Tag: Free Market Foundation

The private sector in South Africa is seen as an evil that must be heavily restricted if not expressly prohibited. For a country wherein government service delivery is poor to say the least, one would expect that private enterprise, which keeps us safe through the various security firms and healthy through the various hospitals, would be celebrated.

The recent presentation at the Board of Healthcare Funder’s annual conference by Christoff Raath, joint-CEO of Insight Actuaries, should garner wide support from the private healthcare industry. Raath quite rightly lamented the incredibly slow pace and prevaricating by the Council for Medical Schemes (CMS) in developing lower cost medical scheme options that could introduce millions more members into the private health sector.

In March this year, in a much-publicised interview (Neal Froneman gets frank about the lows, and highs, of doing business in South Africa), Sibanye-Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman heavily criticised the state of South Africa’s economy and government, citing a lack of leadership.

June 23rd was Africa Public Service Day, when we were urged to give thanks for our public servants and the work they do. There were no street marches of banner-waving civil servants to mark the occasion, but there was a special media release issued by the Public Servants Association (PSA).

Yachting has been one of the great pleasures of my life. It is mostly a contest between yourself and the elements. Yacht racing pits you against these same elements, and against often unseen and distant competitors.

The office of the Ombudsman for Short Term Insurance (OSTI) released its annual report on 17 May, and what exceptionally fine news it contained.

Since the Legal Practice Act of 2014 came into operation, a change came about in the legal community that is unnoticeable on the surface, but which will have significant consequences over time. Prior to the Act coming into operation, the advocates’ profession regulated itself according to its own institutional ethos and the standards set by its members. Now, the profession is ultimately controlled by the Department of Justice (DoJ), through the Legal Practice Council (LPC).

Ten children are invited to a birthday party. As they arrive, they are each given three golden tokens. The host explains that they will play various games with great prizes using these tokens. In the first game the prize is a brand-new bicycle, which the host says he will give to whichever child offers him the most tokens. This is the supply of desirable goods.

A large proportion of the South African students who have fled Ukraine was studying medicine there. They had all applied to study in South Africa after matriculating but were unsuccessful, due to the limited number of applicants that government training facilities can accept.

Statistics South Africa has announced that South Africa’s unemployment rate rose to a record high 35.3% in the last quarter of year 2021. This was an increase of 0.4 percentage points from the previous quarterly unemployment rate. The expanded definition of unemployment rate is at 46.2%.