The Iran War is Africa’s warning: Build sovereignty or be ruled by other people’s power
South Africans should not read the US-Israel-Iran war as a distant Middle Eastern crisis with unfortunate consequences for oil prices. That would be a profound misreading. What is unfolding is not only a regional war. It is a demonstration — a display, in concentrated form — of how power now works in the world: through chokepoints, sanctions, shipping insurance, energy infrastructure, alliance coercion, military signalling and narrative control. It is a warning to the Global South that formal independence means very little if a country does not own or control its material sovereignty.
This is why Andre Zaaiman’s recent analysis (‘US-Iran Structural Analysis and Energy Dominance’) matters. What I value in his work is that he refuses to treat the present war as a random chain of incidents. He locates it in a deeper structure: post-Cold War US primacy, Israeli forward coercion, sanctions as standing instruments of geopolitical discipline and the weaponisation of energy routes. This helps us understand how these actors think. That is the correct frame. The issue is not simply what happened recently. The issue is what long historical architecture made such a war increasingly likely, increasingly dangerous and increasingly difficult to stop.
For Africa, that distinction is decisive. If we read the war merely as a clash of leaders, personalities or tactical moves, we will learn very little and remain superficial. But if we read it structurally, then the implications become unmistakable. We are living in a world where sovereignty is no longer secured by flags, constitutions and diplomatic niceties alone. Sovereignty now depends on whether people, working together, can secure energy, finance, logistics, industrial capacity, trade routes, food resilience, technological autonomy and political room for manoeuvre. States that cannot do this remain formally free but materially vulnerable.
That is why the Strait of Hormuz matters to South Africa more than many of us want to admit. Zaaiman’s strongest insight is that Hormuz is not only a military chokepoint; it is also an actuarial chokepoint. In other words, the question is not merely whether Iran can physically close the strait with naval force. The deeper question is whether war-risk insurers, shippers, charterers and traders can be pushed to treat the route as commercially unworkable. That kind of disruption can generate practical closure even before a formal blockade exists. This is real and tangible, not abstract theory. Major marine insurers have already withdrawn or sharply restricted cover in parts of the Gulf, while the International Energy Agency says flows through Hormuz plunged dramatically in March, prompting an unprecedented 400 million-barrel emergency release by its members.
The lesson is brutal but clear. The modern world can be destabilised without total war. It can be destabilised through the financial, legal and logistical systems that make trade possible. That means South Africa cannot continue to treat energy policy as a narrow departmental matter or beneficiation as an aspirational slogan or industrial policy as a PowerPoint exercise. Energy sovereignty is national sovereignty.
On this point, Minister Gwede Mantashe has been making an argument that deserves serious strategic attention. In February, he said coal remains central to South Africa’s economy and to addressing energy poverty across Africa. More importantly, he argued that the real question is not whether our mineral endowment remains important but how we extract greater value from it. He has also repeatedly insisted that South Africa and the continent must stop exporting raw resource potential while importing higher-value dependence and must instead pursue value addition, localisation and beneficiation close to the point of production.
That is not a technical side debate. It is the core political question of our time. This must be done.
A country that exports minerals but imports industrial dependence is not sovereign in any deep sense. A country that sits on energy resources but cannot convert them into stable power, strategic reserves, industrial feedstock, jobs and technological upgrading is not sovereign in any deep sense. A continent that supplies the raw materials of the future while others monopolise the high-value segments of the chain is not participating in development; it is subsidising somebody else’s ascent.
That is why President Cyril Ramaphosa’s language in the 2026 State of the Nation Address (Sona) matters. He said South Africa’s sovereignty and self-determination are sacrosanct, that they are not negotiable and that “we will not be bullied by any other country”. He linked this not only to diplomacy but to a larger Global South agenda that includes inclusive growth, reform of global governance and the beneficiation of critical minerals at source. Those words must now be turned into doctrine, institutions and investment.
Because let us be frank: the age of pleading for fair treatment from entrenched power is over. No serious nation can build its future on the hope that dominant powers will behave benevolently when their strategic interests are challenged. The current war should end that illusion for good. It shows a world in which powerful states still assume the right to police regions, shape markets, sanction adversaries, define legitimacy and call coercion “security”. Africa must draw the correct conclusion. We cannot organise our development around permanent external permission.
This does not mean reckless adventurism. It does not mean empty slogans, diplomatic theatre or romantic declarations detached from capability. It means the opposite. It means disciplined statecraft.
South Africa should now pursue five strategic shifts with urgency.
First, we need a doctrine of energy sovereignty, not merely energy transition. That means securing baseload reliability, accelerating grid and refinery resilience, expanding strategic fuel stocks, preparing for shipping disruptions, supporting gas where necessary, scaling renewables intelligently and treating domestic resource use as part of an integrated developmental strategy rather than an ideological battleground. Mantashe has argued that South Africa has the resource base to avoid a gas cliff if it develops what it has. The principle is sound: dependency without domestic capacity is strategic weakness.
Second, we need a doctrine of beneficiation with teeth — not rhetorical beneficiation but real beneficiation. That means financing downstream industry, using procurement to build local capacity, aligning energy policy with mineral strategy, supporting Mintek-style industrial innovation and ensuring that critical minerals, coal by-products, platinum group metals and associated feedstocks become platforms for manufacturing rather than mere export revenue. Cabinet’s critical minerals strategy explicitly identifies value addition, localisation, infrastructure and energy security as central pillars. The state must now act as if it believes its own strategy.
Third, Africa must deepen continental and Brics resilience. A fragmented Africa negotiating alone will remain vulnerable to external pressure. A coordinated Africa building shared refining, logistics, payment alternatives, industrial corridors and maritime strategies has a better chance of defending room for manoeuvre. The same applies to Brics and wider South-South cooperation. The question is not whether these formations are perfect — they are not. The question is whether the Global South can afford continued dependence on systems designed elsewhere and controlled elsewhere. It cannot.
Fourth, we need economic security planning across the government. The treasury, the Reserve Bank, Transnet, Eskom, Sasol, the Industrial Development Corporation, the minerals department and trade planners should be running joint stress tests on fuel shocks, freight disruptions, insurance withdrawal, fertiliser inflation, shipping rerouting and currency volatility. Wars now arrive in households through petrol prices, electricity insecurity, bread costs and job losses. Economic security is no longer separable from national security.
Fifth, we need a renewed politics of democratic self-respect. That means defending our constitutional democracy, our freedom, our right to independent judgement and our refusal to become subordinates in somebody else’s imperial design. South Africa emerged from colonialism and apartheid not to sit politely at another power’s table waiting for instructions. We will not return to a condition of subservience dressed up as partnership. We must build our own capabilities, defend our own interests and relate to the world from a position of dignity rather than dependency.
This is where the current war should sharpen our moral and political imagination. The issue is not whether South Africa copies Iran, Russia, America or anyone else. The issue is whether we finally understand that the struggle for freedom in the 21st century is no longer only territorial or electoral. It is infrastructural, industrial, financial and epistemic. It is about who controls energy, who owns logistics, who captures value, who writes the rules and who absorbs the shocks.
Andre Zaaiman is right on the essential point: this war is not merely an event; it is the revealing of a structure. And that structure tells the Global South something uncomfortable but necessary. If we do not build sovereignty in material terms, others will continue to manage our vulnerability for us.
South Africa therefore faces a choice. We can continue with fragmented policy, elite drift and strategic dependency, hoping that global turbulence will somehow spare us. Or we can act like a serious nation: defend our sovereignty, build our productive base, beneficiate our resources, secure our energy system, strengthen African partnerships and refuse coercion from whatever quarter it comes.
The world is becoming harder. The correct response is not fear. It is organised sovereignty. And it is time we built it.
Faiez Jacobs is a governance reformer, former member of parliament and CEO of the Transcendance Group. He advises on public sector capability, economic transformation and strategic resilience in South Africa and the region.