Let us be precise about what happened and in what order. On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched military strikes on Iran. They killed Iran’s Supreme Leader. In response, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway through which approximately 20% of the world’s oil supply passes every day. Global oil prices, which were sitting at $69 a barrel in February, surged past $100 by early March and peaked at $126 a barrel. The international oil price surged more than 40% from the moment U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran began on 28 February.
South Africa did not vote for this war. Africa did not ask for this war. And yet, on 1 April 2026, South African petrol prices increased by R3.06 per litre and diesel by between R7.37 and R7.51 per litre, with Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana forced to cut the fuel levy by R3 a litre just to prevent the full shock from landing directly on consumers. That one-month levy reduction cost the National Treasury approximately R6 billion in lost revenue. Six billion rand, drawn from South Africa’s fiscus, to absorb the consequences of a military decision made in Washington and Tel Aviv.
Diesel prices could rise by a further R10 per litre in May if the war does not end. For a country where diesel powers agriculture, logistics, mining, and the minibus taxis that carry the working poor, this is not a financial statistic. It is a crisis landing in real time on the most vulnerable households on the continent.
The Sequence That Cannot Be Rewritten
There are those who will argue that Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz is the act that caused this crisis. That framing is technically accurate and strategically dishonest. You cannot bomb a country, kill its head of state, and then present its retaliation as the origin of the problem.
The Strait of Hormuz was open before 28 February 2026. Oil was flowing. South Africans were paying market prices. African farmers were buying fertiliser, up to one-third of global fertiliser trade passes through Hormuz, at prices that did not threaten food security. None of that changed because of anything Iran initiated. It changed because the United States and Israel chose military action over diplomacy, and the entire Global South is now absorbing the consequences of that choice.
The International Energy Agency has called this the worst energy shock ever recorded. That is not a description of Iranian aggression. That is a description of what happens when the world’s most powerful military alliance decides to go to war in the middle of the planet’s most critical energy corridor, with no apparent plan for what comes the morning after.
Africa Had No Seat at That Table
The African Union was not consulted. South Africa was not consulted. Not a single African government had any role in the decision to strike Iran. And yet wholesale diesel in South Africa was set to surge more than 50% to reflect the true under-recovery at the pump, a figure calculated by the Central Energy Fund before the government intervened with a levy cut it could not truly afford.
Fuel shortages have emerged at filling stations across Kenya, Ethiopia, and Zambia. Uganda had only a few weeks’ worth of fuel stock by the end of March. South Sudan, which generates 96% of its electricity from oil, began rationing power in Juba, with rolling blackouts expected to continue.
These are not collateral consequences of a distant geopolitical dispute. These are direct, measurable impacts on African lives, African businesses, and African governments, caused by a war that Africa had no hand in starting and no power to stop.
South Africa imports approximately 80% of its fertiliser, which accounts for roughly 30% of agricultural input costs. With urea prices already rising sharply and planting seasons approaching across East and Southern Africa, the energy crisis is now a food security crisis in formation. The families who will go hungry later this year will not be in Washington. They will be in places that have no embassies in Tel Aviv and no leverage in the Oval Office.
The Gaza Context Cannot Be Separated
This war did not begin on 28 February 2026. It began with the siege and bombardment of Gaza, a sustained military campaign that has been documented by the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, and human rights organisations across the world as causing mass civilian casualties on a scale that has prompted formal genocide proceedings.
The Houthi movement’s attacks on Red Sea shipping, which began in 2023, were explicitly framed as a response to that campaign. Iran’s regional posture, its support for proxy actors across the Middle East, and ultimately the confrontation that led to February’s strikes, all of it flows from a conflict in Gaza that Western governments funded, armed, and diplomatically shielded from accountability at the UN Security Council.
To analyse the maritime crisis of 2026 without acknowledging that foundation is not neutrality. It is selective memory in service of power.
What This Demands of Africa
The lesson of 2026 is not subtle. Africa’s economic sovereignty, its ability to keep fuel in its vehicles, food on its tables, and lights on in its hospitals, is currently held hostage by decisions made by governments that do not represent African people and are not accountable to African electorates.
A consensus is emerging among African policymakers and business leaders: the old model of import-dependent, Gulf-reliant energy security is under severe threat. That consensus is correct, but it must translate into action that outlasts the current crisis. Africa holds significant oil and gas reserves of its own, in Mozambique, Namibia, Senegal, Nigeria, and South Africa’s own offshore blocks. The political will to develop, refine, and distribute those resources domestically has never been more urgently needed than it is today.
In the near term, African governments must use every available diplomatic channel, the African Union, BRICS, the United Nations, to call for an immediate ceasefire and the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. South Africa, which has already demonstrated the courage to file at the International Court of Justice on Gaza, has the credibility and the standing to lead that call without apology.
The war in Iran is not Africa’s war. But its costs are falling on African people with a weight that is neither fair nor sustainable. That must be said clearly, and it must be said now.
