The short version
South Africa's National Treasury has sixteen live bonds sold to international investors, and all sixteen are the same shape. Each is issued in US dollars, pays a fixed rate of interest that never changes, and repays the entire amount borrowed in one lump sum on its maturity date. A bond built that way is called a bullet — the principal arrives all at once at the end, rather than in instalments along the way.
That makes this the largest single curve we cover and also one of the plainest. Several other African sovereigns have bonds that repay in instalments, or whose coupon rises partway through their life, or that were reissued after a restructuring — a negotiated change to the terms of debt the borrower could not pay as originally promised. None of that applies here. South Africa has no restructuring history, and the tracker describes it as a normal, liquid emerging-market issuer.
The sixteen dollar bonds together come to roughly US$24.25bn of face value — the amount that has to be repaid, as distinct from what the bonds are worth to anyone today. That figure is the complete live dollar curve.
The one thing a newcomer is most likely to get wrong is the coupon on the two newest bonds. When a government announces a new deal, it often quotes the return the buyers are getting, not the interest rate printed on the bond. Those two numbers are almost never the same, and here they were not. We set that out below.
The sixteen live bonds
All sixteen are US dollar bonds. All pay interest twice a year, on the dates shown. All use the same interest convention, 30E/360, and all repay in a single payment at maturity.
| Coupon | ISIN | Maturity | Amount issued | Interest dates |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.850% | US836205AW44 | 27 Sep 2027 | US$1.0bn | 27 Mar / 27 Sep |
| 4.300% | US836205AU87 | 12 Oct 2028 | US$2.0bn | 12 Apr / 12 Oct |
| 4.850% | US836205BA15 | 30 Sep 2029 | US$2.0bn | 30 Mar / 30 Sep |
| 5.875% | US836205AY00 | 22 Jun 2030 | US$1.4bn | 22 Jun / 22 Dec |
| 5.875% | US836205BC70 | 20 Apr 2032 | US$1.4bn | 20 Apr / 20 Oct |
| 7.100% | XS2908172260 | 19 Nov 2036 | US$2.0bn | 19 May / 19 Nov |
| 6.125% | XS3250317354 | 11 Dec 2037 | US$1.75bn | 11 Jun / 11 Dec |
| 6.250% | US836205AP92 | 8 Mar 2041 | US$0.75bn | 8 Mar / 8 Sep |
| 5.375% | US836205AS32 | 24 Jul 2044 | US$1.0bn | 24 Jan / 24 Jul |
| 5.000% | US836205AV60 | 12 Oct 2046 | US$1.0bn | 12 Apr / 12 Oct |
| 5.650% | US836205AX27 | 27 Sep 2047 | US$1.5bn | 27 Mar / 27 Sep |
| 6.300% | US836205AZ74 | 22 Jun 2048 | US$0.6bn | 22 Jun / 22 Dec |
| 5.750% | US836205BB97 | 30 Sep 2049 | US$3.0bn | 30 Mar / 30 Sep |
| 7.300% | US836205BE37 | 20 Apr 2052 | US$1.6bn | 20 Apr / 20 Oct |
| 7.950% | XS2917537875 | 19 Nov 2054 | US$1.5bn | 19 May / 19 Nov |
| 7.250% | XS3250317867 | 11 Dec 2055 | US$1.75bn | 11 Jun / 11 Dec |
Every coupon, maturity date, amount and interest date in this table is confirmed from a public document. The sixteen lines total about US$24.25bn; the tracker reconciles that to a slightly larger published figure of about US$24.8bn, the difference being a euro-denominated bond that we have left out and explain below.
What they all have in common
Currency. Every one of the sixteen is a US dollar bond. South Africa is described in the tracker as otherwise a dollar-only external issuer, apart from the single euro line noted further down.
Interest. Each bond pays half its annual coupon twice a year, on the two dates listed. A 5.875% bond of US$1.4bn, for example, pays that rate on the full amount each year, split into two equal payments.
Day count. All sixteen use a convention written as 30E/360. That is simply a rule for counting days between payment dates: every month is treated as 30 days long and every year as 360 days. It exists so that interest amounts come out even and predictable rather than varying with the length of the calendar month.
Repayment. All sixteen are bullets, so the repayment column is the maturity column. There is no earlier partial repayment to track on any of them.
Coupons are not yields, and the difference caught out the 2025 deal
This is the single correction the tracker records for South Africa, and it is worth understanding because the same trap appears everywhere.
A bond's coupon is the interest rate written into the bond itself. It is fixed at issue and it never moves: a 7.25% bond pays 7.25% of its face amount every year, for its whole life, to whoever owns it. A yield is something else entirely. It is the return a buyer gets given what they paid, and because bonds are sold at a discount or a premium to their face value, and then traded, the yield moves while the coupon does not.
When the National Treasury announced the December 2025 pair of bonds, its press release quoted the yields at which the deal priced. Those figures were then picked up elsewhere and reported as if they were the coupons. They were not, and they were higher than the true coupons.
The coupons on those two bonds, taken from the Luxembourg exchange listing records rather than from the press release, are 6.125% on the bond maturing 11 December 2037 and 7.25% on the bond maturing 11 December 2055. Those are the figures used in the table above.
Why some ISINs start with US and some with XS
An ISIN is a bond's unique identifying code, and the first two characters are a prefix indicating where the security is registered. Twelve of South Africa's sixteen lines carry a prefix of US; the four newest, issued in 2024 and 2025, carry XS. The prefix XS is used for securities issued through the international clearing systems rather than registered within one national market.
In this case the split lines up with where the paperwork sits. The terms of the twelve US-prefixed bonds come from the issuer's prospectuses filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The four XS-prefixed bonds are the 2024 and 2025 deals, and their terms come from the Luxembourg exchange and cbonds listing records. The tracker also records that these four are the Reg S version of those bonds — the form sold to investors outside the United States. Beyond that, we would be guessing, so we stop there.
Two ISINs we pinned down before publishing anything
The ISIN is the key everything else hangs off, so a wrong one is worse than a missing one. Two of the long-dated bonds had ISINs that we would not publish until they were traced back to the issuer's own filings: the 5.00% bond maturing in 2046 was confirmed as US836205AV60 from the 2016 pricing term sheet, and the 5.65% bond maturing in 2047 as US836205AX27 from the 2017 prospectus.
No ISIN on this page was inferred or reconstructed. Every one is copied from a public document.
One bond deliberately left out: the euro line
South Africa also had a euro-denominated bond, a 3.75% line maturing 24 July 2026, ISIN XS1090107159, of €500m. It is not in the table above and it is not priced on this site.
There were two reasons. It was days from repayment when the tracker was written, and it was a one-off in every mechanical respect: euro rather than dollars, interest once a year rather than twice, and a different day-count convention (ACT/ACT) from the 30E/360 used on all sixteen dollar bonds. Rather than carry a single exception through the machinery for the sake of a bond about to disappear, we left it out and said so.
Where the credit ratings stand
A credit rating is a ratings agency's published opinion on how likely a borrower is to pay. It is not a term of any bond — nothing in the table above changes when a rating changes — but South Africa's have moved recently enough to be worth recording.
S&P raised South Africa to BB from BB- on 14 November 2025, with a positive outlook. Fitch raised it to BB from BB- on 5 June 2026, with a stable outlook; the tracker notes this was Fitch's first upgrade of South Africa in roughly 21 years. Moody's rating is Ba2, and it moved the outlook to positive on 22 May 2026.
All three sit below the investment-grade boundary, which is why South Africa is described as a high-yield issuer. The tracker is careful to distinguish that from distress: high-yield and orderly is not the same thing as in trouble.
What we are not sure about
Two things on this page are open rather than settled. Both are recorded as open in our own working notes, and neither affects the coupons, dates or amounts in the table.
The 144A twins for the four XS bonds are not captured
When a government sells dollar bonds, it commonly issues the same bond in two parallel forms: a Reg S version for buyers outside the United States, and a Rule 144A version for large US institutions. Economically they are the same bond, but each form gets its own identifying code.
For the four XS-prefixed bonds — the 2024 and 2025 issues — we have recorded the Reg S identifiers only. Any US-registered 144A twin of those four has not been captured, and we have not asserted one. If you are looking for a 144A code for those lines, this page does not have it.
Whether daily dealer quotes cover these lines
It is not yet confirmed that the daily quote sheet we use as an anchor covers all sixteen of these bonds. Where it does not, the number shown on this site for that bond comes from our model rather than from an observed quote.
This affects how a figure is produced, not what the bond's terms are. Everything in the table above stands regardless.
Where every figure here comes from
Each of these is a public document. Our working notes name them but do not record web addresses for them, so they are cited in words here rather than linked.
| What it tells us | Source |
|---|---|
| The coupons, maturities, amounts and interest dates of the twelve US-prefixed bonds, and the confirmed ISINs and CUSIPs for the 2046 and 2047 lines | Republic of South Africa National Treasury, prospectuses filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on form 424B5 (SEC filer CIK 932419), including the 2016 pricing term sheet and the 2017 filing |
| The four XS-prefixed Reg S lines issued in 2024 and 2025, and the reconciliation of the total size of the curve | Luxembourg Stock Exchange and cbonds listing records |
| The November 2024 and December 2025 new issues, and the coupon-versus-yield correction | National Treasury press releases |
| The current credit ratings and the dates on which they changed | S&P, Fitch and Moody's rating releases |
How we work out the price
Nothing on this page is a price. Terms change rarely — a coupon, a maturity date and a repayment schedule are fixed when the bond is sold — so a reference page can state them once and stand. Prices change all day, so they live on the price page and only there. If a figure here ever disagrees with one there, this page is the one to distrust, and we would like to hear about it.
What the two have to do with each other is this. On a normal trading day a closing quote for these bonds reaches us from the market, and that anchors what the price page shows. Between closes the price moves with the things that move this market: US Treasury yields, how much extra return investors demand for African sovereign risk, market volatility and, for commodity exporters, commodity prices. Where a bond repays in instalments rather than in one go, the calculation also has to know how much of it is left on any given day — which is what the repayment schedules above are for. Get a schedule wrong and the published price is wrong.
Information only. This page is general educational material about how this market works. Nothing here is investment, financial, legal or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Prices shown elsewhere on this site are indicative and are not an offer to trade.
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