South Africa CPI inflation (headline, year-on-year)

What this value means

Reference month June 2026, released 22 July 2026. Headline index (all urban areas, base Dec 2024=100) stood at 107,5 in June 2026 vs 106,7 in May 2026 and 102,4 in June 2025. This is the highest South African inflation print since June 2024 (5,1%) and the sixth straight month of the index accelerating off the January 2026 low. Main contributors to the 5,0% annual rate: transport 12,7% (contributing 1,7pp), housing and utilities 5,5% (1,3pp), insurance and financial services 5,9% (0,6pp). Transport is doing the work — fuel prices rose 34,3% over the twelve months to June (diesel +50,8%, petrol +31,7%), which is a Middle-East-conflict oil-price shock passing straight through. Goods inflation 4,8% (from 4,4%), services 5,2% (from 4,7%); core (CPI excluding food, NAB, fuel and energy) is much tamer at 4,1% and the trimmed mean at 3,4%, so the headline overstates the underlying pressure. Administered prices are the outlier at 15,5% YoY. CONTEXT THAT CHANGES THE READING: since 12 November 2025 the SARB targets 3% with a ±1pp band, not the old 3-6% range — so 5,0% is now ABOVE the top of the tolerance band, whereas under the old regime it would have sat comfortably inside it. That is why the MPC hiked in May 2026 and held with a hawkish 4-2 split in July 2026. Recent monthly YoY history (Table B2): 2025 — Jan 3,2 Feb 3,2 Mar 2,7 Apr 2,8 May 2,8 Jun 3,0 Jul 3,5 Aug 3,3 Sep 3,4 Oct 3,6 Nov 3,5 Dec 3,6 (2025 annual average 3,2%); 2026 — Jan 3,5 Feb 3,0 Mar 3,1 Apr 4,0 May 4,5 Jun 5,0. Note the CPI was rebased and reweighted to Dec 2024=100 with the January 2025 release, so index levels are not directly comparable to pre-2025 published series (rates are). Next release: July 2026 CPI on 19 August 2026 (P0141, enquiries Andrew Rankhumise). Access note: the P0141 PDF at statssa.gov.za is machine-readable but returns compressed streams to HTML-oriented fetchers — parse it as a PDF. The Stats SA HTML summary (https://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=19757, 'Inflation rises to a two-year high') carries the same headline figures. UPDATE (roll applied 2026-08-21): Reference month July 2026, released 19 August 2026; headline index 107,7 (Dec 2024=100), MoM +0,2% — the first deceleration after six months of acceleration, driven by transport easing to 8,9% YoY (contributing 1,2pp, from 12,7%/1,7pp in June) as the fuel shock unwinds; other main contributors housing and utilities 5,2% (1,3pp) and insurance and financial services 5,7% (0,6pp); goods 3,4% (from 4,8%), services 5,0% (from 5,2%), core (excl food, NAB, fuel and energy) 4,2%, trimmed mean 3,1%, administered prices 10,9%. At 4,3% the headline remains above the top of the SARB's 3% ±1pp tolerance band. Next release: August 2026 CPI on 23 September 2026 (P0141, enquiries Andrew Rankhumise); the PDF sits behind Imperva but serves cleanly to curl with a Mozilla UA and parses fine with pypdf.

Earlier values

Get it programmatically

curl https://afriref.dev/v1/za/cpi
# $0.005 per call — x402 on Base (USDC). No key, no signup.
# History:    curl https://afriref.dev/v1/za/cpi/history?from=2020-01-01
# Provenance: curl https://afriref.dev/provenance/za/cpi

Other South Africa series: SARB repurchase (repo) rate · VAT standard rate · National Minimum Wage (hourly) · Public holidays · Corporate income tax rate · Personal income tax brackets · Statutory social-insurance contributions · SARB rand exchange rates (official reference) · Prescribed rate of interest · VAT registration threshold · Withholding tax rates

The same figure elsewhere: Tanzania · Togo · Tunisia · Uganda · Zambia · all 34