South Africa's finance minister calls the fuel tax cut temporary. Will he keep it?

What happened

To provide temporary relief, the fuel levy will be reduced by R3 per litre for diesel and R1.50 per litre for petrol from 4 November 2026.

R3 a litre off diesel and R1.50 off petrol from 4 November. That is the cut in the general fuel levy, a tax charged on every litre, that South Africa’s finance minister Enoch Godongwana announced in his mid-year budget speech on 21 October. From 2 December the cut gets smaller, R1.50 on diesel and R1 on petrol, and it ends on 5 January 2027.

The cut costs R10 billion in lost tax. To pay for it, R10 billion that had gone to the state Central Energy Fund goes back to the budget’s reserve. Godongwana said oil prices rose sharply after Israel and the United States attacked Iran and the Strait of Hormuz closed, and that the government can now give relief “again“ because it has rebuilt its savings. In the same speech he proposed new rules to keep spending under control.

This is the second such cut this year. In March the government took R3 a litre off the levy from 1 April to 5 May. On 28 April it extended the cut to 2 June and took the levy on diesel to zero, then halved the cut for June. The full levy came back on 1 July, as planned.

In 2026 South Africa changed fuel prices on a Wednesday at the start of each month, so the next change after the cut ends would fall on Wednesday 6 January. Local elections are on 4 November, the day the cut starts. The opposition party ActionSA had asked the minister on 6 October to cut the levy.

Thereafter, the relief will continue at a lower amount until 5 January 2027.

Minister Enoch Godongwana, Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement, 21 October 2026

Sources: gov.za

The Pattern

We looked for cases where a national government cut a tax on each litre of petrol or diesel for a set time and named the day the cut would end. We checked nine such cuts since 2022, in Brazil, Sweden, Czechia, Australia, the UK and South Africa, from more than 30 we found. Seven times the government kept a cut going after the end date.

The Read

South Africa kept both its earlier cuts going at their first end date, in 2022 and in 2026. Six of the seven extensions came in the last 16 days before the end date, on the day itself or the day after, so a decision may come only around Christmas. In October the minister said oil prices had risen sharply because of the war around Iran.

There are reasons for doubt. This time the smaller cut and the end date were in the plan from the first day, and in 2026 South Africa’s own step down ended on time, on 1 July. The R10 billion comes from a one-off transfer. The two cuts that ended, in Sweden and Australia in 2022, came after a change of national government, while the 4 November vote here is local. Six of the nine cuts came in the oil price jump of 2022.