17 February 2021 - Money makes the world go round, but what happens when expropriation without compensation (EWC) whirls it the other way? South Africa’s financial sector is about to find out.
Media
Every week we reach hundreds of thousands of people through placing arguments in the media in support of the principles we stand for. No other advocacy group in the country does as much as we do to promote support for policies that defend your right, and that of your community, to make decisions about your own life free from counter-productive government interference.
16 February 2021 - "Cuba & South Africa share a special bond with strong historic relations spanning decades. Over 732 South Africans, many from previously disadvantaged communities, received years of training in Cuba since the inception of the Nelson Mandela/Fidel Castro medical training programme" wrote Cyril Ramaphosa, Twitter, April 2020.
16 February 2021 - The State of the Nation Address is typically framed around some metaphor or slogan. Last week, President Ramaphosa invoked the image of the fynbos. It is, he reminds us, a resilient plant that goes through periodic destruction, after which it grows again.
IRR CEO Frans Cronje to step down
16 February 2021 - The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has announced that its CEO, Dr Frans Cronje, will step down at the end of 2021 after eighteen years at the institute, eight as CEO.
Will SA banks declare their opposition to the Expropriation Bill? – IRR
16 February 2021 - As the deadline for public comment on the Expropriation Bill rapidly approaches, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) will this week be asking the country’s major banks and financial institutions whether or not they will be making submissions to Parliament to warn against the risks to their clients.
16 February 2021 - Last week's State of the Nation address should leave South Africa in no doubt that the government has little sense of how to deal with the economic predicament the country finds itself in, whether in relation to the damage inflicted by the pandemic, or its longer-term retardation.
15 February 2021 - Earlier this month, Queen Elizabeth II entered the 70th year of her reign, her father, King George VI, having died on 6th February 1952. Had his elder brother, King Edward VIII, remained on the throne and fathered an heir, she might never have become queen. Had he remained on the throne without producing an heir, she would have become queen 20 years later than she did, for her uncle outlived her father by two decades.
15 February 2021 - The single most important test on whether the South African government is serious about staging an economic recovery remains its position on expropriation.
14 February 2021 - Google Maps tells me it takes 17 minutes to drive from my home in Claremont to Philippi on the Cape Flats, which sounds about right when I think back to taking our Scottish terriers to the kennels there, where they’d be cared for while the family went on holiday.
13 February 2021 - I am, as ever, left in astounded awe at how coldly and cruelly some academics and activists of the political left can craft word after word in such measured and careful tones, which, if enacted as policy, could decimate a country’s economy, bring great suffering to millions of its people, and enable the destruction of its democracy.
12 February 2021 - Elmien du Plessis writes that the Expropriation Bill of 2020 is "a good piece of legislation" for which "we have been waiting for 26 years" (Expropriation Bill: Making law is a political process, but it mustn’t be misread, 4 February). But the Bill is just as unconstitutional as the 1975 Expropriation Act it is intended to replace – so its adoption will hardly be a step forward.
12 February 2021 - South Africa’s cabinet will be proposing the Contingente Internacional de médicos especializados en situaciones de desastre y graves epidemias ‘Henry Reeve’ – the Cuban ‘medical brigade’ deployed to assist other countries facing medical disaster situations – for the Nobel Peace Prize. While largely symbolic, this is a very visible and audible gesture from South Africa’s government towards not only Cuba’s medics, but towards the Cuban state as a whole. And, like practically all things Cuban in South Africa, this has received an outsized reaction.