Tag: Zakhele Mthembu

Dumping is described as international price discrimination, wherein a product is cheaper in the importing market than it is in the market that is exporting said product. This practice is frowned upon, as exemplified by calls to curb dumping through measures like tariffs or outright bans on certain imports.

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB), historically finding its expression in the Currency and Banking Act of 1920, is today premised on section 224(1) of the Constitution. Has the Reserve Bank been acting constitutionally since its legal foundation changed? Has it been protecting the value of the Rand in the interest of balanced and sustainable economic growth as required? How would the Reserve Bank meet its constitutional objective?

South Africa is hailed as the country with the most progressive of labour regimes. We have a constitution that has explicit labour relations rights in section 23. We also have a myriad of supporting legislation such as the Labour Relations Act and the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, amongst others.

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 international company Meta (which owns Facebook and WhatsApp) has been referred to the Competition Tribunal, to be fined 10% of its turnover for violating Section 8 provisions of the Competition Act, which prohibit the abuse of dominance by a company.

The Competition Commission has recently referred WesBank, the car finance division of First Rand Bank, and Toyota Financial Services South Africa (TSA) to the Competition Tribunal, to be fined 10% of their turnover for the alleged violation of the Competition Act.

The Upgrading of Land Tenure Rights Amendment Act of 2021 was assented to in May 2021 by the President. This amendment was necessitated by a case, Rahube v Rahube, heard initially in the North Gauteng High Court, with the Constitutional Court later confirming the order. The amendment changes the landscape around the conversion of insecure title into secure private title.

Section 25 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa is constantly under attack. Coming off a vote in parliament where its proposed amendment failed. The section specifically is under attack again. The Constitution in general was critiqued by the Minister of Tourism, Lindiwe Sisulu. Yet, property rights specifically are singled out, citing Professor Ramose who called it (s25) the ‘longest clause’. The right to private title, is attacked as being representative of colonialism. Is this true?

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.

South African competition law is highly regarded internationally. In 2018, the Global Competition Review (GCR) ranked the Competition Commission as the best regulator globally. With such praise, one would expect the economy to be the most competitive in the world. This is not the case. Instead, South Africa ranks very poorly in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World report, which measures the freedom of economies globally with standards like regulatory burden, property rights protection, intervention and the general ease of opening and doing business in a country.