IRR to investment funds: are you on the side of hard-working South Africans, or of the government?

Will investment funds take a stand against the expropriation of pensions and savings? This is the question the IRR will soon be putting to investment funds across the country.

Minister Tito Mboweni’s recent endorsement of the idea of using South Africans’ pensions and savings to fund government expenditure is a sinister development. It is clear that the pensions and savings of hard-working South Africans, who have played by the rules and made responsible decisions on their own investments and income, are now in the firing line of an SACP-ANC government that has lost billions to corruption and state capture, and trillions to economic lunacy and mismanagement.

Having run out of taxpayers’ money, the government has made clear in recent months its intention to capture whatever assets it can to either throw at failing government-run entities and projects in the ideologically naïve and wrongheaded hope of generating positive economic results, or funnel to cronies in its patronage network to keep the engine of cadre enrichment chugging along.

Through all this, corporate South Africa and investment fund managers have remained largely silent. This must now change.

To this end, the IRR will be launching an extensive open-letter campaign to engage prominent investment fund managers on what they will be doing to protect the hard-earned pensions and savings of millions of South Africans.

Said IRR deputy head of policy research Hermann Pretorius: “Using pensions and savings to fund the SACP-ANC government is nothing but a new form of state capture. The question is, will investment fund managers side with their clients – the people who trust them to look after their money and financial wellbeing – or, in silence, only appease a government intent on expropriating pensions and savings?”

Media contact: Hermann Pretorius, IRR Deputy Head of Policy Research – 079 875 4290; hermann@irr.org.za

Media enquiries: Michael Morris Tel: 066 302 1968 Email: michael@irr.org.za

Kelebogile Leepile Tel: 079 051 0073 Email: kelebogile@irr.org.za

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