Cape Town capped its own power bill. Pretoria still sets the rest.

R6.35.

That is what sits on top of every litre of petrol sold in South Africa before a single drop reaches a tank. It is national fuel tax and road tax, stacked on by Treasury in Pretoria, and it is identical whether a driver fills up in Claremont, Soweto or Polokwane.

Nobody in Cape Town set that number. Nobody in Cape Town can lower it either.

This column argues one thing every day: The Western Cape can run its own affairs. This one is about money, specifically the money a household loses each month, and who actually decided it should.

How much is Cape Town's power bill going up this year?

Less than the rest of the country, because the city fought for that.

The National Energy Regulator approved an 8.76% increase for households that buy power straight from Eskom in 2026/27. Municipalities that buy power in bulk from Eskom and resell it were handed an average increase of 9.01%, starting 1 July 2026.

Cape Town did not pass that full amount on. The city capped its own residential increase at an average of 6.64%, with its cheapest Lifeline block rising 8.65% and its two main household blocks rising between 5.42% and 6.27%. That gap, 2.37 percentage points below the national municipal average, is the city's own decision. Pretoria set the bulk price. Cape Town decided how much of it to absorb.

What does a Cape household actually pay against the rest of the country?

Five of those six rows are decided outside the province. Only the first one is a local council's own call.

Photo: Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Why does petrol cost exactly the same everywhere, including the Cape?

Because the price is built in Pretoria, not at the pump.

Read nextThe Cape sends more tax to Pretoria than it gets back

The 2026 Budget raised the general fuel levy on petrol by 9 cents to R4.10 a litre, the carbon fuel levy by 5 cents to 19 cents, and the Road Accident Fund levy by 7 cents to R2.25 a litre on both petrol and diesel. None of that moves by province. A Cape Town driver and a driver in Mahikeng pay the same national levies on the same litre, set by the same minister, in the same speech.

Stats SA's own figures for September 2026 show why that matters. National transport inflation ran at 10.8% year on year, more than double the 4.5% headline CPI figure, and transport alone added 1.5 percentage points to the national number. That pain is not a Cape problem. It is a national one, dressed in rand and cents, and it lands the same in every province regardless of how well any provincial government runs itself. If anything, that is the strongest argument there is: The one cost nobody can manage locally is the one Pretoria fully owns.

Photo: Husskeyy / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Is Cape Town's grocery basket actually cheaper than Johannesburg's?

Slightly, and Durban just edges Cape Town out.

The Pietermaritzburg Economic Justice and Dignity group tracks a basket of 44 everyday food items across the country's major cities every month. In September 2026, that basket cost R5,364.98 in Cape Town, against R5,679.01 in Johannesburg and R5,364.64 in Durban. Cape Town beats Johannesburg by R314. Durban beats Cape Town by 34 cents, close enough to call a tie.

That near-tie is itself a clue. VAT is a national rate. Fuel levies move freight costs the same way everywhere. A well-run city can shave margins at the edges, but it cannot out-manage a national tax on the maize, bread and vegetables that make up most of that basket. The province can only win the parts of the bill it actually controls.

Who actually pays for Cape Town's municipal budget?

The city does, almost on its own.

Cape Town adopted an R87.8 billion budget for 2026/27 in June, split into R74.62 billion for running costs and R13.09 billion for roads, pipes and other infrastructure. Property rates revenue alone rose 7%, adding about R963.5 million to the city's books. Almost none of that R87.8 billion is a handout from Pretoria.

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Set that against the Western Cape's provincial government, which runs on a R93.5 billion budget for the same year. A full 95.4% of that money is a transfer from national government, not money the province raised itself.

A city with no power to set income tax or VAT already balances a budget nearly as big as the whole province's, on its own rates and tariffs. A province that could set a few of its own taxes would not be starting from zero.

Where does the rest of the Cape's tax rand actually go?

Out of the province, and only part of it comes back.

The Western Cape raises 15.5% of every tax rand South Africa collects, among the highest shares of any province, as our earlier look at the province's budget and tax numbers laid out. When Treasury splits its equitable share pot between the nine provinces, the Cape gets back only 10.4 cents of every rand in that pot. The gap between what the Cape sends up and what comes back down is the real story behind every line in the table above, and it is explained in full in our breakdown of where a municipal bill's money actually goes.

None of this is a case for secession on its own. It is one piece of the wider argument laid out in our explainer on what a formal split from South Africa would actually take, which this column returns to from a different angle every day.

So what would a Cape household actually keep?

More than it does now, if the numbers above are any guide.

Cape Town found 2.37 percentage points of room in a price it did not even set, just by refusing to pass the full national increase on to residents. That is what a government does when it is allowed to make its own call on even one line of a household's bill. Fuel levies, VAT and a food basket built on national freight costs are untouched, all decided in Pretoria, none of it up for a Cape vote.

Imagine what a treasury that actually ran its own taxes could find in the rest of that bill.