Written By: Robert Khumalo

Geordin Hill-Lewis is easy to like if you are inclined toward the Democratic Alliance. He is polished, articulate, administratively credible, and far more convincing as an executive than as a mere parliamentary combatant. Now, after his election on 12 April 2026 as the DA’s new federal leader, he arrives at the head of South Africa’s second-largest party at a moment of genuine consequence.

The DA is no longer simply an opposition formation heckling from the sidelines. It is part of the Government of National Unity, it is heading into local elections, and it is openly trying to position itself as a future governing party. Hill-Lewis himself has made that ambition unmistakable. He has said he is not satisfied with the DA remaining a junior partner, and that the party must aim to become the largest in South Africa and lead national government.

That makes the obvious question too small. The real question is not whether Hill-Lewis is good for the DA. He probably is. The real question is whether he is good for liberalism in South Africa, or whether he is merely the latest, and perhaps most polished, custodian of the DA brand.

Those are not the same thing. A party can improve its electoral prospects without deepening its principles. It can become more professional, more careful, and more broadly acceptable while saying less and less that is philosophically distinct. In fact, that is often how parties grow. They swap conviction for calibration and then call it maturity.

Hill-Lewis has the chance to do the opposite. But that remains only a chance.

The best case for Hill-Lewis is straightforward. He brings something South African politics desperately lacks: a leader with a visible governing record in a functioning administration. His whole political appeal rests on the claim that where the DA governs, the basics work. In his acceptance speech, he made that argument central. Budgets are managed responsibly. Competent people are appointed. Institutions function. Services are delivered. He framed that not simply as a DA boast, but as proof that South Africans do not have to accept decay as normal.

And unlike many politicians who make these claims in the abstract, Hill-Lewis can point to Cape Town. Under his mayoralty, the city has pushed a record infrastructure drive, including a three-year R40 billion infrastructure programme, with the city and allied reporting repeatedly presenting this as a historic investment effort. It has retained a strong audit reputation, with the Auditor-General’s 2023/24 local government outcomes listing the City of Cape Town among municipalities with clean audits. It has also pursued one of the most concrete market-oriented reforms anywhere in the country through independent power procurement and a longer-term energy strategy aimed at reducing reliance on Eskom and expanding private and diversified supply.

That matters. Liberalism in South Africa has often suffered from sounding like a seminar when it needed to look like a government. Hill-Lewis offers liberals something more tangible than a stack of think tank papers. He offers a mayoralty that has at least tried to turn decentralisation, market participation, and competent administration into visible policy.

His instinct on several major issues is also recognisably liberal. In his first speech as leader, he defended property rights against expropriation, attacked cadre deployment, rejected crony enrichment masquerading as empowerment, backed mother-tongue education, and tied the defence of freedom to the practical task of lifting people out of poverty. He also made law and order his top national policy priority, arguing that without safety there can be no growth, no flourishing community, and no healthy democracy.

That last point is especially important. Too many South African elites still treat crime as background noise, a grim but permanent feature of life to which ordinary people must simply adjust. Hill-Lewis has done the opposite. He has put the restoration of legal order near the centre of his politics. Properly understood, that is not illiberal at all. It is one of the first duties of a liberal state. Freedom means little where extortionists, syndicates, and predators operate without consequence. He is right to say that law and order is not one priority among many, but foundational.

So yes, there is a real liberal case for Geordin Hill-Lewis.

But there is also a reason to be cautious.

The DA has long had a habit of translating liberalism into managerialism. Instead of making the moral and economic case for freedom, markets, dispersed power, and equal citizenship under the law, it often defaults to a simpler message: we run things better. That message is not false. In many cases it is plainly true. But it is also incomplete. Competence is not a philosophy. Clean audits are not a theory of justice. Better refuse collection is not yet a defence of liberty.

Hill-Lewis risks falling into the same pattern. His pitch is sharper and more ambitious than that of many predecessors, but it still leans heavily on performance, trust-building, presence in communities, and a politics of practical delivery. Those are all necessary. None are sufficient. Liberalism cannot survive as a mere tone of voice for well-administered municipalities. It must be argued as an answer to South Africa’s national crisis.

That crisis is not simply one of poor management. It is a crisis of political centralisation, cadre deployment, legal decay, race patronage, state monopolies, and elite extraction. If Hill-Lewis wants to be good for liberalism, he must say so plainly and repeatedly. He must explain that South Africa does not suffer only from incompetent rulers, but from an anti-liberal governing model.

This is where the uncertainty begins.

He has shown the right instincts on B-BBEE, or at least on what it has become. Reuters reported this week that he reaffirmed the DA’s opposition to the current B-BBEE framework while trying to communicate more effectively to black voters that opposing the model does not mean indifference to black advancement. That is exactly the right terrain on which a serious liberal should fight. South Africa does need black advancement. It desperately does. But it does not need more politically connected rent-seeking, more elite brokerage, and more race arithmetic in place of broad-based growth. Hill-Lewis seems to understand that. The question is whether he can make that case forcefully enough to break the stale ANC framing that only patronage is compassionate.

He also seems to understand that the DA’s problem is not merely media hostility or unfair caricature. He has acknowledged a real trust deficit with black voters and said the party must become more present in communities that have never supported it. That honesty is refreshing. Too much of the DA’s internal culture has oscillated between self-congratulation and grievance. Hill-Lewis at least seems to grasp that voters are not obliged to reward a party simply because it believes itself more competent. Trust must be earned politically, not demanded morally.

But here again there is a danger. Trust-building can become a euphemism for ideological softening. The DA’s challenge is not just to be liked by more voters. It is to persuade more voters that liberal principles serve their interests better than racial statism, cadre deployment, and state dependency do. That is harder. It requires not only presence, but conviction.

Cape Town itself illustrates the double-edged nature of Hill-Lewis’s appeal. Supporters see a city with better administration, large-scale infrastructure ambition, cleaner governance, and a real attempt to use municipal autonomy for practical reform. Critics see a city that still reproduces deep spatial inequality and whose leadership can sound too quick to dismiss structural grievances. Civil society organisations such as Ndifuna Ukwazi, Equal Education, and the Equal Education Law Centre have sharply attacked Hill-Lewis over his handling of spatial apartheid language and housing policy, arguing that managerial success has not undone entrenched exclusion. Whether one accepts all of that criticism or not, it points to a real weakness in the DA model. Administration alone does not settle questions of justice, access, and inclusion.

The GNU creates another test. Hill-Lewis says the DA must be a principled coalition partner, not a passenger collecting positions. He has vowed to oppose GNU policies that block progress while helping steer government in a better direction. That is the correct posture. But coalition can also blur ideological lines. It can train a party to manage the pace of ANC decline rather than offer a genuine alternative to it. The DA under Hill-Lewis must resist that temptation. If it does not, then he may prove very useful to the DA while doing little to renew liberal politics in the country.

So, is Geordin Hill-Lewis good for liberalism, or just good for the DA?

For now, the fairest answer is this: he is almost certainly good for the DA, and potentially good for liberalism.

He is good for the DA because he gives it executive credibility, strategic ambition, and a stronger claim to being a party of government rather than a professional opposition. He is also one of the few prominent South African politicians who can plausibly connect clean governance, local reform, energy competition, merit, property rights, and law and order into a single public persona.

But for liberalism, promise is not enough. If Hill-Lewis merely perfects the DA’s managerial pitch, then he will help the party without changing the country’s ideological direction. If, however, he uses his leadership to argue boldly that South Africa’s future lies in freedom under law, market-led growth, real decentralisation, secure property, and a state constrained to doing fewer things better, then he may become something much more important.

He may become the leader who finally turns DA competence into a genuinely liberal national alternative.

That is the test before him now.

Robert Khumalo is a political analyst and classical liberal commentator.

As the debate on immigration continues to rage in a context where it may even influence the outcomes of local government elections, it is increasingly clear that some of the tension stems from the fact that ordinary people and elites are speaking past each other.

From the outset, it is worth noting that not all elites disagree with the sentiments expressed by many ordinary citizens. Equally, not all citizens disagree with the views put forward by some elites. The term “elites” in this piece refers specifically to certain academics and media pundits who are dismissing the discourse around immigration as scapegoating and Afrophobia, while “the people” refers largely to poor South Africans who are represented by grassroots organisations such as Operation Dudula and March and March.

What appears to the people as elite indifference, and to elites as popular prejudice, is in fact a sign that both sides are missing something fundamental about the other’s reality.

Lived experience and intuitive reasoning

For the people, the issue of immigration is interpreted at the level of lived experience and pattern recognition. Scenes of immigrants who commit crimes in their communities, spaza shops that are almost exclusively immigrant-owned, and public institutions that are visibly used by immigrants come together to form a story of displacement and encroaching dominance by outsiders.

In this context the natural response is to view these outsiders as the source of their problems and to call for their complete expulsion as a solution, whether rightly or wrongly.

While the people’s concerns are valid and deserve genuine attention, a downside of reasoning intuitively in this case is the tendency towards overgeneralisation and misattribution. Overgeneralisation occurs, for example, when all crime is blamed on immigrants. Misattribution happens when problems are ascribed solely to immigrants, rather than to government failures and, to some extent, the people themselves.

Abstraction and misreading

The elites, who mostly operate at the level of theories and ideas and therefore interpret the issue on an institutional level, are not entirely wrong in identifying a nationalistic impulse as one driver of grassroots frustration. They are also not entirely wrong in criticising some misinformed leaders of these grassroots organisations who are clearly exploiting the people’s frustration to advance their own agendas.

But what they are missing – and this is not being said condescendingly – is that the average person on the ground is not operating at the same level of abstraction. The average person is not thinking critically about uneven development in Africa and the pressure this inevitably places on their country.

They are not analysing systemic corruption in immigration institutions, crunching crime statistics, or considering the complex factors behind the economic success of immigrants. Nor are they attuned to arguments about state capacity and the failure to deliver social goods. They are simply responding intuitively to the reality they experience and the patterns they observe around them.

Criticising the limits of intuitive reasoning and calling for more nuanced responses to a complex issue is undoubtedly important. But being dismissive and immediately reaching for labels without appreciating that it is somewhat unfair and even unrealistic to expect people to operate at the same level of abstraction is problematic. Expecting people to communicate in polished, scholarly language rather than the raw, unfiltered terms in which they articulate their concerns is also problematic.

Both tendencies create the false impression that elites do not care because they simply do not share the same experiences. The ultimate outcome on the people’s end is resentment and a feeling of being ignored and disrespected.

Towards a middle ground

This may well sound idealistic, but perhaps a potential way forward is a middle ground that acknowledges different frames of reference and addresses immediate, tangible experiences without losing sight of the deeper institutional and structural dynamics that are driving the problem. The aim here is not to get everyone to start thinking in the same way, but to find common ground for mutual understanding and practical action. This could well be the approach that makes everyone in the discussion feel acknowledged.

One must reiterate that this piece rests on no presumption of ignorance or simple-mindedness on the part of the people, and it is not a thinly veiled justification for elite-driven conscientisation of supposedly ignorant masses. Some level of thinking and reasoning is arguably a universal human capability, and human behaviour is always partly shaped by ideology, even when that ideology operates unconsciously for many.

The key nuance lies in how the human mind can be sharpened – or can sharpen itself – to resist the natural urge to default to intuitive reasoning and ascend to higher levels of abstraction that allow for a more reflective and informed understanding of complex social problems. This again is a universal human capability, and it should be remembered that elites themselves are humans who do not always interpret issues at high levels of abstraction.

In closing, who is wrong on immigration? The simple answer is that no one is, at least not entirely. The more complex, and perhaps unsatisfactory, answer is that we need to appreciate how different frames of reference can lead to different understandings of social reality as we engage constructively in dialogue on a way forward.

Ayanda Sakhile Zulu holds a BSocSci in Political Studies from the University of Pretoria and is a Policy Officer at the Free Market Foundation.

Unemployment is the fundamental problem with South Africa. We have many systemic and endemic issues, but most of our woes would be solved if more people had jobs.

The fiscal crisis would be solved with more taxpayers. Petty crime would drop if people could earn an honest living. Extra tax revenue could equip law enforcement to prosecute the violent criminals. Wealth would grow, equipping South Africans to feed their children, solve nutritional deficiencies, and send their kids to better schools.

According to StatsSA, 31.4% is the official unemployment rate. If you include those jobseekers who have given up and other potential members of the labour force, that number jumps to 42.1%. That means that for every ten South Africans of working age, between 3 – 4 of them don’t earn a living. They don’t pay tax. Often, they are dependent on grants paid for by tax money – or puts financial strain on a family member.

When you look closer at these stats, the cause of unemployment becomes starker. 57% of people aged 15 – 24 are unemployed. 39.2% of 25 – 34-year-olds are unemployed. That number drops as people get older, with only 20.4% of people aged 45 – 54 being unemployed.

Unemployment disproportionately affects young, entry-level workers. Older people with experience and skills are less likely to face unemployment.

Some would think that having younger, more energetic workers would be a boon for a company. Especially, if we’re being pessimistic, considering that younger workers can be paid less than their older counterparts. Yet South African companies are hesitant to employ entry-level workers.

South Africa is cursed with a host of regulations and laws that stifle business freedom and discourages companies from employing workers unless they really must, and unless they really trust the person being hired.

The Labour Relations Act (LRA) grants far too much power to trade unions, allowing these unions to shutdown entire industries and to standardise unworkable and unprofitable wages. Companies fear firing their workers because they may be required to pay hefty compensation (up to 12 – 24 months’ salary) and even be ordered to rehire the fired worker.

The Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA) pushes huge requirements on the employer to justify dismissal. This discourages employers from hiring workers at a whim or taking a risk. They need to be very sure when they hire someone, or they risk never being able to fire them.

The Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA) raises hiring costs through mandatory benefits, pricing low-skilled workers out of employment. These rules also stop companies from flexible planning and operations. This pushes employers towards automation and contract workers.

The Employment Equity Act (EEA) actively discourages companies from wanting to grow their business or employ anyone, as they will be required to employ people based on race, and have the demographics of their company reflect the racial ideology of the government. Non-compliance can lead to fines in the millions. While employers can try to justify straying from the EEA, the risk is still present.

The National Minimum Wage Act inflates labour costs, pricing out entry-level positions and making it uneconomical to hire people for certain jobs. Bargaining councils also inflate the minimum wage to even higher than the national mandate, further discouraging employers from hiring.

The Unemployment Insurance Act (UIA) and other related funds require employers to bankroll part of the financial safety nets of their employees, while also becoming wrapped up in paperwork and red tape. This discourages the hiring of even temporary staff, lest the company take on ongoing liabilities.

The law is not on the side of employers, and they know this, and so, they don’t risk hiring new workers. Trade unions threaten to shutdown entire industries while demanding exorbitant pay rises – often using violence to achieve their ends. Of course, we don’t have a lot of jobs! The government doesn’t make it easy to want to provide jobs.

So, what’s the solution?

First, we need to liberalise the labour market. We need to make it as easy to hire and fire people as possible. If someone visits an office and asks for a job, that company should be fully incentivised to say: “Hey, if it doesn’t work out, we can just dismiss you.”

Allow companies to take risks on their own terms, and don’t protect workers from economic realities or accountability.

We must also reduce red tape across the board. Business licensing and registration must be abolished or streamlined. Regulatory and paperwork burden must be reduced as much as possible. What should matter is that a company is hiring someone and is paying them. Unless that company is genuinely harming that employee, it is no business of the state.

We must also abolish Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) and the EEA. Racialised legislation disincentives companies from growing their businesses, lest they must give a portion of their company away to a politically appointed “partner”.

The government must also make South Africa friendly to foreign investors and companies. US firms already employ over 250,000 South Africans. Imagine if South Africa guaranteed property rights and provided policy certainty to foreign investors. Even more companies would flood into the country, bringing jobs and capital.

To accomplish this, the government needs to adopt a truly non-aligned approach to foreign policy, and stop antagonising the US and other Western countries, as well as getting rid of policies that may threaten property rights – like the Expropriation Act.

The government must also cut the red tape on the creation of private colleges and schools. Public schools have proven to not provide satisfactory education. And there are far too many young South Africans who need tertiary education to develop skills. The solution isn’t to encourage them all to study unmarketable subjects at universities – but to expand the range of technical, vocational and private colleges to raise the supply of study positions. Allowing the creation of private medical colleges would simultaneously raise our supply of doctors, lowering medical costs.

Finally, the Reserve Bank needs to relax its controls over South Africans receiving income from abroad. Many enterprising South Africans have turned to working digitally overseas to bring in an income. Yet the government makes it incredibly hard and onerous to receive this money. It is perfectly easy to spend money on foreign products, but very difficult to get paid.

South Africans earning a living and bringing money into the country should be encourages and the process to receive remittances eased.

I am not alone in thinking all this; 86% of South Africans support liberalising the labour market to make it easier to get a job.

South Africa does not need more slogans, plans, or excuses. It needs jobs. And jobs will only come when government stops treating employers as suspects, workers as permanent liabilities, and growth as something to be managed rather than unleashed. Liberalise the labour market, slash red tape, restore policy certainty, and let South Africans work. Only then can we begin to end unemployment.

Nicholas Woode-Smith is the Managing Editor of the Rational Standard and a senior associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity. You can follow him on X: @NWoodeSmith.

The founder and leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, has been found guilty of firearm offences and sentenced to five years direct imprisonment.

I support the guilty verdict (which came a few months earlier) and I think the sentence may actually be too lenient based on past precedent. Even though I do not support criminalising mere possession of an unlicensed firearm, I support the outcome because the rule of law demands it.

I do not share Malema’s politics. His socialist ideas amount to nothing more than theft, cloaked behind a legitimate need to restore previously stolen property. Mr Malema perverts a desire for justice by suggesting policies that would in essence effect a transfer of all land and much of the rest of the property within South Africa to the state. Mr Malema should not be imprisoned for his advocacy of theft or for singing “kill the Boer”, which some see as incitement for murder, because it is mere speech.

Nobody should be imprisoned for possession because having a firearm in your possession, without informing the state, does not violate anyone’s rights.

Similarly, the other lesser charges such as discharging a firearm in a built up area, do not in themselves indicate a violation of someone’s rights - actually shooting someone would. But there may be a case to be made for civil charges if someone who attended the event where the firearm was discharged felt their life was needlessly put at risk.

Yet, I support Malema’s conviction and I think his sentence may be too lenient because the rule of law must trump all other considerations, especially when the accused person is a member of Parliament.

The rule of law has various elements associated with it, but in my opinion, the first and highest value is equality before the law. Laws must apply equally to the subjects (citizens) as they do the lawmakers (MPs and all other members of government and their families and friends), otherwise it is too easy to write tyrannical laws because they do not affect the people writing them.

This is particularly true of firearm rights in South Africa.

In recent years we have seen rhetoric and even proposed amendments to the Firearms Control Act, that would in effect, disarm peaceful, law-abiding citizens. This has occurred while the VIP protection component of the police budget has been increased faster than the rest of the budget, in essence a reduction of protection for ordinary citizens while protection for ministers, the President, etc., is increased.

We must also remember that the statute that Julius Malema violated. I focus mostly on the charge of possession since it has the longest sentence, and without which the rest of the sentences would amount to just a fine. Possession of an unlawful firearm carries a 15 year mandatory minimum sentence under the Criminal Law Amendment Act (105 of 1997), if the firearm is of the semi-automatic or automatic variety. This can be reduced only if there are “substantial and compelling circumstances”.

Another important component of the rule of law that applies in this case is precedent or stare decisis (Latin for “to stand by things decided”). This means that we must be guided by past legal decisions when we encounter similar facts. To my mind this is important because it is too easy to be unjust to people in the past or people in the present, through inconsistency in the legal system. I have a right to expect that, given similar facts, a similar outcome in the legal system will result.

Ordinary citizens have been convicted and given worse sentences than what Malema has received for possession under less severe circumstances (no discharge of the firearm in a built up area and these people were not lawmakers).

Let’s examine some of these cases.

The first case I could find was The State v Thembalethu (2008) where the accused used a semi-automatic pistol during a robbery. The firearm was unlawfully possessed and he was given 15 years for this as per the minimum. He appealed all the way to the Supreme Court of Appeal. His appeal was rejected and he was to serve the whole 15 years.

The second case is Madikane v The State (2010) where the accused was found with a semi-automatic firearm and initially sentenced to the prescribed minimum of 15 years. This was despite the fact that the accused did not commit any other crime like discharging the firearm illegally or committing a robbery. The accused also pled guilty and took responsibility for his actions, even though his testimony seems to show that he was hanging out with friends and took the gun from them just before the police raid. It was not even his gun. The sentence was reduced to seven years on appeal.

Compare this to Julius Malema, who pleaded not guilty to all five charges and tried to argue that the gun he was seen firing on video was not a real gun. Instead of taking responsibility he also alleged a political conspiracy in his prosecution. This is despite the fact that the National Prosecuting Authority only made a move to prosecute him after AfriForum laid charges and threatened to prosecute him via their private prosecutions unit.

Given these facts, it can be argued credibly that any prosecutorial bias was on Mr Malema’s side.

The last case is The State vs Mlambo (2025). The accused was a 36 year old single father to three children, a member of the South African National Civics Organisation (SANCO), a former member of his local Community Policing Forum, and a business owner with two fast-food businesses. He was found with a concealed weapon with 15 rounds of ammunition due to an anonymous tip. He was sentenced to six years in prison specifically for the possession. He had pleaded not guilty, claiming he did not know how the weapon had come to be in a bucket behind the door of his shack.

From this it is clear that Malema actually got off lightly. He committed other offences in addition to possession. He pleaded not guilty, lied that the gun was a toy despite clear video evidence and thousands of witnesses. He did not take responsibility and cited a fake conspiracy against him.

Being a lawmaker entrusted with the responsibility of passing laws for the country, he also swore an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the Republic, as an MP.

If you believe the crime of which Malema is convicted is not worth sending people to prison over, I agree with you. So let us repeal the Firearms Control Act or at least make unlawful possession subject only to a fine and not imprisonment. Then, release everyone convicted of unlawful possession from prison and pay restitution for all the time served for unlawful possession.

That is: If your objections are principled and not merely meant to protect one man because deep down you think your favoured politicians are members of an aristocracy that sits above the law.

Join Martin van Staden, Zakhele Mthembu and Ayanda Zulu as they dive into some of the most pressing issues of the week.

In this episode, we unpack the sentencing of Julius Malema and question whether justice is applied equally. We also examine the immigration debate, asking whether deporting foreign nationals will create jobs or distract from deeper economic issues.

Written By: Charl Heydenrych

Despite the legal verdict finding Julius Malema guilty, a strict libertarian analysis, grounded in the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) and consent axiom, suggests that the state’s conviction represents a triumph of administrative bureaucracy over the fundamental ethics of liberty.

From this perspective, the court’s decision to penalise an action that resulted in no physical injury or property damage highlights a fundamental disconnect between statutory law and natural justice.

The Victimless Crime Paradox

The central tenet of libertarianism is that a crime requires a victim. Without an aggrieved party whose person or property has been violated, the state has no moral standing to initiate force, in the form of fines or imprisonment, against an individual.

In the case of Malema firing a rifle at a rally, the facts remain that no one was hit, no property was destroyed, and no individual came forward claiming their rights were physically infringed.

By finding him guilty, the state has effectively criminalised a victimless act. To a proponent of the NAP, the conviction is an act of aggression by the state itself, using the threat of violence to punish a man for an action that, while perhaps reckless in the eyes of the public, did not actually breach the peace by harming another.

Licensing as a Violation of Property Rights

The conviction regarding the unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition strikes at the heart of the libertarian critique of the regulatory state. Libertarians view the right to own and carry tools for self-defence or recreation as a natural extension of self-ownership.

Prior Restraint: Requiring a licence to possess a firearm is a form of prior restraint. It assumes the state owns the right to grant or deny the exercise of a fundamental liberty.

Property Rights: A firearm is a piece of private property.

The act of possessing it, regardless of whether a government agency has issued a piece of paper or plastic card authorising that possession, does not constitute an initiation of force.

By convicting Malema for lacking a licence, the legal system has prioritised compliance over conduct. The state is not punishing him for what he did to someone else, but for failing to ask the state for permission to exist as an armed individual. In a libertarian framework, the lack of a permit is not a moral failing or a criminal act.

Risk Versus Reality: The Problem With Proactive Law

The state’s justification for such convictions usually rests on the management of public risk. The argument follows that firing a gun into the air is dangerous, and the law must intervene to prevent a potential tragedy.

However, a libertarian rejects the idea that the state should have the power to punish individuals for potentialities. If an action could cause harm but does not, the NAP has not been violated. If we allow the state to prosecute people based on the statistical probability of danger, we invite a Minority Report-style system of justice, where the government regulates every aspect of life, from driving speeds to calorie intake, under the guise of safety.

By finding Malema guilty for an act that resulted in zero casualties, the court has ruled that the state’s desire for an orderly, permitted society outweighs the individual’s right to act freely, as long as they do not hit anyone.

Consent and Private Assembly

Furthermore, the rally was a private political gathering. The attendees were there voluntarily, participating in an event known for its militant aesthetics and provocative symbolism. In a purely libertarian society, the rules of conduct at a private assembly are determined by the property owners and the participants. If the participants did not feel their rights were being violated by the display, the state’s and AfriForum’s intervention as a third-party prosecutor is an unwanted and unnecessary intrusion into private association.

Conclusion: Law Versus Justice

The guilty verdict against Julius Malema may be a victory for the South African Firearms Control Act, but from a libertarian point of view, it is a loss for individual liberty. The conviction reinforces the precedent that the state can cage or fine an individual for actions that harm no one.

When the law punishes the unlicensed possession of an object or the unauthorised discharge of a weapon that strikes no victim, it ceases to be a system of justice and becomes a system of control. For the libertarian, the verdict is a reminder that under current legal paradigms, the state considers the violation of its own arbitrary rules to be a greater sin than the actual initiation of force against a human being.

Charl Heydenrych is a retired human resources practitioner and a libertarian.

I may disagree with interventionists on the right, left and center, but that doesn’t make me a non-interventionist. There are many people who seem to have developed the stupidest form of nationalism, that imagines a country can be free and prosperous while closing its borders and ignoring everything that occurs outside of that country. This is what I call Wakanda nationalism because it only works in fiction. In the real world it only leads to disaster, as it did for China, Korea and Japan in the past.

What we learned from those examples is that countries that shut themselves off become poorer and less developed than everyone else. China shut itself off first through the Haijin policy, or sea bans, which restricted maritime trade, from about 1434 to 1567. Then again from 1757 to 1842 specifically to limit Western influence on China, there was even a missed opportunity in 1793 to peacefully open trade with the British and that refusal not only led to the opium wars that initiated China’s ‘century of humiliation’, it meant that China was ill-prepared to fight the war due to it being left behind the Western world who were industrial powers by that point.

Keep in mind that if you had described industrialisation to a well-informed medieval European, they would have most likely assumed that China would be the first country to industrialise. The Chinese were known for innovation and manufacturing going back to ancient times. This is why trade along the silk road was such a big deal and why the trade route was called by that name. They also produced other goods like tea and porcelain, invented gunpowder, paper etc.

The Chinese also had a large market and an abundance of capital (unfortunately the emperors squandered this). No one would have dreamed, certainly not the medieval British, that Britain would be the place where the first instance of industrialisation would occur. Yet that is exactly what happened because the British, whether through blind luck or something else, developed a society that had robust, decentralised institutions with trade links to Europe and the rest of the world.

As an island nation, the British understood that their very survival depended on trade. They also had a limited population, particularly after the bubonic plague, and knew they could not rely on a large internal market like the Chinese could. All of these and other factors contributed to Britain winning the industrialisation race while China and its East Asian neighbours shut themselves off from the world and were left behind while the West, they used to think of as primitive, surpassed them and eventually defeated them.

Both the Chinese and Japanese were forcibly opened by Western powers, China by Britain in 1842 and Japan by the USA in 1853. Japan, to its credit, quickly learned its lesson and applied them via the Meiji restoration in 1868 (a mere 15 years later, this shows how adaptable Japan and its institutions were/are). China would take longer to adapt and did not really learn the lesson until the 1978 reforms under Deng Xiaoping.

Korea on the other hand, was not opened by a Western power, it was opened and then colonised by Japan. Things would go downhill from there and it was not until the end of the Second World War and the establishment of South Korea that any part of Korea would start to gain prosperity and some freedom. It would take the military dictatorship from 1961 to 1979 for South Koreans to see rapid gains in prosperity. A central pillar of the dictatorship’s policies was making South Korea a competitive exporter (partly through allowing markets to set wages) instead of the failed policy of import substitution (a policy that modern South Africa still relies on despite an abundant of evidence of its failure).

Similarly, Sub-Saharan Africa was a late bloomer in terms of development. While global trade links did exist from East Africa to the East and via the Sahara, this was nothing compared to the trade links enjoyed by the Mediterranean civilisations. This is why so little was known of Africa as long ago as the 19th century, with the African interior being referred to as the dark continent.

All of this to make the point that the Wakanda strategy of isolation cannot create prosperity, closing borders makes you worse off culturally and economically. This cartoonish form of nationalism is gaining traction in South Africa. Europeans might have an objection to Middle Eastern and African immigrants, but in general they understand the importance of at least being connected to your neighbours, South Africans seem to live under the delusion that we can be safe and prosperous while cutting all ties with our neighbours.

Firstly, our best and most natural allies are on the African continent. These people have a similar culture as us, with most South Africans having originated in West Central Africa and made their way East and South during the Bantu migration more than 1500 years ago. Sub-Saharan Africa is also where the African Christian states are concentrated. The religion that dominates SA is also dominant across Sub-Saharan Africa.

In fact, from South Africa in the South to Kenya, Uganda, the Central African Republic and Cameroon in the North, there is a remarkable similarity in language, genetics and culture. This is also the part of Africa where the African part of the British Empire was located and today there is a clear division in African politics between the Northern (largely) Francophone countries and the Southern (largely) Anglophone countries, which further reinforced the similarities in terms of the institutions inherited from the British empire.

Another point is that African borders are arbitrary. Why do we have so many Basotho in the Free state and other parts of SA bordering Lesotho? Why are there so many Swazi people in Mpumalanga? Why are there so many Batswana in the Northwest province instead of Botswana? Why are there so many Ndebele, Venda and Tsonga people in Zimbabwe?

These are all peoples who make up South Africa; there’s even a sizable Xhosa population in Zimbabwe. In Mozambique, Tsonga people make up over 20% of the population. And these peoples all derive from or are related in some significant ways to other people in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is no cultural reason to close our borders, which is not to say we must not control the border.

We have also seen how isolationism can lead to a country falling from a position of being relatively more advanced than its neighbours and trade partners, to falling far behind to the point that the country becomes easy to conquer. Our closest relationships should naturally be formed with our Sub-Saharan African neighbours. This includes cultural, diplomatic, trade, security and other relationships.

This cannot happen when there is this rhetoric that demonises other Africans and implies they are all criminals. I have even seen some truly heinous statements referring to Africans as dirty. Clearly this is meant to dehumanise the people who are closest to us. I will always find it interesting that by demonising these people in this way, given how close they are to black South Africans, the ones doing the demonising essentially agree with those who are racist against black South Africans.

You may see yourself as better than the Zimbabwean, but you are clearly not so much better that you have nothing at all in common.

On a more pragmatic level, the closest people we can trade with or cooperate on security or other matters, are our African neighbours. In fact, trade with Africa does much of the work of reducing our trade deficit. Our trade with the West and with China either widens our overall deficit or only reduces it through the export of raw commodities for the most part, Africa buys our processed goods and services.

When it comes to security, our non-ocean border is our northern border with other African countries. With good diplomacy, we can work to make sure to secure ourselves against any security threat from the North. This could include military bases in some of these countries, radar, satellite ground stations, missile batteries (particularly important on the East and West coasts of Africa) etc to ensure any invasion attempt against us can be deterred either before the enemy lands on the continent, or far from our borders.

I can honestly say there is no hope of South Africa resolving its many problems on its own as many like to say (the idea that before unity all African countries must resolve their individual problems). The right kind of cooperation is how we resolve our shared problems and build shared prosperity and security. There is simply no historical precedent of a country going it alone or ignoring its neighbours and succeeding.

This means we also must take responsibility for stabilising Africa. The quicker our neighbours stabilise and live in peace with the rule of law, the quicker we can trade freely. Stable neighbours also reduce immigration to South Africa, but this is far from being the most important benefit.

When we speak of Africans derisively, looking down on them because they are poorer than us, we better hope that fortunes will never be reversed as they were in the case of China and the West. Africans will remember South African insults, even when future South Africans have forgotten them and need Africa’s cooperation to succeed. We have an opportunity now to build good relations with our neighbours from a position of strength; it might not last long.

Mpiyakhe Dhlamini is a libertarian, writer, programmer and an Associate of the Free Market Foundation.

Written By: Vivienne Vermaak

The battle with the body is one that no human is spared.

From Narcissus of Greek mythology who pined away while admiring his own reflection, to the portrait of Dorian Gray, which bears the brunt of his ageing while his flesh remained youthful, to us mere mortals, whose battles are less epic, the struggle is real.

It is perhaps not surprising that neither Narcissus nor Gray was fat. Being obese remains one of the most shameful things a person can be, despite attempts from the ‘body positivity’ movement to make the fuller figure more desirable. There are some good reasons for this; body weight is a primary marker for age, virility and vitality, for instance. Human beings instinctively know a lot about your general mating potential even from a distance of 150m, by making an instant assessment of your silhouette shape. Obesity is also a valuable health marker. A BMI (body mass index) of over 30 is a red flag for diseases like diabetes, heart problems, depression, and certain cancers. Being plus-sized is a big deal.

In the Western World we live in a curious age where, for the first time in history, more people are dying from eating too much than too little. Free markets, free choice, and convenience have resulted in a strange conundrum – we are living longer and becoming more ill, at the same time. We can also become very thin, not because we are hungry, but because we choose it that way.

Drugs like Ozempic have become household names over the past few years and are associated with dramatic weight loss. The active ingredient is a semaglutide called GLP-1. A recent lapsing of a patent held by Novo Nordisk for this product has opened the floodgates for cheaper versions to become available to larger sectors of society. This is the invisible hand in action. Once only available at high cost to elite athletes illegally, this class of drugs found its way to Hollywood, amongst bitter denials from the red carpet, then via medical aids to specialists and now available in compounded forms online without prescription. Health enthusiasts exchange numbers of instructors who are vendors, and GPs are selling cheaper versions with fewer side effects directly from their practices. The market decided, and all of this without advertising. People simply saw a product that worked for someone else and wanted it. Supply, and demand, and demand, and supply.

Of course, with great freedom comes great responsibility. GLP-1 use is accompanied by some risk, predictable moral judgments, and arguments of terrible quality. To the classic liberal, the principle should be simple: “My body, my choice.” Most people can conceive of that idea, but it is the idea of extending this freedom to others where some stumble: “Your body, your choice,” becomes a harder principle to truly apply without pointing patronising fingers.

Certainly, these drugs are powerful and have side effects that are concerning, as with any medication, but there is no proof that they are more damaging than statins or vaccines, and the trade-off with lowering disease rate and feeling good about yourself might be a fair one for modern man. When taken to extremes, we see examples like Kelly Osbourne, who cut a shocking figure on the red carpet recently by looking emaciated with grotesquely exaggerated features due to plastic surgery. It is like watching the picture of Dorian Gray come alive in a ghoulish real-time horror show. Narcissus, in turn, is alive and very well in the form of Bryan Johnson, whose motto is: “Don’t die.” He means it. Johnson’s Project Blueprint is an intense $2 million a year anti-ageing protocol aimed at reversing his biological age. He follows a strict, data-driven routine involving a 04h30 wake-up, over 100 daily pills/supplements, a vegan, calorie-restricted diet, 1 hour of exercise, penis enhancement protocols, and 8h34m of sleep, managed by relentless daily biometric monitoring. Myth has become real, morality a live soap opera on Instagram.

Some people feel that these drugs are doing something ungodly and interfering with the natural way of things, while others contend that it is the most significant medical breakthrough since antibiotics. Elon Musk falls in the latter group. He has taken GLP-1s for weight loss, as has SA billionaire Rob Hersov. The arguments against the drug now shift not to the inherent dangers or ungodliness of it, but to the fact that it is unfair that not everyone can afford it. Musk campaigns for the drugs to be cheaper (through a government roll-out plan, one of his companies might benefit from, perhaps?) A restratification of society is happening. It used to be that the poor were emaciated; now it is the rich.

The have-nots will want what the haves, have. Vanity, envy, and desire are the energy behind the invisible hand that turns the wheel of commerce. The weight loss industry is massive and growing. Valued at over $150 billion now, figures are expected to double by 2030. The ‘Big is Beautiful’ industry is collapsing, with many of its frontline influencers suddenly shrinking. If you are not already on the drug, you will soon be curious or have loved ones who are taking it. Should you take it or not? Should you judge people who do? What are your options?

Fat or thin, it is hard being human. As Thomas Sowell says: “There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs.” The trade-off for liberals here should be clear – it is not about optimal choices, but about the freedom to have them. Mostly, not about a freedom you wish for yourself, but extending that courtesy to others. And that freedom should include the liberty to make mistakes. My body, my risk. Your body, your choice.

Vivienne Vermaak is an award-winning journalist and public speaker. Vivienne is a Senior Associate of The Free Market Foundation. She writes in her personal capacity.

Despite evidence to the contrary, the notion that “corruption” is a bug of BEE rather than a predictable outcome of its systemic design continues to persist among staunch proponents of it.

“The policy itself is not the problem,” they argue. “It has just been leveraged by corrupt actors for their own selfish ends.”

Incentives and human behaviour

While this argument sounds convincing, it misses an important point about the relationship between human nature and policy or systemic incentives. It is the legendary Thomas Sowell in his classic, A Conflict of Visions, who reminds us that humans are rational actors whose behaviour is shaped by incentives.

Put simply, humans are self-interested agents who naturally respond to policies and systemic incentives in ways that allow them to maximise benefits for themselves. Even when these incentives encourage perverse practices and behaviours that harm others and appear “corrupt”, these practices and behaviours remain rational to them in their pursuit of self-interest.

Crucially, even policies with supposedly good intentions can produce perverse outcomes if their incentives encourage perverse behaviours that allow actors to maximise their benefits.

Welfare is not the best example in the South African context because the picture is more nuanced, but one could argue that the expansion of the welfare state over the past three decades has, at the margin, contributed to a degree of dependency and a decline in entrepreneurial initiative. This stands in contrast to the entrepreneurial drive among some immigrants, who almost always operate under very different incentives.

Some may regard this trend as a reflection of inherent traits, but this misses the point. For those who have come to rely on the state as a consistent source of support, adjusting behaviour around that reality is not irrational. It is a rational response to the incentives they face.

Applying the argument to BEE

The case is not very different when it comes to BEE, particularly around the principle of preferential procurement and the issue of fronting, which proponents of the policy often criticise.

It is no secret that BEE premiums exist, and that the South African state has no issue with paying additional premiums to companies with high BEE scores to encourage transformation. This, however, has contributed to inflated tender contracts, where some companies deliberately overcharge the state for procurement and pocket money at the expense of taxpayers.

This may appear selfish or “corrupt” to outsiders who are concerned about the misuse of their tax money, but it is rational to companies that are simply exploiting an existing incentive to maximise their gain from a policy with high compliance costs. While some companies do not push the premium and take it as is, the key point here is that the system contains a perverse incentive that encourages this perverse behaviour.

Some legacy companies, which have very high BEE scores, are often criticised by proponents of fronting and not being genuinely committed to transformation. The criticism goes that black shareholders and managers exist in name only without any real power or control.

This is indeed a real issue (depending on who you ask), but focusing on a few “bad” actors misses the bigger picture about a system that rewards those who are most compliant with it. The state privileges companies with high BEE scores in tendering processes to promote transformation.

This creates a predictable outcome where some actors, even if their transformation is largely symbolic, game the system and deliberately ramp up their BEE scores by ceding equity stakes to political elites, for example, to gain a competitive advantage in state tendering processes. Of course, some actors do not do this, but the key point again is that the system has an incentive structure that makes such behaviour a rational strategy for those seeking to maximise their benefits.

A problem of design

If one accepts the premise that incentive structures built into systems can drive human behaviour – perverse behaviour at that – then one can reasonably conclude that such systems must either be reformed to prioritise cost efficiency and other market considerations or scrapped altogether.

Both possibilities do not deny history or the imperative of justice but underscore the importance of not misdiagnosing problems and pursuing justice in ways that encourage perverse behaviour and waste resources needlessly.

As the debate on BEE continues, it is important to recognise that the problem lies not in a handful of bad apples – even as corruption is real and harmful – but in a system that makes such behaviour a rational response to the incentives it creates.

Ayanda Sakhile Zulu holds a BSocSci in Political Studies from the University of Pretoria and is a Policy Officer at the Free Market Foundation.

Petrol is an essential good. Fuel that not only keeps our economy chugging but enables all South Africans to work and live. As we head into a possible oil crisis due to the war in Iran, the government needs to stop the anti-poor and archaic tactic of taxing petrol to make up for shortfalls in its fiscus.

Between the start of the war and when this article was being written, the price of oil had increased by 36%, with constant surges and plummets as policy uncertainty and the status of the Straits of Hormuz fuels speculation.

20% of the world’s oil travels through the Straits of Hormuz. And while South Africa gets most of its oil from Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, there will no doubt be a ripple where the price of oil across the globe rises to meet demand.

On top of this, the government plans to raise the Road Accident Fund (RAF) fuel levy for the first time in five years. The RAF Levy added R2.18 to every litre of petrol and diesel and will now be raised by an additional 7c.

The RAF has been awash with accusations of mismanagement, bad accounting and corruption.

Even without the RAF, a third of the price of fuel goes to tax; notably, a general fuel levy and VAT. And above that, additional taxes on every level of the supply-chain continues to inflate the price of fuel. It’s taxed when it’s shipped from overseas, it’s taxed when it lands here, the transport company is taxed, the fuel depots are taxed, and the petrol stations are taxed again. And all this tax is inevitably wasted on corruption and bad policy.

Cheap fuel is the bread and butter of an economy. Workers need fuel to get to work. Every physical product requires fuel to get between A and B. Fuel is needed to keep generators running. The only reason we’ve escaped loadshedding is because Eskom has been spending more on diesel.

Between 1 April 2025 and 5 March 2026, Eskom spent R6.32 billion on burning diesel to keep the lights on; an average of R18.6 million per a day. While this burn rate has diminished slightly, the fact that we rely on heavily on diesel to power the economy should make it clear the importance of cheap fuel.

When the price of fuel rises, the price of everything rises. It’s likely the single biggest source of inflation, besides mass-money printing. The knock-on effect of an oil crisis can sink an economy.

But the government can remedy this situation and help millions of South Africans escape the brunt of the fuel crisis.

Dropping the price of fuel by a third by removing all taxes on fuel would cause a positive ripple across the economy, freeing up more cash for consumers to spend and save, and allowing companies to either drop prices or re-invest the savings in growing their operations – fuelling job creation.

Petrol and diesel are essential goods. Without them, there is no economy. No food, no pumped clean water, no electricity. Petrol tax shouldn’t be treated like a get rich quick scheme by the Treasury.

The shortfall that this leaves needs to be addressed in the same way our fiscal shortfall should be addressed in general. We need to cut wasted expenditure and adopt policies that lead to job creation.

We cannot keep taxing a minority of taxpayers into the dirt. We need to enable mass employment so that the tax base widens. This simultaneously leads to less dependence on public spending, simultaneously lowering the need for high taxes in the first place.

South Africa has the tools to make life better for everyone and to make the best of a bad situation. The government must only stop seeing how it can drain the taxpayer dry and assume its role as the country’s enabler, not its abuser.

Nicholas Woode-Smith is the Managing Editor of the Rational Standard and a senior associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity. You can follow him on X: @NWoodeSmith

Join Martin van Staden, Nicholas Woode-Smith, Zakhele Mthembu and Ayanda Zulu as they dive into some of the most pressing issues of the week.

In this episode, we discuss how SARS is collecting record levels of tax from South Africans while government waste continues unchecked. We unpack concerns around the newly proposed history curriculum and what it could mean for education in South Africa. We also examine Ibrahim Traoré’s recent comments on democracy and the broader implications for governance and accountability.

The supporters of the Iran war tell us that the war is being waged for moral reasons, in addition to the security imperative of preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. That’s if they bother to give coherent justifications. Trump has given many, often contradictory, justifications. Yet the focus on the Middle East comes at a cost, not just in financial terms but also strategically and morally as it pertains to East Asia, and more specifically, the Korean Peninsula.

All governments are evil to some degree, but there is no worse government than the brutal, dystopian dictatorship that runs North Korea. The Kim family treats North Koreans like their personal property. They undergo the most intrusive surveillance, and the regime perverts relationships, trying to get people to turn against each other. As of 1997, it was estimated the Kim regime had murdered a minimum of 710,000 North Koreans. These are innocent, unarmed civilians whose murder qualifies as democide.

There is no level of depravity the Kim regime has not sunk to. Everything is justified if it ensures regime survival. Kim Jong-un is particularly brutal, having presided over a purge that brutally murdered his uncle through a firing squad using anti-aircraft shells. His entire family and associates were then killed, including children. Kim also killed his own brother in 2017 using the VX nerve agent, which was rubbed on his face by two women who were tricked by North Korean agents into believing the whole thing was a harmless prank.

The Kims have their own caste system, called the Songbun system. It classifies every citizen using three main categories: core, wavering, and hostile. These designations are as terrible as they sound. Among the latter are the descendants of landlords who had their lands seized by the Kims’ communist revolution in 1948. These designations determine your success under the regime, including how much food you can access.

There is no individual innocence or guilt in Kim’s Korea. If your family member defects, then you are guilty too. It is impossible to overstate how evil the regime run by that little fat man is. This is why I believe America’s intervention in Korea in 1950, leading UN forces, was the last unambiguously good intervention by the USA. Life under the Kims is no life.

Of late, reports coming from North Korea are that the younger generations have been consuming more South Korean media than usual. They have been buying more South Korean goods in the black markets. They are also reportedly not as attached to the regime as some older Koreans. This has led to Kim executing teenagers for such petty crimes as watching South Korean dramas on their phones and other devices.

America deserves the world’s appreciation for rescuing the Korean people from being overrun by the murderous Kims and their totalitarian ideology. Thanks to the US decision, the world got to experience Korean culture, learn about and interact with Korean people, including their businesses such as Samsung, which had the biggest share of the global smartphone market until recently, when Apple overtook them, at 19% and 20% respectively.

Yet under Trump, the US is signalling that the Korean Peninsula is just not that important to America. South Koreans were alarmed to see Americans dismantling THAAD and Patriot missile batteries for use in the latest Middle Eastern conflict. THAAD missiles are used to intercept ballistic missiles just inside or outside the atmosphere during their re-entry phase, while Patriot missiles are more short-range. Both are needed to adequately defend against missiles and all other aerial threats.

To be clear, America did not take away everything, but it took away enough to cause concern, given how long these missiles take to manufacture and the demands from both Ukraine and now the Iran war. The US is failing to prioritise. It is focusing on the small fry of Russia and Iran and leaving the Chinese big fish to grow even larger. Trump has effectively abandoned the Obama-Biden Chinese containment strategy. Remember, he also exited the TPP during his first term.

The reason South Koreans are so worried is because this comes as Kim Jong-un launches the most significant ideological shift towards the South since the ceasefire was signed. Under the new hostile states doctrine, North Korea no longer seeks peaceful reunification with the South. Cooperation avenues have been closed, and dialogue has been curtailed.

Most disturbing is that, in February of this year, the Korean Workers’ Party was finalising this change by amending its party charter. This is higher than the North Korean constitution. In March, the North Korean People’s Assembly further confirmed this change and increased its military budget. Kim delivered an address labelling South Korea as the most hostile state. They then test-fired 12 short-range ballistic missiles, after testing cruise missiles from a new destroyer class.

These significant developments have largely gone unnoticed outside the peninsula due to the Ukraine and Iran wars. North Korea has refused attempts by South Korea to restart dialogue and, rationally, with America seeming less interested in the peninsula, President Lee Jae-myung has made moves to increase South Korea’s independence from the USA, both militarily and diplomatically.

Militarily, Korea is developing its own versions of THAAD and Patriot missiles. Korea is also making moves to become a nuclear threshold state by negotiating for the right to enrich its own uranium, ostensibly to power its new fleet of submarines. But this capability could also enable the South to enrich uranium for its own nuclear weapons. It has also increased its military budget by 7.5%. Much of this is going towards force improvement programmes, which would allow it to take over Operational Control (OPCON) from Washington by 2030. This would allow it to take control of its own military during wartime.

Diplomatically, President Lee visited China in January this year for a four-day state visit, the first visit by a South Korean leader since 2019. While the subject of the visit was mostly economic, with 15 memoranda signed, the underlying subtext was clear in the context of the other moves being made by South Korea: Washington can no longer be relied on. The only other power that can rein in Kim is China.

At a deeper level, the North Korean threat to South Korea will always exist as long as China feels it needs to keep Kim as a buffer against the US. The only way China can feel secure enough to allow the unsustainable North Korean economy to die a natural death is if the US leaves the Korean Peninsula and China is allowed to resume its historic role as hegemon over the Korean Peninsula. The only way South Korea can allow that is if it is able to defend itself against North Korea.

Trump pulling out more than a third of THAAD and Patriot missiles came at exactly the wrong time, showing extraordinary indifference to South Korean security during a time when the country was most under threat, possibly since the ceasefire was signed. The ramifications are going to be swift and irrevocable. South Korea will accelerate its drive for independence from the US and closer ties with Beijing, now with increased support back home.

It is funny that so many people think Trump is shoring up US power when he is systematically dismantling it. Just recently he humiliated the Japanese Prime Minister in the Oval Office by joking about why she didn’t warn him about Pearl Harbor. The question being asked was why Trump didn’t tell his allies about his attack on Iran beforehand. The implication is clear: he could not trust Japan, NATO allies, South Korea, and even his Five Eyes alliance partners, but he could trust Israel.

Trump doesn’t understand power. It is not just the ability to execute military operations. It is much more subtle than that, especially in East Asia, a region which has some of the most subtle forms of expression, and a history much longer than the US has existed. I support South Korea doing what it has to do to survive. If it can provide enough reassurances to China, hopefully China will allow it to reunify the peninsula under its control.

Yes, South Korea is a democracy, but unlike North Korea, China does not have the insecurity in its political system that prevents it from trading with democracies. Trade is only restricted when Beijing feels it has been insulted by leaders of those countries, as when the Japanese Prime Minister implied that Japan would be willing to defend Taiwan against China. Economically, China, Japan, and South Korea are closer to each other in terms of economic systems than they are to North Korea.

To collapse the North Korean regime should be relatively easy if China gives its tacit support. One of the other reasons China might want to do this is Kim Jong-un’s obvious attempts at diversifying his benefactors to include Russia. Not only did he send North Korean troops to fight for Russia, but Putin, not Xi Jinping, sent a congratulatory message after Kim’s “election” to the leadership of North Korea recently.

But nothing can happen until South Korea achieves strategic independence, including an independent nuclear deterrent, from America. The South must then make secret deals, using intermediaries in the North. There should be informal contacts with the key decision-makers, even if official contacts have been terminated. A deal could involve the following:

1. Elites getting land and shares in state-owned companies after the South takes over.

2. Kim Ju-ae, the daughter of Kim Jong-un, who is currently being groomed to be the next leader, being appointed transitional President after South Korea takes over. She is young enough for the South to control her.

3. The Northern military being converted into a police force for the North after the South takes over.

4. Kim Ju-ae being given a generous lifetime pension after leading the transition for not more than two years.

Then the next step would be China cutting off aid to North Korea. Southern intelligence services must simultaneously work on causing or fanning unrest in the North. Then China would close its border with the North and position troops on the border.

The South would then deploy its own troops to “stabilise the situation” and prevent the nuclear weapons from falling into the wrong hands. It is essential that those who control the firing of the nuclear weapons be given the most generous deals beforehand among all elites. The type of reunification must not overly burden Southerners. It must be in the form of a confederation, with the South just creating a legal environment that allows investment in the Northern economy. Northerners cannot be given Southern citizenship, and they cannot get Southern welfare, but they would be able to travel across the border freely.

After 20 years or so, both peoples may be ready to become citizens of the same country if they want to do that, or just continue as two countries with the same defence and foreign policy, handled by the South, and the same rights, but different governments.

The survival and prosperity of the Korean people adds value to all mankind. In a way, this is similar to the Persian people. These are some of the most brilliant people among all mankind when it comes to all facets of what makes us human: music, art, business, science, engineering, and philosophy. It is in all our interest if they don’t just survive, but thrive. In the Kim regime, the Korean people face an extinction-level event in a way that is not true of any other relationship between people and those who would govern them. The only thing standing in the way of probable disaster is South Korea. Everything depends on them and the moves they make.

Mpiyakhe Dhlamini is a libertarian, writer, programmer, entrepreneur, and associate of the Free Market Foundation. I write about personal finance and wealth-building from an SA perspective, South African and African issues, policy, politics, and anything else that interests me. The views in this article are my own and not those of any organisation I am associated with.

All over the world, governments speak of growing the economy. They display statistics. They build roads, bridges, schools, and call it progress. They enact regulations, collect taxes, and redistribute resources, all in the name of development. But what truly makes wealth? The answer cannot be found in bureaucrats reallocating other people’s savings. True economic growth is a private affair: it arises when individuals save, invest, produce goods and services, and voluntarily exchange them.

The common measure of growth - gross domestic product (GDP) - fails to distinguish wealth-creating activity from mere redistribution. When the state taxes citizens and spends the proceeds, it is simply shifting resources from some hands to others. That amount of spending may show up in GDP statistics, but it does not represent a net increase in real wealth. Building a bridge or a highway by taxed resources does not create new goods or services; it only moves resources around. If I take money from you and use it to build something for someone else, I haven’t increased humanity’s productive capacity; I have only reshuffled existing resources.

Governments often treat economic growth as a problem that can be solved by more spending, more regulation, or more monetary manipulation. That approach misunderstands the true source of prosperity. When the state invests, it does not mobilise latent savings; it expropriates them. When it expands the money supply, it dilutes the value of existing money and misleads people into thinking economic activity is rising, even when nothing real has improved.

A better path is counterintuitive for many: the state should step back. It should create room for individuals and businesses to save, take risks, borrow, lend, produce, without the burden of arbitrary spending, regulation, or enforced redistribution.

History offers concrete lessons. Take, for instance, the perverse consequences of rent control. In many places governments cap rents to make housing more affordable. This well-intentioned intervention typically reduces landlords’ incentives to maintain their properties or build new ones. Studies show that rent-controlled units tend to deteriorate; in the United States, nearly 29 percent of rent-controlled housing was reported to be dilapidated, compared with only 8 percent in uncontrolled housing^[i].

Once profits from rent are artificially suppressed, owners often convert rental units into owner-occupied apartments or sell them altogether, shrinking the rental housing stock. In one well-documented case, the removal of rent controls in a city led to a property-value increase of two billion dollars over a decade, a signal that rent regulation had earlier suppressed true value and clogged the market^[ii].

What was meant to help the poor ended up reducing the supply of affordable housing, degrading quality, creating waiting lists, black-market deals, and crowding in segments exempt from regulation^[iii].

Similar lessons unfold in agriculture, where governments often subsidise farmers, inputs, and production to “support” the sector. According to a recent report by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, governments worldwide provide hundreds of billions of dollars annually in subsidies, including input subsidies and price supports that distort markets^[iv].

These subsidies do not necessarily raise agricultural productivity. In many cases, subsidised inputs merely substitute inputs that would have been used anyway, meaning the subsidy does not add production, it only shifts incentives

Moreover, such distortions often benefit large agribusiness at the expense of small farmers. What begins as a policy to stabilise farming income quickly becomes a system of rent seeking and inefficiency

In the financial sector the lesson is no different. Governments have repeatedly bailed out collapsing banks and large institutions, often arguing that failure would bring systemic collapse. But these bailouts engender moral hazard: firms learn that bad risks may be rewarded rather than punished, which encourages reckless behaviour. A recent study of bailout policies across emerging economies since the early 1990s confirms that recurrent bailouts exacerbate moral hazard and undermine long-term financial stability^[v].

Even when financial crises are contained, bailouts distort corporate governance. Decisions about stewardship of corporations are shifted from market actors to regulators, often guided more by political pressures than by efficient use of resources

These examples share a pattern. Government interventions, whether in housing, agriculture, banking, or infrastructure, rarely produce net growth. Instead, they shift resources, distort incentives, and reduce the natural, voluntary genesis of wealth.

Prosperity is not created by government fiat. It springs from the tacit knowledge of individuals: what to build, how to build it, for whom, and when. Central planning, regulation, and forced redistribution can never substitute for this dispersed, decentralised intelligence.

Any true commitment to economic growth must start with humility from the state. The government should stop trying to “make growth happen” by spending more or controlling more. Instead, it should preserve the conditions for savings and investment, protect property rights, allow free exchange, and refrain from punishing success or subsidizing failure.

When the state gets out of the way, individuals and businesses will spontaneously deploy capital, create goods and services, build infrastructure, not because of government edict, but because of profit, need, foresight, risk, and entrepreneurial imagination.

Econ Bro (@EconBreau and @EconBreau2 on Twitter/X) is a Nigerian Austrolibertarian economist and an apprentice at the Mises Institute. Under the organisation name “The Freedom Institute” he teaches individual liberty, personal responsibility, private property rights, free markets, and sound money to mostly young people across Nigeria. Econ Bro is an Associate of the Free Market Foundation.

[i] https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html

[ii] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/

[iii] https://fee.org/articles/rent-controls-a-well-intentioned-disaster/

[iv] https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/subsidies-and-government-support.html

[v] https://www.mdpi.com/1911-8074/18/2/101

Written By: Mukundi Budeli

The water crisis in Johannesburg starkly highlights the inadequacies within governance structures and urban management, posing a significant challenge that requires innovative, market-driven solutions. As residents grapple with persistent water shortages and inadequate sewage systems, the crux of the matter lies in the systemic disconnect between population growth and the ability to meet basic resource needs. Addressing this crisis calls for a robust embrace of principles that can foster efficiency and accountability.

Johannesburg, celebrated as an economic powerhouse, has witnessed rapid population growth, yet the reaction from urban infrastructure has been sluggish and insufficient. The existing water supply networks have struggled to keep pace with the surging demand, leading to frequent disruptions that negatively impact daily life and economic productivity. This scenario invites not just reform in urban planning but a reimagining of how water management can function in a more adaptable framework. By prioritising the role of private entities, which are nimble and able to rapidly respond, the city can leverage competition and innovation to drive improvements in service delivery.

Consider the basics: demand surges as the city swells, but supply lags because roughly 40% of treated water vanishes through leaky pipes. Central utilities, bogged down by bureaucracy, react too slowly to fixes. A better way? Let private firms compete to repair and operate sections of the network. In places like Manila, companies bidding on “output-based” contracts slashed leaks by 50% in under two years, paid only for water actually delivered, not hours billed. Johannesburg could divide its grid into zones, auctioning management rights to operators who install smart meters, sensors, and durable pipes. This incentivises rapid upgrades because profits tie directly to results, cutting losses and freeing water for households without massive taxpayer bailouts.

Informal settlements amplify the strain, where thousands cram into areas without proper sanitation, overwhelming shared taps and sewers designed for far fewer people. The core issue? Free-riding: a few users hog water or neglect repairs, leaving everyone short, much like a shared borehole running dry because no one steps up to pay for the pump. Moreover, the reality of overcrowded and informally occupied buildings should not merely be viewed through the lens of property rights; it is fundamentally a public safety concern that reflects deeper systemic issues. Buildings designed for 300 occupants often house 700 to 800 individuals, overwhelming already strained infrastructure.

Residents can fix this by forming voluntary user associations. Households prepay a small share into a group fund for a borehole and meters that cut off non-payers. Locals enforce rules with fines for waste, giving payers priority access. Free-riders join or go dry, quickly stabilising supply through self-reliance.

The issue of overcrowding and informal settlements should also be approached from a market perspective, framing it not simply as a property rights issue but also as a matter of public safety. Buildings meant for a limited number of residents often house far more individuals, straining existing infrastructure. Addressing this effectively requires the development of new housing that can accommodate the growing population, thereby easing pressure on water systems.

Decentralising water management plays a crucial role in addressing the crisis. Current centralised models often overlook local needs, creating inefficiencies. By encouraging local communities and private entities to manage their water resources, a sense of ownership fosters accountability. When residents are involved in decision-making, they are more likely to advocate for necessary improvements and maintenance.

Ultimately, transforming Johannesburg’s water crisis into an opportunity depends on reimagining urban management through a lens that prioritises market solutions. Enhanced governance that reduces regulatory barriers and fosters private sector participation will pave the way for a more resilient urban infrastructure. By enabling the market to lead the charge in housing and water management, the city can not only mitigate immediate shortages but also build a foundation for sustainable growth that benefits all residents.

Mukundi Budeli is a law graduate from the University of Witwatersrand and an Associate of the Free Market Foundation.

Standing in line for hours at a cramped, dirty and diabolically inefficient Home Affairs to get ID documents has been a rite of passage for South Africans for decades. But that may be coming to an end.

Home Affairs Minister and member of the Democratic Alliance (DA), Dr Leon Schreiber, has created a partnership with banks across the country, equipping private bank branches with the ability to process national IDs. The banks already have the infrastructure needed to process these IDs, all the while avoiding the usual onerous paperwork and queues that Home Affairs had become famous for.

This is just one step towards fixing Home Affairs, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. Government bureaucracy, exacerbated by unmotivated and under-trained public sector employees, wastes countless hours of every South African’s life. For every hour wasted in sparsely located Home Affairs, citizens could be working, playing or resting.

Now, with banks being able to provide more of these services, at a fraction of the cost to the fiscus than before, getting an ID can be just an errand, and not a daytrip.

Minister Schreiber promises that this is just the beginning, and that his reforms of Home Affairs will continue to make the department more efficient and cost-effective. For once, I am looking forward to monitoring the activities of a government department.

Schreiber’s appointment is definitely one of the small victories of the Government of National Unity (GNU). But not everyone seems to think that that it’s a win.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) condemned “attempts to privatise Home Affairs”. Their statement cites South Africa’s shortfall in providing formal documentation for all citizens. But what’s lost on them is that the old, purely public-sector led Home Affairs is what caused this shortfall.

Critics of these reforms are not defending good public service. They are defending the very queues, delays and insecure legacy systems that made Home Affairs such a national embarrassment in the first place.

On X and elsewhere pundits have decried that banks are stepping on the government’s turf, and eroding state power. They see Home Affairs outsourcing its services to banks as essentially the government giving up on providing a service.

But I have to ask: so what?

Over the last few decades the government has proven that it cannot run Home Affairs effectively. The entire department has become synonymous with the slowest, most agonisingly dull ring of Hell.

South Africans require services that Home Affairs provides. It is unimportant that the department provides these services, or if the government provides these services. What matters is that the services are delivered.

And under the old dispensation, it was not being delivered efficiently, if at all.

We should not be clinging to keeping the state relevant for its own sake. If the government does not need to run something or be involved, it shouldn’t. Government run operations are, by their very nature, inefficient.

They take a simple service, tag on dozens of middlemen, unnecessary committees, corrupt procurement contracts, and have it all run by dead-eyed government employees who’d rather be doing anything else.

The government doesn’t have an incentive to do a good job. It gets paid regardless. It gets bailed out regardless. The private sector, on the other hand, is compelled to perform well because if it fails, it dies.

The increased privatisation of Home Affairs services and duties is ultimately a good thing. There may be hurdles along the way. Nothing is perfect. But it doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be better than what it was before. And there is no way that anything can be as bad as what Home Affairs has been putting South Africans through for the last thirty years.

Nicholas Woode-Smith is the Managing Editor of the Rational Standard and a Senior Associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity. You can follow him on X: @NWoodeSmith.

Join Martin van Staden, Zakhele Mthembu and Ayanda Zulu as they dive into some of the most pressing issues of the week.

In this episode, we expose how ratepayers in Johannesburg and Nelson Mandela Bay are being squeezed for more while services decline, and how the fuel levy quietly takes even more from every South African. From failing municipalities to national taxation, we break down how citizens are being fleeced at every level and what it means for your wallet.

Paul Ehrlich, who just died, was a full-time doomsday prophet, telling the world dire things about the immediate future, none of which came true. He said hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s and 80s. He said he’d “take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” He even said that “Boomers” such as himself would not live past 50. When he died he was 93.

The major media outlets at the time worshipped at Ehrlich’s feet and boosted his theories. Nations started taking the dire predictions seriously and implemented policies based on his claim. Now the major media are posting obituaries emphasising how wrong he was.

Economist Julian Simon was a voice in the wilderness calling out Ehrlich’s lack of basic understanding of the role of economic incentives and how and why they would deal with the problems. Other market-based economists said the same thing.

What worried me then was how the public in general and media outlets were unaware of this counter position. Steeped in economic jargon it lost readers from the start. What was needed was an easy-to-read short book that translated the economics ideas for the lay audience. The problem was many had good intentions built on bad economics.

So in 1995 I wrote a book on myths about population growth. Exploding Population Myths was published by South Africa’s Free Market Foundation. I noted “that many liberals woefully lack an understanding of the economics involved. So while their sentiments are praiseworthy this lack of economic knowledge results in a misunderstanding of these issues.”

The main point of my book was to explain world population growth and why it was going to continue to decline. It wasn’t the threat panic mongers claimed it would be. It would peter out over the next century. After 31 years this theory, so far, is proving to be true. In 1995 world population was growing at 1.57% annually. As of last year it was down to 0.85%. During that same period South Africa’s growth rate went from 2.4% down to about 1.1%.

One of my main points was the driving forces behind population growth were the death rates, life expectancy, and poverty.

I argued only the very poor could “afford” to have many children. It was necessary for them given the high death rates in such nations. In poor nations children were an asset not a liability. They provided labour to the family and were the old age “pension” for parents.

In richer nations children were a liability. Parents provide education, medical care, computers, cell phones, even cars when their kids reach their teens. At the same time children in better off nations did not provide hard labour for their family or fund their parents’ retirement.

The result of this economic reality was as people grew more prosperous, they had fewer children than when they were poor. Proof of this can also be found in the TFR, or total fertility rate, for the average woman in any nation. In the 60’s South African women gave birth to 6 children on average while the latest estimate from Stats SA is 2.21—zero population growth is reached when the TFR hits 2.1.

In the more market-oriented economies fertility rates declined but the populations tended to grow even as the TFR fell below replacement levels. The reason was longer lifespans. Growth wasn’t due to more births but the result of fewer deaths. In 1950 Europe’s life expectancy was 62, while South Africa’s was 37.2. Their rates today, respectively, are 79.1 and 66.

The real issue to consider is with rising life expectancy, the work force in nations grows older on average given they are living longer but the TFR is in decline meaning fewer new workers per year. Wealthy counties thus found immigrants contributing to the nation’s well-being even as the immigrants themselves had improved lives.

Nationalistic opposition to immigrants is harmful to the general population. For instance, Trump’s violent attacks on immigrants have meant farmers lack field workers, home construction went to a standstill as workers were rounded up, and care givers for the elderly are in shorter supply. In truth, it’s now a lose-lose situation.

Overpopulation hysteria has all but vanished with serious media not buying into it. Greater wealth creation has put into place the incentives for lower birth rates while longer life expectancy countered some of that trend.

If nations, such as South Africa, want to address the remaining levels of population growth they need to increase economic prosperity. The real issue of population is basic economics. In the final paragraph of my 1995 monograph I wrote:

“The good news for the people of Africa is that they need not suffer in poverty any longer. The solution is simple: free the people to produce; allow the people to keep what they produce; and the people will produce.”

I do not celebrate Paul Ehrlich’s death but I’m glad his ideas died out long ago.

James Peron has written for multiple publications and author of several books, including Exploding Population Myths and The Liberal Tide. James is an associate of the Free Market Foundation.

In these highly divided times, it’s hardly surprising that a (sort of) fresh new war in the Middle East would be controversial. Certainly not when Israel is involved. It’s still somehow disappointing, though, that reactions to the United States and Israel’s attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran have fallen so predictably along partisan lines (especially in the US) and are overwhelming framed not by nuance, and frequently not even by facts, but by trying to squeeze a complex situation into existing ideologies.

Responses to the war have often been more about one’s feelings towards Trump and/or Netanyahu than about the actual situation on the ground and the people who are most directly affected by the war. Not always, of course, as there are clearly many Trump supporters who are avidly against the war and there are those who would never dream of voting for either Trump or Netanyahu but see the war as a grim necessity. But the loudest voices come, as is so often the case, from those with nothing of value to say.

What is especially galling, though, isn’t so much the dunderheaded commentary on the war by those who have nothing more profound to add to the conversation than “Trump dumb” or “rah rah America”, but the way those who are most directly involved in the conflict are frequently gaslit, even negated, by those who view them as little more than props in their own ideological warfare.

Of course, it’s not that people who don’t live in the Middle East have no right to weigh in on the war, especially as it is affecting us all through its already seismic impact on the global economy. Rising gas and oil prices means a sharp increase in prices for everything else – and you can be sure that even when the former stabilise and decrease, the latter will stay right where they are.

But push comes to shove, it will always be those whose lives that are most directly impacted by the conflict that should have the last word.

Surprise Support

It’s perhaps instructive, then, that contrary to the overwhelming opposition to the war outside of the Middle East, there is a significant amount of support for it in the region itself. According to a recent report in the Times of Israel, a number of Gulf leaders – especially those from Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and, amazingly, Qatar - have admitted that though they opposed the war at first and are still more than a little sore that it has been brought down onto their heads, they hope that Israel and the US continue fighting until the Islamic Republic can no longer be a threat to the region. This was further corroborated by the New York Times with its own report that the Saudi prince has been “pushing” Trump to continue the war and not make any deals with the regime.

In Israel, meanwhile, according to recent polls the support for the war rests somewhere along the lines of 78% support by Jewish Israelis – which is down from the 93% support of earlier polls when regime change seemed more likely, but is still nothing to be sneezed at. Even Netanyahu’s fiercest political opposition, those who hope to topple his government in the forthcoming elections, stand fully behind him in this instance.

It’s crucial to understand how significant this tacit or full-throated support of the war is for the Gulf States and for Israelis. They not only support the war, but believe it should continue until the Regime falls or is crippled beyond recognition, and this is despite the fact that it has played absolute havoc on their day-to-day lives.

Major civilian targets have been hit, primarily through Iranian drone strikes, in countries that are both more aligned with Israel (the UAE, Bahrain) and those that very much aren’t (Saudi Arabia, Qatar). Actual casualties have been relatively low, thank God, but it has been highly disruptive to the economies of these countries and the lives of their civilians. And yet, they – or at least their leaders – understand what the Islamic Republic is, why it’s such a threat, and why, for all that they attempted to appease the great beast over the years, it still attacked them when the chips were down.

In Israel, meanwhile, life has been completely upended. As anyone with friends or relatives who live there know, the day to day existence for most Israelis, be they Jewish or otherwise, consists of running to their shelters multiple times a day, home schooling their children and avoiding any sort of public gatherings as rockets, missiles and drones continue to rain down on them from both Iran and from the regime’s proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Despite the Iron Dome defence system and the plethora of bomb shelters, dozens have been killed and billions of shekels in property damage have been incurred. Meanwhile, after two years of tirelessly fighting Hamas in Gaza, hundreds of thousands of reservists have been called up to directly fight the terrorists of Hezbollah in another complicated ground campaign in Lebanon.

And yet, 82% of Israelis, including at least a quarter of Israeli Arabs, support the war. Why? Because they too understand that this war has been going on for 47 years as the Jihadist Islamic Republic has brought its own country to ruin in its bloody-minded attempt to wipe Israel off the map – something that reached its unbearable apotheosis on 7 October 2023 and the months and years that followed. They understand that Jihadis with nuclear weapons are a threat unlike any other, they understand that there has never been a better time to take down the regime than now, and they understand that for Iranians to finally, finally be free, they need to be free of their monstrous “leaders”.

Those Most Affected

Which, of course, brings us to Iran itself. What do ordinary Iranians, who are clearly bearing the brunt of Israel and America’s attacks on the regime, feel about the war? Along with the all too tragic reality of the collateral damage of war, these attacks has caused the regime to be even worse, even more despotic than it already was. And this is a regime that murdered somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 Iranian protesters over two days in January – and who have continued to execute anyone with even the vaguest whiff of dissension about them. How can they possibly support this war?

The answer, of course, is right there in the question. If anyone understands the evils of the Islamic Republic it’s the people of Iran, who have suffered for half a century under its theocratic boots. This is a people that have shown a bravery that most us could scant imagine in every act of defiance, no matter how small, to stand up for their own rights.

Now, is this opposition to the Islamic Republic represented by 90% of the Iranian people or 10%? Honestly, it’s hard to tell. Certainly, we know that the overwhelming majority of Iranians living outside Iran support the war and want the country to revert to what it was before 1979: one of the Middle East’s most progressive and secular nations. Within Iran, it’s obviously much harder to be fully certain of the feeling on the streets as the Islamic Republic has stifled dissent for its entire existence and controlled all forms of communications, especially during war time.

And yet, some communications do come through. So much so, in fact, that there have apparently been cases of Iranians risking their lives to provide intelligence to Israel and America through Persian social media. We know from the mass protests how unpopular the regime is. We know that the vast, vast majority of the Iranian people are not now and never were radical Islamists. And we know that no people on Earth would be at all okay with living under such draconian conditions for the better part of fifty years.

We also know, sadly, that they are under no illusion about what it will take to bring this regime down. That they will need all the help they can get. And even then it may not be enough.

Exploiting Their Pain

With all this in mind, I can hardly conceive of anything more cynical, more morally indefensible than the way “activists” outside the region, across the political spectrum, have used this mass suffering for their own purposes. Whether it’s Candace Owens “stanning” for the Islamic Republic in order to score points against the Jews and the “liberal elite”, or Javier Bardem getting up on stage at the Academy Awards to smugly declare “free Palestine” and “no to war” when he has never, not for a second, called out the Jihadists who murdered tens of thousands of their own people within the space of the day, there’s something extremely self-serving about some who speak loudest against the war.

Which, of course, isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of reasons to be against the war – especially for American citizens who are footing the bill for the war, and the servicemen who are paying with their blood. There are certainly plenty of reasons to criticise the governments of both the US and Israel on any number of subjects. But the performative one-sidedness of people like Bardem and other clueless celebrities and activists is hypocritical at best, disgustingly duplicitous at worst.

Worse, though, is the shameless exploitation of what’s going on to score cheap, and frequently unearned, political points. Take, for example, the “news” doing the rounds that Israel was once again oppressing Palestinians and Arab Israelis by shutting down Al Aqsa mosque during the high holy days of Ramadan and Eid. This would indeed have been horrible if not for the fact that, you know, there is a war going on with warheads exploding across the entirety of Israel (and the Palestinian territories) that have caused all places of worship to be closed. And, as if to punctuate the point, there was literally a case of a missile hitting the courtyard that is shared by the holy sites of all three of the Abrahamic faiths in Jerusalem: the Wailing Wall, Al Aqsa and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

This total lack of context is fairly typical for those who would use any excuse to challenge Israel’s actions or very legitimacy, and you can be damn sure that these same “news sources” had nothing to say about the Islamic Republic nearly destroying Al Aqsa and killing Muslim worshippers.

Perhaps the most shameless display of hypocrisy, though, might just be those countless videos where we see clueless American or European “activists” shouting down actual Iranians that try to explain the truth about Iran, what the Islamic Republic is, why Iranians might support the war, and why liberal democracy might actually be a better system of government than Islamist theocracy. Whatever happened to listening to the “lived experience” of victims?

We all (including me, clearly) have our own axes to grind, but I have to ask these loud-mouthed hypocrites, those that mistake a catchy slogan for complex reality, is it really too much to do even the tiniest bit of research before opening your mouth and showing just how little you really know? Who knows, you may learn something.

Ilan Preskovsky is a Johannesburg-based freelance writer, who has covered everything from international politics to Jewish culture/ religion to film and TV reviews. His work has been featured online on the likes of News24, Popverse and BizNews, and in print in Business Day, Jewish Life Magazine and the Star, among others.

Written By: Michael Caplan

The big players in South African education are rapidly expanding. With their access to capital they are able to build schools with impressive modern facilities – including things like computer centres, pools, hockey astros, state of the art classrooms, and modern elegant architecture.

A recent example is Advtech’s super campus, but Curro and Inspired (Reddham and Reddford) have the same quality facilities.

This is all very well, but as experienced leaders in education the world over know, beautiful facilities do not make education excellence.

We know quality education needs staff and leadership who are brave enough to innovate, to try the unconventional, to draw lessons from the latest scholarship in fields like neuroscience and education.

There are several factors, inherent in these groups, that make innovation highly unlikely at best.

Leaders – what do they know?

A fundamental problem is that the senior, most powerful decision makers, in all these education groups have little or no education experience. They are there because of their proven corporate track record and strategic leadership skills.

This lack of knowledge and experience in the field that is the core of these businesses creates problems when these leaders must evaluate proposals of innovation put forward by school heads. Proposals set out by those who know what they are talking about, who know what will work in the classroom, with their staff and their students.

Many will say that this leadership has expert educators underneath them to advise, but how likely are they to take this advice? Key decisions come down to business strategy which often does not align with initiatives that constitute an increased quality of education. The structure mitigates against innovation.

Case study

The need for economies of scale, the steep hierarchy and plain complacency shut down innovation.

Let’s take the case of a head of a particular school (which is part of one of these big groups). He/she has done intensive research into the modern field of neuroscience of education and has become familiar with innovative practices being used internationally. He or she knows this will work – experience and research say so. This head is excited and puts together a comprehensive proposal making it clear how it will significantly advance the quality of pedagogy – leading to a far better product for the people that matter most – the students.

The proposal goes up to the powers that be. In response – the head receives a pat on the back for initiative and effort, but the answer is no. Why? It is too risky. The executive explains that the company is highly successful at producing brilliant academic results and even better financial figures. “Why fix what is not broken? Why risk our proven recipe with experimentation?”

Without autonomy given to those who know about education, who do the teaching and know what will work, educational innovation dies a quick death. In the end most of these excellent leaders just give up, after all, they need to keep their job.

The excellent financial performance figures, which are applauded by the business communities, neatly cover up this lack of innovation. Many school heads are fully aware but the message they dutifully trot out to their staff is that – we are doing great.

Little wonder that the only real innovation comes from small, agile single schools that are not part of a large corporation.

Myths of AI introduction

Much has been said about AI being the future of education. Likewise, all the big education groups have marketed themselves as being at the forefront of using AI to improve and modernise education. This has led to huge capital investment in AI and more broadly in edutech.

The trouble is that many of these key budgeting decisions are made without the knowledge required to ensure that AI implementation is beneficial. In fact, AI can, in some cases, make no improvement (a huge waste), or more often actually harm the student. If key budget decisions are based on what looks good and impresses, rather than thorough, careful research by educators, it is likely to do more harm than good, while nevertheless pushing share prices up, adding brand value and bringing in investors.

You cannot simply add AI and mix.

The issue of what works vs what just has a wow factor is crucial for key spending decisions at the top of the big education players in SA. It is therefore worth a closer look at the tools that have been created by educationalists to determine use and abuse of technology in general and AI specifically.

RAT – how much difference is tech making in the classroom?

There has been a vast amount of work done in this field over many years.

This research has created a framework to assess genuine effectiveness of tech in education called RAT (Hughes, 1998): R -Replication; A – Amplification T – Transformation.

With Replication – you do nothing but replicate the task with no educational improvement. Amplification means by using technology you add efficiency but no educational benefit. However, with Transformation the integration of technology (including AI) makes a major pedagogical difference. You improve learning in a way that could not be done without its use.

The reality is that the vast majority of tech and AI spend does not lead to anything near transformation. Why? Because the wow factor trumps the use of quality research. This kind of careful, well-considered intervention takes far too much time and effort especially for big players.

If introduced poorly AI can easily have the effect of outsourcing student thinking. Several studies have shown this damaging effect on students’ ability to think critically, creatively and independently.

If the big players in SA education are really interested in producing world class education, the above framework needs to be applied to spending decisions. This can only be done by giving educators a key role at the top. There must be a healthy appetite for risk that goes with any pioneering innovation.

The mighty have fallen

Corporate history is littered with the stories of huge dominant players who looked invincible, only to succumb to innovation that was simply ignored with complacency and the “don’t fix what’s not broken” approach; Nokia and Kodak come to mind.

As with a giant ship which takes ages to turn, a huge corporation may be outmaneuvered by smaller but much more agile competition.

This has never been truer than with the increasingly competitive private education market.

Alternative – big but different

Of course it does not have to be this way, from my layman perspective, I do not see why these players need to go with the full standardisation model. An approach which gives educator leaders significant autonomy could exponentially increase innovation. Suddenly that same creative, thinking head spoken about in the hypothetical example earlier is fired up and motivated to come up with excellent innovation with the knowledge that he/she will be listened to.

The Spar Model comes to mind – store managers are very much still the Spar Brand but have considerable autonomy to innovate and make their store specialised to suit a particular market location.

In closing, I am reminded of Percy Byshe Shelly’s famous poem Ozymandias,

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said – “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert … Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Michael Caplan, an Associate of the Free Market Foundation, is a History and English teacher with 27 years’ experience in mostly private schools in Johannesburg. He holds an MA in History and has a strong interest in libertarianism and the free market.

The new United States Ambassador to South Africa, Leo Brent Bozell III, has made it clear that the US wants a friendly and prosperous relationship with South Africa.This goal is at serious risk of being jeopardised by Pretoria’s repeatedly malicious actions.

Since arriving in South Africa, Bozell has been quite diplomatic. If you read only the statements from anti-Western organisations such as the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the Media Review Network (MRN) and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO), you would be led to think that he’d declared war on South Africa.

But in truth he expressed the US’s desire to maintain friendly relations with South Africa, and that Washington values trade and commercial partnerships with Pretoria.

The main point of contention has been that Bozell has condemned the government’s refusal to treat the “Kill the Boer” song as hate speech. For reasonable readers, it might come as a shock that South African courts do not consider a song openly calling for violence against a racial minority as hate speech.

Even so, hate speech is defined in South African law as expression based on a protected characteristic (such as race) that a reasonable person would understand as promoting or expressing hatred towards a person or group, in a manner that is harmful or incites harm, rather than merely rude, offensive, or insulting.

It is clear to any reasonable person that “Kill the Boer” is hate speech. Yet politics and the dominance of Afro-Marxist nationalists in the halls of power have protected the song and its singers from prosecution.

Bozell is completely right to call out South Africa’s judiciary for allowing Kill the Boer to be sung at political rallies, by political parties that repeatedly call for the forced expulsion of people based on race.

Yet the responses on X and by anti-Western organisations have decried Bozell’s comments as “undermining South Africa’s judiciary,” and attacking South African sovereignty.

DIRCO’s decision to summon Bozell only reinforced the impression of a government more interested in performative outrage than serious diplomacy. Instead of responding substantively to the concerns raised by Washington, Pretoria chose escalation. In doing so, it may have overplayed its hand and further strained a relationship that South Africa can ill afford to damage.

These responses are in no way appropriate. Any individual is allowed to have an opinion about a ruling – even if that opinion goes against the courts. Additionally, Bozell’s comments in no way deprive the South African government of its ability to maintain control over the country – the definition of sovereignty.

Rather, these kneejerk responses are just another case of supporters of a crackpot regime hiding behind a word they don’t understand – sovereignty. War criminals throughout the world have hidden behind the term to try to protect themselves from accountability. Yet sovereignty isn’t a catch-all-term that allows governments carte blanche to do what they want.

When it comes to international relations, sovereignty is a two way street. If we want to deal with the Americans and benefit from investment and trade, then we need to cooperate with them.

As citizens of South Africa, we shouldn’t be blindly defending our government in this debacle. What matters is what’s best for the people of South Africa. And friendly relations and trade with the US is of tantamount importance to the well-being of every South African.

The US is our most lucrative trade partner, a major investor, and a major source of jobs. And this is while our government repeatedly alienates its government. Imagine if we had friendly relations with Washington!

Bozell wants friendly relations between the US and South Africa. According to Bozell US President Trump stated that South Africa is one of the top 10 investment opportunities for US firms. And this much is true. Major tech giants are investing in South Africa, and we are by far the biggest trade partner for the US in sub-Saharan Africa. We could and should be taking advantage of this relationship.

Bozell envisions doubling the US companies operating in South Africa from 500 to 1000 and increasing the jobs these firms provide from the current 250,000 to 500,000.

This, plus other investment and increased trade, would boost our economic growth to unprecedented levels. South Africans need this infusion of wealth into our faltering economy.

To maintain US relations, Bozell reminded the country that over a year ago, the South African government was issued with five demands. These demands were hidden for months from South African citizens and the government refused to engage on them. To this day, they’re still silent about the demands.

None of these demands are unreasonable or constitute violations of our sovereignty. In fact, it’s pretty good advice that benefits South Africans – not the US.

The first demand is that the government starts taking rural crime and fark attacks seriously. It’s frankly embarrassing that we need a foreign government to tell us something the government should be doing already.

Second: the US wants the ANC to condemn and ban the “Kill the Boer” song. The fact that the ANC and President Cyril Ramaphosa refuse to even disavow the song shows their implicit support for its genocidal statement.

Third: Expropriation Without Compensation (EWC) must not happen and property rights must be respected. This should go without saying. Property rights are the bedrock of a civilised society.

The final demand is that South Africa stop requiring US firms to comply with BEE. I have read in some places that the demand has expanded to scrapping BEE altogether. BEE is likely the most destructive piece of legislation in the country; abolishing it would help the country immeasurably.

Bozell has also expressed that South Africa must stop antagonising the US on the world stage – something that the response to his statements proves the ANC is not ready to comply with anytime soon.

He reaffirmed that the US doesn’t want South Africa to become a satellite of the US. He doesn’t even expect South Africa to align with the US. All he asks for is that South Africa stops aligning with regimes openly opposing the US. As DIRCO keeps stating that it is non-aligned, this shouldn’t be too hard. But overtly anti-US and pro-New Axis policies by the government has made it clear where its loyalties lie.

In the end, Bozell’s message is not a threat to South Africa, but a warning and an opportunity. The US is telling us, plainly, that South Africa can either continue down a path of ideological hostility, racial incitement, anti-investment policy, and diplomatic self-sabotage, or it can choose growth, stability, and mutually beneficial cooperation.

South Africans should not resent being told hard truths that our own government refuses to face. We should resent that it took a foreign ambassador to say them.

If Pretoria truly cared about sovereignty, prosperity, and the well-being of its people, it would stop insulting one of our most important partners and start fixing the policies that are driving away investment, undermining property rights, and poisoning our international standing. Bozell is right about South Africa. The real question is whether South Africa is prepared to be right about itself.

Nicholas Woode-Smith is the Managing Editor of the Rational Standard and a senior associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity. You can follow him on X: @NWoodeSmith.