Tag: Black Economic Empowerment (BEE)

Austerity does not need to mean suffering. Cutting public spending is urgent to address South Africa’s growing debt. Delaying cuts will only worsen debt and interest payments, making future cuts more severe. Reducing spending needn’t harm South Africans, as many wasteful expenses can be removed. In 2023, the Democratic Alliance (DA) estimated that the African National Congress (ANC)-led departments wasted around R40 billion in 2022/23 alone.

South African policymakers learn all the wrong lessons from other countries. Rather than look to the free and prosperous societies of the United States and Europe, politicians and pundits would rather push us to imitate Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba and Zimbabwe. And even when policymakers identify genuinely good role models, they take the wrong lessons.

There is a rare opportunity to right a lot of South Africa’s wrongs in one go. Corruption and unemployment are two major roadblocks. Permit me to explain how they can be simultaneously addressed within the current administration. I suggest an amnesty largely on the African National Congress (ANC’s) past wrongdoing in office in return for liberalisation of labour laws. This may be for a bit further down the line.

In 2020, the National Treasury published for public comment a draft Conduct of Financial Institutions Bill, as an update of its draft two years earlier. This 2020 draft bill aims, ambitiously, at revising the separate laws which regulate the conduct of financial institutions of all kinds, be they banks, insurers, pension funds or medical schemes; and which regulate the conduct of providers of financial advisory, administration or payment services.

How to get rich in the 21st century details how India’s prime minister wants his country to reach rich world status by 2047. His formula lies in incentivising homegrown industry, a diversified services base, and a relentless focus on what’s good for the economy.

The Employment Equity Amendment Act (EEAA) is not just a perverse, incompetent, and tyrannical piece of legislation, but yet another milestone on this government’s journey to embracing its own form of Apartheid.