Why is everything so expensive?
It starts far away — in a barrel of oil on the other side of the world — and ends in your wallet, twice. Tap each step to read more.
1 The world sets the oil price — and we have no say
Crude oil is bought and sold in US dollars on global markets every single day. South Africa produces almost no crude oil of its own — we import nearly all of it. So when anything shakes the world: a war in the Middle East, OPEC cutting supply, a ship blocking the Suez Canal — the price jumps, and SA has to pay whatever the world charges.
Right now Brent crude — the benchmark SA uses — is elevated above its five-year average. That pressure hasn't gone away.
You didn't vote for any of this and you can't negotiate the price. But you pay it every time you buy petrol, take a taxi, or buy food that travelled on a truck. SA is a price taker — not a price maker — on oil.
2 The rand makes it even worse
Oil is priced in US dollars — but South Africans earn and spend rands. So every time the rand weakens against the dollar, the same barrel of oil costs us more. The rand is deeply sensitive to things most people never hear about: US interest rate decisions, load-shedding headlines, SA's credit rating, and global investor mood.
A weaker rand isn't just an exchange rate on a news ticker — it is a hidden tax on every imported good: oil, wheat, cooking oil, medicine, and electronics.
When the rand weakens by just R1 against the dollar, petrol goes up by roughly R0.60 per litre. That's R24 extra every time you fill a 40L tank. Multiply that across taxis, delivery trucks, and every item on a shop shelf — and a weak rand drains your household budget quietly and steadily.
3 Petrol and diesel prices jump at the pump
Every first Wednesday of the month, the government (DMRE) adjusts the petrol price. It has limited choice — it must reflect the international oil cost, the rand/dollar rate, and a stack of levies (the Road Accident Fund, the General Fuel Levy, and customs duties). When oil is up and the rand is down at the same time, the pump price can surge sharply in a single month.
Petrol 95 inland hit R21–R22/L in early 2026. In 2021 it was around R16/L. That's roughly 35% more expensive in four years — far outpacing most people's salary increases.
A 40L tank fill that cost around R640 in 2021 now costs close to R860. That extra R220 comes straight out of the same money you use for groceries and school fees. And taxi fares track diesel — when diesel rises, the taxi industry pushes for fare increases, often approved by the regulator within weeks.
4 Delivering food to the shops costs more
South Africa's food supply chain runs almost entirely on diesel trucks. There is no meaningful freight rail for fresh food — the truck is king. Johannesburg to Cape Town is 1,400 km. A fully loaded truck burns over 400 litres of diesel on that trip. At today's diesel prices, that single trip costs more than R8,000 in fuel alone — up from around R6,200 in 2021.
Trucking companies pass every cent of that increase on to retailers, who pass it on to you. The cost of moving food is now baked into the price of everything on the shelf.
Even if the farmer's harvest is good and prices at the farm gate are stable, the food still has to travel. You feel this most on items that come from far away: fruit from Limpopo, vegetables from the Western Cape, fish from the coast. The further it travels, the bigger the diesel surcharge hidden in the price.
5 Your groceries cost more — Hit #1
Higher diesel doesn't just hit trucks. It hits the farmer's tractor, the irrigation pump drawing water from the borehole, the packing house running refrigeration, and the cold storage depot holding stock before distribution. Every link in the food chain burns diesel — so every link gets more expensive.
This is why bread, maize meal, chicken, cooking oil, and sugar have all risen significantly even in years when the rains were good and there was no shortage. Oil costs flow through everything.
Staple foods that feed most South African families have risen 30–50% since 2021. A 2.5kg bag of maize meal that cost around R24 in 2021 now often retails at R35–40. A 2L bottle of cooking oil went from around R28 to R48+. Bread from R14 to R19+. These are the items that cannot be cut from a tight budget.
6 Eskom burns diesel to keep the lights on
Eskom's coal-fired power stations are old and break down constantly — causing loadshedding. When they break, Eskom fires up emergency diesel-powered "peaking plants" called OCGTs (Open Cycle Gas Turbines). These are expensive to run even when diesel is cheap. When diesel is at R20+/litre, running them is catastrophically expensive.
In 2023 alone Eskom spent R49.8 billion on diesel — more money than many countries spend on their entire defence forces. Every rand of that had to come from somewhere: electricity tariffs.
Loadshedding isn't just the inconvenience of sitting in the dark. Every hour that gets "fixed" by a diesel plant adds to your next electricity bill. You pay twice: once in the candles and inverter batteries you buy during loadshedding, and once in the tariff increase that follows.
7 NERSA approves higher electricity tariffs
To recover those diesel costs and fund repairs to ageing coal stations, Eskom applies to the electricity regulator NERSA for tariff increases every year. NERSA must balance keeping Eskom financially afloat against protecting consumers. In recent years, Eskom's financial crisis has won that argument.
Your electricity bill has nearly tripled since 2015. A further ~18–20% increase was approved for 2025/26 — partially driven by the diesel cost shock from the loadshedding years.
If your electricity cost was R600/month in 2015, the same consumption now costs you closer to R1,600+/month — with no improvement in supply reliability. For households on prepaid, this means your R200 airtime voucher buys far fewer units than it did five years ago.
8 Factories, farms, and cold storage pay more too
Every part of the food chain depends on electricity: the chicken farm keeping broilers warm, the maize mill grinding your pap, the bakery baking bread at 4am, the cold storage depot keeping meat and dairy safe, and the supermarket running its fridges and tills. When Eskom raises tariffs, every single one of these businesses pays more — and passes it on.
Small businesses — the spaza shop, the butchery, the school tuckshop — have the least power to absorb these costs. They raise prices faster, because they have no choice.
The electricity cost is invisible inside the price of nearly everything you buy. A packet of frozen vegetables costs more partly because the cold chain that keeps it safe got more expensive. A loaf of bread costs more because the bakery's electricity bill jumped. You never see this cost itemised — but you feel it every month.
9 Your groceries cost more — Hit #2
So the same oil shock hits your grocery bill twice over: first through higher diesel (transport and farming costs) — and then again through higher electricity (processing, refrigeration, and retail costs). This is what makes South African food inflation so much more severe than in most comparable countries.
Most countries face one of these pressures at a time. South Africa faces both simultaneously, because our electricity grid depends heavily on diesel to stay online when coal fails. It is a structural problem that will take years and billions to fix.
A family that spent R3,000/month on food in 2021 now needs R4,200–R4,500 to buy the same basket. That's R1,200–R1,500 more every single month — not for more food, not for better food, but for exactly the same groceries. On a fixed income or a minimum wage, that gap doesn't close.
The bottom line
Everything that costs more in South Africa right now flows back to two things working together: a globally high oil price and a structurally weak electricity grid. Neither is your fault. Both are real, and both will take years to fully resolve. What you can do is understand the chain — so that when prices move, you know why, and you can plan ahead.