Tag: Free Market Foundation

The Upgrading or Land Tenure Rights Act (ULTRA) is arguably democratic South Africa’s most important law. Yet virtually no one knows about it. A proposed amendment is currently before Parliament but only one aspect has enjoyed attention: the removal of gender discrimination.

Democratic Alliance Member of Parliament, Ghaleb Cachalia, who also serves as the party’s spokesman on public enterprises and serves on the Ethics Committee in Parliament, introduced the Public Finance Management Amendment Bill to the National Assembly.

In his Adjustment Budget Speech Minister of Finance Tito Mboweni told us what we already knew. Debt is up and we need to borrow even more, spending will increase, government revenue will be less than expected, the deficit will increase, the economy is expected to contract, and unemployment is higher than usual.

The negative effects of South Africa's hard lockdown continue to reverberate through the economy and broader society. The latest flashpoint has been in the taxi industry, specifically in Gauteng, where the South African National Taxi Council (SANTANCO) started the week of 29 June by indicating their taxis will operate at 100% capacity – in open defiance of lockdown regulations.

It is unfortunate that President Cyril Ramaphosa did not use his 17 June announcement of modifications to South Africa’s level 3 lockdown as an opportunity to end the ill-considered ban on tobacco and related products. Appropriately, on the same day, Africa Check confirmed that the government is losing around R35 million per day in excise taxes for tobacco products.

The South African economy, like many emerging and developing economies, has high levels of poverty. As with many such countries, there are three primary objectives to reducing poverty, unemployment and inequity. These three objectives take precedence over almost all other goals.

Finance minister Tito Mboweni favours zero-based budgeting, an approach that would weigh each expenditure item, each departmental budget, against government goals. The Minister has said that this would entail focusing on ‘infrastructure development and other growth-enhancing measures’ and come at the expense of those programmes considered wasteful in relative terms.

The 26th week of 2020 will prove decisive in the South African political sphere. The business rescue practitioners appointed to try and resurrect South African Airways (SAA), after three extensions and extensive (and perhaps unlawful) interference by the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE), published the proposed business rescue plan on 16 June. The plan, however, is more of a pipe dream than anything else. The political drama about to unfold would be majestic to behold if it were playing out on television. Unfortunately, this is all but fiction.

The Copyright Amendment Bill has caused great uncertainty in South African and global artistic and creative markets. The bill has gone through many revisions and attracted widespread criticism. Today, it awaits and has been waiting for President Ramaphosa’s signature for months. But the whole activity must be restarted due to government’s mishandling of the public participation process. If this is not done, the bill will lack the legitimacy that every government policy requires, particularly from the relevant constituency – in this case, innovators.

The Rule of Law was mostly absent during Apartheid when a system of parliamentary supremacy elevated the state's effectively absolute power above all else.