The latest escalation between the US and Iran illustrates a persistent illusion that global risk is a force that can be isolated, categorised and safely neutralised. Washington, faced with a protracted conflict, has sought to squeeze Iran’s oil revenues. Tehran, in turn, has threatened the plumbing of the global energy system. On paper, the logic is linear. Squeeze the revenue to force the concession. However, in practice, the outcome is a more chaotic unravelling of control.
Iran’s response exposes the fragility of a fragmented system. Rather than capitulate, Tehran has leant into a different form of asymmetry. This is not independence from the system, but a calculated willingness to disrupt it.
The Strait of Hormuz is not merely a regional waterway. When such a chokepoint is squeezed, the effects do not remain confined to the price of crude oil. They cascade through the deeper, less visible plumbing of the global system. The strait carries sulphur and ammonia essential for global fertilisers, aluminium for lightweight manufacturing and even helium used in semiconductor cooling.
By choking these upstream flows, a regional friction quickly metastasises into a broader disruption, affecting agriculture, industrial production and the supply chains underpinning AI. What appears to be a narrow chokepoint is, in reality, a pressure point for the modern economy.
This is the paradox of the current moment. Political divisions are deepening, yet the underlying economic system remains tightly entangled. The US naval blockade captures this tension. Policing adversaries requires policing allies and neutral actors too. In such a network, control is no longer a function of intent but of what the broader network is willing to absorb. What emerges is not compliance but circumvention through a parallel web of less transparent, more politically contingent trade channels.
This tension is rooted in what the late political scientist Andrew Mack called the “interest gap”. For the US, managing Iran is a messy line item on a crowded global agenda. It competes for bandwidth with domestic economic concerns, electoral pressures and long-term rivalry with China. For Iran, by contrast, the conflict is existential.
This asymmetry matters because when the stakes are uneven, so, too, is the tolerance for pain. A superpower’s resolve is diluted by competing priorities, whereas a smaller power’s resolve is sharpened by the immediacy of survival.
This leaves us in the familiar but precarious position of a price-taker, forced to import the inflation and instability of a world over which we have little influence
For South Africa, the implications of this shifting global system are indirect but acute. We occupy an uncomfortable middle ground of the global order, where we are neither peripheral enough to be ignored nor central enough to dictate terms. This leaves us in the familiar but precarious position of a price-taker, forced to import the inflation and instability of a world we have little influence over.
South Africa relies on imported energy, participates in volatile capital markets and depends on trade routes that traverse increasingly contested geographies. In stable times, these are sources of efficiency. In a fragmented world, they are the lightning rods for external shocks.
The rand does not require a domestic catalyst to weaken. Global uncertainty is a sufficient trigger. More subtly, domestic policy responses can deepen this exposure. While the incipient recovery in rail marks a necessary strategic turn, the economy’s reliance on road freight remains a stubborn reality. This dependence on high-intensity logistics, alongside the historic use of diesel to bridge electricity shortages, has tethered South Africa closer to global oil dynamics.
While Eskom’s lower diesel usage in April 2026 offers cyclical relief and rail volumes begin an arduous restoration, the underlying structural vulnerability persists. These are rational responses to immediate constraints, yet they leave the economy increasingly exposed to a global system that is both less predictable and more costly.
The task for South Africa is to move from passive adjustment to systemic robustness. Greater resilience demands that we build “just-in-case” redundancies into our economic architecture. In practice, this means accelerating the African Continental Free Trade Area to deepen intra-African trade as a buffer against global volatility and leveraging our platinum group metals endowment and reform momentum to secure technology transfer in exchange for market access.
By decoupling administered prices through utility-model reforms, such as the new water and energy frameworks, and adopting scenario-based fiscal planning that treats external shocks as a constant, South Africa can reduce its dependence on global price-setting dynamics.
Instead of treating commodity spikes as black swan anomalies, we should price systemic volatility into our long-term planning. By prioritising investments that offer diversified exposure, we can create an economy that is structurally geared to absorb global friction. Global volatility is a given. South Africa’s vulnerability to it is a choice.
Packirisamy is group economist at Momentum Group
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