In 2002, the year of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and after, both South Africa and the international community have been reviewing the role of energy in sustainable development. Energy is critical to economic and social development but, depending on the way it is produced, transported and used, it can contribute to both local environmental degradation, such as air pollution, and global environmental problems, principally climate change. Part of the challenge of moving towards a sustainable development path is to be able to track progress. The objective of this paper is to present a set of indicators and analysis for South Africa, based on the Helio International Sustainable Energy Watch (SEW) indicators, that shows how to track progress toward sustainability in the energy sector. Within the SEW framework, South Africa is the closest to the sustainability target on the indicators for access to electricity, resilience to external impacts, and burden of energy investments on the public sector. South Africa performs worst on the indicators for carbon emissions per capita and energy intensity. Continued high energy intensity and emission intensity are potentially a competitive disadvantage for the South African economy. High carbon emission intensity also makes South Africa increasingly vulnerable to pressure to take on some kind of commitment within the United Nations climate change negotiations process. On the other hand, it makes South Africa an attractive candidate for Clean Development Mechanism international investment projects, which could help to move the country onto a lower emission intensity path. Investment in clean energy is only beginning in South Africa, so this indicator is far from sustainability. The poor score on the indicator for renewable energy use also reflects the long road ahead for South Africa in developing renewable energy sources, particularly those other than traditional biomass - and is a challenge to move beyond seeing these only as solutions to remote area energy problems.