The Rand has weakened quite considerably recently, which should have some impact on the petrol price.  This time it is not so much to do with internal factors, such as the resignation of the Reserve Bank Governor, Gill Marcus.  

The Dollar has improved in strength against basically every currency in the world and even the Pound and the Euro have shown weakness against the Dollar.  The US economy is expanding again, it is growing and one of the advantages of a strong Dollar, to counteract our petrol prices, is when the Dollar does improve, things that are sold in Dollars generally get cheaper and luckily oil is one of those things.  The American economy has improved so much faster than the economies of the other countries in the world that they are now beginning to think about increasing their interest rates, and that confidence is exactly what has made the Dollar the most popular currency in the world at the moment, which is why everyone is buying it and selling the other currencies.  Obviously, it also hurts American companies as well – for example, Ford Motors make a lot of money from cars that they sell overseas and as a result of the strengthening Dollar they have just said that their profits are expected to decline from US$7 billion to US$6 billion in their next reporting period.  That in turn affects the American stock market, so hopefully we will see some interest in American in not having too strong a Dollar because it is sad to see the Rand getting walloped like it is at the moment – but we must bear in mind that it is not just us – it is countries all around the world whose currencies are weakening against the Dollar now.