• Petrol is likely to get cheaper in December, by about R1.50 to R1.80 a litre, but diesel could cost more because the government’s fuel tax relief is getting smaller.

• These are early figures with the final prices announced at the end of the month, and an extra charge could cut the petrol saving.

Petrol is likely to get cheaper in December, but diesel could cost more.

Early figures from the Central Energy Fund point to a petrol cut of R2.02 a litre for 93 and R2.32 for 95, BusinessTech reports.

But some of that will be taken back. The government is making its fuel tax relief smaller in December, which adds 50c a litre back to petrol and R1.50 back to diesel.

After that, 95 petrol could drop by R1.82 a litre, from R30.24 to about R28.42 inland. The price of 93 could drop by R1.52, from R29.87 to about R28.35. On a 50-litre tank of 95, that is about R91 less.

Diesel is the problem. The early figures show almost no cut, so the extra tax pushes the price up. BusinessTech says wholesale diesel could go up by R1.15 to R1.49 a litre, depending on the type.

Oil prices have helped petrol. Investec economist Annabel Bishop said Brent crude, the world oil price benchmark, fell from near US118 a barrel to about US95 after the United States mid-term elections. BusinessTech also credits a stronger brand after South Africa’s local elections.

The fuel tax relief was announced before the elections. Without it, IOL reported, petrol would have gone up by about R1.50 a litre in November.

It has been a hard year for drivers. News24 reports that 95 petrol is up about R8 a litre since December 2025, and diesel is up more than R12.

• Eskom has asked to charge municipalities 8.84% more for electricity from July 2027. The energy regulator decides on 26 November.

• Johannesburg must send its electricity tariff request to the energy regulator by 30 March. New tariffs start on 1 July.

The next Joburg council will not have long to show what it will do about your bills.

Eskom has asked municipalities to charge 8.84% more for electricity from 1 July 2027, according to Joburg Etc. The National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa) is due to decide on 26 November.

Then it is the council’s turn. A court ruling, reported by The Conversation, says municipalities must send their full electricity tariff requests to Nersa by 30 March every year.

Nersa must finish its decisions by 5 May. New tariffs start at the beginning of the financial year, on 1 July.

That leaves a new council only a few months to settle in and decide.

In July 2026 the City of Johannesburg raised electricity by 8.63%, according to eNCA. Nersa said Eskom’s price to municipalities rose by an average 9.01% from the same date.

Not everyone in Johannesburg buys power from the city. ActionSA’s Gauteng caucus leader said many households in Soweto get electricity directly from Eskom. For them, an increase would start earlier, on 1 April 2027.

The council itself is still unclear. Reuters reported on 4 November that no party was expected to win an outright majority in Johannesburg. Parties have two weeks from the declaration of results to form a coalition.

DA mayoral candidate Helen Zille has promised to fix the billing system and spend money paid for water on water. She also said the city will not be fixed in her first 100 days.

Until a coalition is settled, what you pay from July 2027 is an open question.

• Prices are 4.5% higher than a year ago, says Statistics South Africa. Maize meal is 8.6% cheaper and fruit and nuts 4.8% cheaper, but transport costs are up 10.8%.

• Economist Johann Els expects inflation to go above 5% in October and November, and the fuel levy cut from 4 November will cover only about a quarter of the petrol price rise since January.

Maize meal and fruit cost less than they did a year ago, but getting around is much more expensive.

Prices in September were 4.5% higher than a year ago, according to Statistics South Africa. That is up from 4.4% in August and 4.3% in July. In simple terms, something that cost R100 a year ago now costs about R104.50.

Food is where the good news is. Food prices are only 1.2% higher than a year ago, and they fell by 0.1% from August.

Maize meal is 8.6% cheaper than a year ago, although it went up 0.8% in the past month. Cereal products overall are 1.9% cheaper, the eighth month in a row that their prices have fallen. Fruit and nuts are 4.8% cheaper.

Meat is still going up in price, but slowly. Prices are up 0.7% on a year ago, the slowest pace in 18 months.

Not everything is cheaper. Fish and seafood cost 8% more than a year ago. The rise is 9.1% in the Western Cape, 7.6% in Gauteng and 7.4% in Limpopo. Vegetables cost 3.5% more than a year ago, but their price fell 1.6% in September.

Transport is the biggest problem. Costs are 10.8% higher than a year ago, and this added more to inflation than anything else. IOL reported that petrol has gone up by R6.13 a litre since January, and diesel by R10.66. For a 50-litre tank of petrol, that is about R306 more.

PSG economist Johann Els told IOL that taxi and public transport costs have also gone up, but there is little sign yet of price rises spreading to other things.

Rent is rising more slowly. It went up 3.9% in the third quarter, down from 4.1% in the second. Flats rose by 4%, townhouses by 3.9% and houses by 3.8%. On a rent of R3,000, a rise of 3.9% is about R117 more a month.

Els expects inflation to go slightly above 5% in October and November, then start to fall from around April next year. He said a lot depends on whether oil prices drop next year.

Some help is coming at the pump. From 4 November, the fuel levy will be cut by R1.50 a litre on petrol and R3 a litre on diesel. That covers about a quarter of the rise since January. The cut shrinks after 1 December and ends on 5 January 2027.

For households, that means maize meal and fruit are where your money goes further, while fish and travel are where it goes less far.

Listen to this article.

• Fuel tax will drop by R1.50 a litre on petrol and R3 on diesel from 4 November to 1 December, then by R1 and R1.50 until 5 January 2027.

• The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) says the relief will help, but the government must also stop wasting public money.

The tax on the price of petrol and diesel will be cut from 4 November, but the relief will not last.

Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana announced the cut to the fuel levy in the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement.

From 4 November to 1 December 2026, the levy will fall by R1.50 a litre on petrol and R3 a litre on diesel.

After that, the cut will shrink to R1 a litre on petrol and R1.50 a litre on diesel until 5 January 2027.

For a 50-litre tank, that is a saving of R75 on petrol and R150 on diesel in the first month, and R50 and R75 after that.

The cut only lowers the tax part of the price, so other factors will still decide what you pay at the pump.

The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) said cheaper diesel could also ease the cost of transport and food. The R10-billion cost will be paid from money that was previously moved to the Central Energy Fund.

OUTA said the relief will help, but only for a short time. Its CEO Wayne Duvenage said people feel the pressure “every time they fill their tanks, buy groceries or pay for transport”.

OUTA wants the Treasury to look at the long-term tax on fuel and find ways to give lasting relief without cutting money for roads and other key infrastructure.

It also wants the government to show it is cutting waste. The Treasury reviewed R887-billion paid to provinces and municipalities for infrastructure between 2017/18 and 2023/24. It found that many projects were late, unfinished or did not deliver what they promised.

OUTA said this does not mean all the money was wasted. But it wants the Treasury to say which projects failed, who was responsible and what has been done about it.

The Treasury has also added R4.14-billion to the fight against gender-based violence. OUTA said this will mean little while forensic delays continue. The DNA Board told Parliament on 16 October 2026 that only 1.5% of DNA profiles met the 30-day target. Nearly 166,000 DNA samples are still waiting to be processed by police.

The Treasury also found that many municipalities spend too much on running costs and too little on looking after infrastructure. It has stopped paying the usual share of national funds to 69 municipalities that did not pay their creditors.

OUTA wants stronger action against municipalities that mismanage money, without leaving residents to suffer. With local government elections on 4 November, it said voters should ask how their municipalities spent public money.

• OpenAI is bringing ads to its ChatGPT Free and Go plans in South Africa, and says the ads will be clearly marked and will not change the answers.

• ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Enterprise, Business and Education plans stay ad free, and users can manage ad settings.

ChatGPT users in South Africa may soon start seeing ads.

OpenAI is bringing ads to its free plan and its cheapest paid plan, called Go, in 26 more countries, including South Africa.

The company emailed South African users about a change to its privacy policy, which explains how the ads work and how people can control them.

The Plus, Pro, Enterprise, Business and Education plans will stay ad free.

OpenAI said ads will be clearly marked as sponsored and kept apart from ChatGPT’s answers. It said the ads will not change what the chatbot tells you.

Ads can be tailored to you using information that stays inside ChatGPT, such as ads you have interacted with or what you talk about in your chats. You can manage this in your settings.

OpenAI said advertisers cannot see your chats, chat history, memories or personal details. They only get overall numbers, such as how many people saw or clicked on an ad.

It also said it does not show ads to accounts it identifies as belonging to people under 18.

OpenAI began testing ads in the United States in February 2026. In April, it launched a tool called Ads Manager that lets businesses buy ads themselves with no minimum spend.

MyBroadband reported that the tool was not yet open to South African businesses. That means any ads South Africans see for now will not come from local companies.

OpenAI said that when it widened ads to India, Europe, the Middle East and North Africa on 31 August, they were making money at a rate of US$1-billion a year. It said tens of thousands of advertisers now use the platform.

The company said ads are one of several ways it makes money, alongside subscriptions, business products and paid access for developers. It said ads help keep the free plan available to more than one billion people every week.

• Researchers developed AI tools that use facial photographs to estimate cancer patients’ survival chances and how healthy they appear.

• The technology could help doctors choose suitable cancer treatments, but more research is needed before it can be widely used.

A photograph of your face could one day help doctors work out your chances of surviving cancer.

Researchers at Mass General Brigham, a healthcare system in the United States, have developed artificial intelligence tools that look for signs of a patient’s health in an ordinary facial photograph.

The findings were published in The Lancet Digital Health.

The technology was developed using more than 40 million photographs of people of different ages and ethnic groups.

Researchers created two tools.

The first estimates a person’s biological age, meaning how old their face appears compared with their actual age.

The second uses a photograph to estimate a cancer patient’s chances of survival directly.

Researchers found that cancer patients who appeared at least five years older than their actual age had a 21% higher risk of dying during an average four-year follow-up.

Those who appeared at least five years younger had a 17% lower risk.

The findings came from patients receiving radiotherapy in the United States.

Hugo Aerts, one of the study’s senior authors, said it was the first demonstration that AI could directly predict cancer survival from a simple photograph, the Guardian reported.

The technology could eventually help doctors decide whether patients are strong enough for demanding treatments such as surgery, radiation or cancer medicines.

Dr Raymond Mak, a cancer specialist at Mass General Brigham, said doctors need better ways to measure patients’ physical strength and frailty.

Researchers also found that smoking, heavy drinking and drug use were linked to faces appearing biologically older.

But the technology is not ready to replace medical assessments.

Researchers say further studies are needed before it can be widely used in hospitals.

The aim is to give doctors another tool to help make treatment decisions, not to predict with certainty how long someone will live.

• A Lions player in his thirties died at a French hotel while the team prepared to face La Rochelle.

• Saturday’s Champions Cup match is now uncertain, while the player’s name is being withheld until his family is informed.

A Lions player has died at the team’s hotel in France while the squad was preparing for its Champions Cup debut against La Rochelle.

Daily Maverick reported that the player was found unresponsive in a shower cubicle on the Île de Ré.

The player, who was in his thirties, was in cardiac arrest when emergency services arrived shortly before 10.30am.

Paramedics tried to revive him but were unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead.

Sources independently confirmed the death to Daily Maverick.

His name is being withheld because his family have not yet been informed.

Île de Ré is an island off France’s western coast and is connected by bridge to the mainland city of La Rochelle.

The Lions had been preparing there ahead of their Champions Cup opener against two-time champions La Rochelle.

It is not yet clear whether the match will still go ahead.

The game was scheduled for Saturday, 17 October.

• Tatjana Smith won the 50m and 100m breaststroke titles at the SA Short Course Championships in Pietermaritzburg.

• Her times automatically qualified her for December’s World Short Course Championships as she builds towards the 2028 Olympics.

Publish time: 2026-09-28 10:45

Tatjana Smith has made a winning return to elite swimming, taking two national titles and booking her place at the World Short Course Championships.

According to Wesley Botton’s report, the four-time Olympic medallist was one of the top performers at the SA Short Course Championships in Pietermaritzburg.

Smith, who retired from competitive swimming in 2024, won the women’s 50m breaststroke in a personal-best 29.50 seconds.

She then won the 100m breaststroke in 1:04.00, just 0.11 seconds outside her own national short course record.

Both times automatically qualified her for the World Short Course Championships in December.

Smith also recorded the fastest time in the 200m breaststroke heats at 2:23.27 but withdrew from the final.

The 29-year-old is now focusing more on shorter races as she looks towards the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

The 50m breaststroke will be part of the Olympic programme for the first time.

Smith said she is still getting used to racing over the shorter distance.

“It was the first race in a new event, so there are a lot of things going on in your mind,” she said.

She admitted she was surprised by her 50m time.

“I didn’t feel like I executed it that well… but I didn’t do so bad. Not bad at all.”

Smith will race both the 50m and 100m breaststroke at the World Short Course Championships after qualifying in both.

Michael Houlie, Chris Smith and Duné Coetzee also achieved automatic qualifying standards at the championships.

Another 15 swimmers reached B qualifying standards and can be considered for national selection.