Inland 95 is R30.25. A full tank just got R166 dearer.

From Wednesday 7 October 2026, inland 95 unleaded is R30.25 a litre. That is R3.33 more than the R26.92 it was the day before, and the first time this grade has sat past R30 inland. At the coast the same litre is R29.38. Inland 93 is R29.88. Wholesale diesel is higher still, so the bakkie and the delivery van are not spared. A round number is why it trended. The slip is why it matters.

Here is the slip, not the speech. Fifty litres of inland 95 now costs about R1,512.50. That is R166.50 more than the fill the day before. Forty litres, a small car, is R1,210, up R133. Twenty litres, which is what a lot of people actually buy when the card is tired, is R605, up R66.60. A taxi owner does not absorb that. It moves into the fare. A bakery does not absorb the diesel. It moves into the bread. Paraffin jumped as well, so a household with no car still meets this hike at the stove.

What the department said, and what the timeline added.

The Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources pointed to the crude price: Brent rose from about US$87.89 to US$101 a barrel over the review period, with US–Iran tension, the Strait of Hormuz, higher shipping costs and thinner inventories. The rand strengthened a little and did not save the litre. In April the state cut the general fuel levy by at least R3 a litre for two months. That relief was not repeated for October. Those are the reasons on the official page.

The chart is having a second argument, and it should be labelled as an argument. One side stops at Iran and the oil shock. The other points at home: levies that came back, refineries that are closed, reserves that were sold. A levy really is back, in the sense that the April cut was not renewed. Closed refineries and sold reserves are the political case people are making. They are not a sentence the department printed next to R30.25. Both can be true in a month without being the same kind of fact. A war can lift crude. A tax can sit on top of the lift. The person paying does not get to choose which half fills the tank.

One household, three bills.

On 8 October the litre is in the same scroll as a suspended grant and “PLEASE DO NOT VOTE ANC”. Fuel, a grant and the vote are not three countries. They are one South African month. The nurse on a night shift, the baker, the person sending money home for paraffin: none of them experience R30.25 as a geopolitical essay. They experience it as the thing that used to last until Friday and now does not. The pump will not tell you which bill is the moral one. It will only tell you the total.