items, does not pose an immediate threat due to a three-year wage agreement which provides near-term certainty,” he said. “Additionally, controls on public service headcount and a voluntary early retirement programme should help contain the government wage bill.” But he cautioned that pressure remains on the Treasury to reduce elevated government debt, while commodity prices could turn and undermine corporate profitability, reducing revenue.
The full context of the deliberations is set out in Business Day’s coverage at https://www.businessday.co.za/news/2026-10-20-ramaphosa-weighs-fuel-relief-as-sas-cost-of-living-soars/. Until Wednesday, the families and commuters paying record prices at the pump are left waiting for an answer that balances their relief against the programmes the money would otherwise fund.