Tag: Free Market Foundation

Since the start of the pandemic it’s been a relatively awful period in modern human history. No, it’s not quite as deadly as World War II, or quite as destructive, but it’s been destructive none the less. Sadly, the longer it lingers the more damage it will do.

History repeats itself – with vicious, chilling accuracy. Just under twenty years ago, the Zimbabwean justice system seemed to have prevailed over a frothing-at-the-mouth late President Robert Mugabe who had lost a number of court battles against the besieged white commercial farmers.

South Africa loses R700 million a day for every stage of Eskom’s rolling blackouts. Given these catastrophic economic challenges created by the collapse of electricity infrastructure, an urgent alternative energy supply is needed to stabilise the grid.

Economic freedom enshrines personal choice, voluntary exchange and protection of private property. It is the freedom to start a business or hire an employee without government interference, or to invest and trade with whomever you please.

South Africa ranks 84th out of 165 countries and territories included in the Economic Freedom of the World: 2021 Annual Report, that we have released in conjunction with Canada’s Fraser Institute. In 2000, South Africa ranked 58th on the list of countries analysed.

While we acknowledge the positive structural reforms currently underway by government – most notably the lifting of the self-generation threshold to 100MW – command control plans of enforced localisation stand to undo any potential positive upsides of other reforms.

The Competition Commission has recently prohibited a transaction between Emerging Capital Partners Africa (ECP) and Grand Parade Investments, a private equity firm listed in the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The transaction would have seen ECP acquire Grand Parade’s stake in Burger King South Africa (BKSA) as well as Grand Foods Meat Plant (Pty) Ltd.

The Department of Social Development’s Green Paper on Comprehensive Social Security and Retirement Reform will, if adopted, result in the most harm for those it is ostensibly intended to benefit. We call on government to urgently reconsider any proposals that increase the state’s power over citizens’ financial affairs and urges all South Africans to resist the proposals contained in the paper.

The proposal for a universal basic income grant (BIG) has been on the table for almost 20 years. It was first recommended by the Committee of Inquiry (Taylor Committee) into a Comprehensive System of Social Security for South Africa in 2002, after a number of civil society organisations had petitioned for it on account of persistent poverty and structural inequality.

According to Peter Attard Montalto (head of Capital Markets Research at Intellidex) the violence and looting that took place in parts of KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in July 2021 cost the national retail sector R5 billion, 800 non-shopping centre stores were looted, 100 stores were burnt out, and 200 shopping centres were looted, and many destroyed. How can the country recover from such devastation - and when still enduring more than a year of lockdown and a pandemic? The answer must lie in economic and individual freedom.