At moments like this I remember the deer-in-the-headlights moment September 2008 was as Lehman (my employer at the time) went bust and the South African media seemed to flip rather late from head in the sand to sudden panic.

If we step back the headlines look hyperbolic. That there has been record foreign bond selling in the past few market days is a function of bondholders sitting on, and locking in, the huge gains they have made by riding the rally over the past 18 months.

That yields had risen only 90 basis points from the start of the month to the peak, and are already coming off again (when US yields had risen by some 25 basis points themselves), seems to indicate that there were enough willing buyers at slightly higher yields (after a huge drop in yields) for there to be a sweeping up of the selling without market location. A similar story can be told about the rand, though the poor equity market hasn’t fared quite so well.

A wide variety of investors we speak to on an ongoing basis seem to be happy to remain structurally positive on the macro — and slowly over time the micro — South African stories, as seen by the warm reception the South African policymaking team received in London last week.

Reporting on the risks about the fiscus here seems alarmist when the latest cash data seem to suggest the National Treasury could end the year with more than R50bn more cash than it said it would have at the budget less than a month ago. Revenues are looking healthy in the coming months and might even surprise the Treasury at year-end. The fiscus is entering a period of global uncertainty with record buffers and flexibility. This doesn’t get linked to the present situation enough.

This is not to say all is rosy — we just need to better contextualise what is going on. We can, of course, dream up many scenarios in which you might need an emergency budget or enormous changes at the time of the medium-term budget policy statement. Much will depend on how much the Iran situation spills over through oil prices into lower global growth, and so back to South Africa and fiscal revenues. Yet even here South Africa-relevant commodity prices are likely to remain buoyant given necessary structural demand (rather than simply cyclical demand shifts).

However, beta of global growth to South African growth has declined in the past 20 years. The Transnet induced logistics crisis has rendered the country’s export potential so weak that (low) growth is set on a steady path by consumption and other domestic factors. This isn’t to say there won’t be revenue shocks for the fiscus, but they are less likely to be fall-out-of-bed moments than trimming a few billion here or there.

But we must be careful what lurks beneath the surface as the tide goes out, particularly regarding supply chains. Regular readers will know I can become agitated about inefficiencies and a crisis staring people in the face.

For instance, we have not yet received a domestic growth boost from the ongoing structural reforms. While there is the prospect of more resilience at a higher natural growth rate, that is not the case yet.

Having spent several years engrossed in the general car crash that is the South African refinery space, this therefore feels like a somewhat facepalm moment. With 65% of refined fuel products imported (the amount of petrol imported in the past five years has more than doubled) it turns out there is nothing strategic about the strategic fuel reserve, which has for some reason in recent years revised down its need from 90 days (the international norm) to a target of just 60 days, though it is likely not now near half that level. It’s more likely 20-30 days.

As usual, unless there is a crisis, little has historically happened at the department of mineral resources & energy, and now at the department of mineral & petroleum resources. Hope is not really a strategy, but it is too late for immediate corrective action so there must be some hope that G7 nations will spring into action and that, most likely through force, the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened to allow refined products to flow. We can then go back to ignoring the risks, which, while not exactly transparently expounded on, have been broadly clear to anyone willing to dig or listen to events in parliament.

The gas cliff is next in line, and while for different reasons, one wonders if it will be possible to find a solution here before we topple over the cliff edge to an actual crisis. For some reason the betting money seems to be on not finding a solution in advance.

The wider point is that deep problems lurk just below the surface that are often too complex and unclear for policymakers or the public to focus on, but are exposed at times like this. (The fiscus is not one of them.)

• Peter Attard Montalto leads on political economy, markets and the just energy transition at Krutham, a SA research-led consulting company.

This article first appeared in Business Day.