Briefing by Frans Cronje: Will the ANC survive Covid-19? - IRR
5 May 2020 - Dr Frans Cronje, CEO of the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) will be presenting an online briefing tomorrow morning on the political implications of the Covid-19 crisis for the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
5 May 2020 - It’s hard to imagine a more destructive conjunction of circumstances for South Africa’s economy: a recession, unemployment at close to a third of the workforce, a shutdown in response to a frightening epidemic, and now a credit-rating downgrade.
4 May 2020 - The timing of reopening schools at the peak of SA’s winter, ahead of the country’s expected first infection peak and ahead of reopening the bulk of the economy, could not be worse.
4 May 2020 - The 8th and 9th May this week will mark the 75th anniversaries of Nazi Germany’s final surrender to the Western and Russian armies. South Africa’s contribution to victory was threefold: fighting in the air and on land and sea, keeping her ports open to Allied shipping, and making equipment for what Prime Minister Jan Smuts described as a “war of machines, science, and production”.
3 May 2020 - Some commentators on the lockdown have strived to make a case for what seems a superior kind of caring, one that disdains the implicitly selfish and grubby business of the “economy” in favour of the altogether more estimable virtue of “lives”.
3 May 2020 - Applying first-world solutions to South Africa, a poor and extremely poorly administered, corrupt country is not just naïve, it is dangerous. For the proposal of nationalising the private health sector to come on top of the horrors of the Covid-19 pandemic and the maladministered recession we suffered even before the pandemic, is sickening.
29 April 2020 - In the midst of massive and rare occurrences that have a severe impact – ‘Black Swan’ events, – forecasts have little credibility. The key determining factor of the depth and length of the Covid-19 depression is how long the lockdown and restrictions will last. That is a big unknown.
29 April 2020 - Ismail Lagardien mistakes the Daily Friend, an online media platform published by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), for the institute’s website and goes on to mistake the sentiments of a columnist published on the platform as the institute’s opinion (America First and ‘economy first’ are not the only options, April 28).
Tying Covid-19 relief to race-based policy is wrong and self-defeating – IRR
29 April 2020 - The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) notes with dismay that racial criteria will be used to determine whether government relief will be extended to small businesses.
The vital need to lift the lockdown – IRR
28 April 2020 - Mounting hunger, hardship and economic decline underscore the necessity of South Africa’s lifting the current lockdown, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has argued in its submission to the government on the national response to the Covid-19 crisis.
27 April 2020 - SA’s prospects for a post-pandemic economic recovery are now contingent as much as anything else on abandoning the government’s pursuit of expropriation without compensation. If that is not done, a post-Covid-19 recovery probably cannot occur.
27 April 2020 - It is fashionable these days to decry the role of the Western Allies in destroying Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime on the grounds that the Russians did most of the fighting in Europe and suffered vastly more casualties, both of which arguments are true.
