Record Fuel Price Increase: A Crisis for the Poor

6 October 2026
Abahlali baseMjondolo Press Statement

Record Fuel Price Increase: A Crisis for the Poor

The record increase in the fuel price, which will take inland 95 petrol to R30.25 a litre from 7 October, will push poor people even deeper into suffering.

We are already living through a devastating social crisis. Around 13.1 million people are unemployed or have given up looking for work. There are around 5 million unemployed young people between the ages of 15 and 34, and the unemployment rate for this group is 47.4%. Among young people between 15 and 24, unemployment has reached 62.8%. Around 3.8 million young people aged 15 to 24 are not in employment, education or training. Around five million people continue to live in shack settlements, and there are around 3,400 shack settlements across the country.

Millions of people do not have sufficient access to healthy food. The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity group calculated that in September the average household food basket cost R5,488.06, while a basic nutritionally adequate food basket cost R6,655.29. The average cost of feeding one child was R970.27 a month, while the Child Support Grant is only R580 a month.

A worker earning the national minimum wage can work for the whole month and still not earn enough to buy a nutritionally adequate food basket for a household, even before paying rent, electricity, transport, school costs and other necessities.

Official statistics show that 14% of households have inadequate access to food and 8.2% have severely inadequate access to food. Almost one in four South African children under five are stunted.

The social devastation has plunged millions of people into deep suffering, and robbed millions, especially young people, of any hope for a viable future.

We cannot continue like this. Yet in this crisis a corrupt and morally depraved political elite, now organised across a number of political parties, continues to loot public funds. At the same time a deeply cynical business elite continues to make enormous profits from the labour and consumption of poor and working-class people. Supermarkets make massive profits while people go hungry. Executives earn millions while workers struggle to feed their families. Food has become a commodity from which large companies make profit while millions of people cannot afford enough to eat. This is simply immoral and it must be stopped.

The first thing that needs to be done is to stop cutting public spending to please business. Austerity must be immediately stopped and public money must be used for the public good. Social grants must be increased to protect people from hunger. Wages must be increased to give people enough to live on. Public transport must be safe and affordable. The social value of land must be put before its commercial value and land must be made available for housing, food production and recreation.

There can be no food security in a country where wealth and land are so unequally distributed. Hunger is not caused by a lack of food. It is caused by impoverishment, unemployment and inequality, and by a food system in which land, production and distribution are controlled for profit.

We need a massive project to build food sovereignty. Poor people cannot remain dependent on a food system controlled by a small number of large supermarket chains and food corporations. Urban land reform must make land available for people to grow food close to where they live. Municipalities must support community gardens, small farmers, street traders and local food producers, and establish public and community markets where healthy food can be sold directly and affordably.

It is critical that we break the control of the large supermarkets over the food system and build a food system organised around public need rather than private profit.

Food cannot continue to be treated as a commodity in a country where millions go hungry. Access to healthy food must be treated as a right.

In a social crisis of this extent the corrupt political elite, the state and capital have lost all moral and political credibility and we cannot continue to accept their authority while millions go hungry and millions of young people have no future.

Land must be occupied and put to democratically managed social purposes while we build the democratic power of the poor and the working class to put land, wealth and power in the hands of the people.

Thapelo Mohapi 084 576 5117
Snenhlanhla Mncanyana 073 832 3331
Lindo Motha 066 129 4815