Liberals Establish "Progress" For a Freer South Africa
EDITOR’S NOTE: As of 2025, Progress SA seems to be defunct and their website no longer works.
A group of young liberal South Africans have established Progress, which they describe as a grassroots movement that will fight for a free future. Its motto is "Our Freedom. Our Future."
"We are young South Africans who are concerned about our country’s stagnating economy, and mainstream calls for disregarding basic liberties."
The following principles are said to guide Progress:
• Liberty
• Opportunity
• Non-racialism and non-sexism
• Property pights
• The market economy
• The Rule of Law
For more on the principles, click here.
Progress claims to provide "a rational, moral alternative" to the encroaching scourge of "racial nationalism, identity politics and other kinds of totalitarianism."
Is UCT free?
Their first campaign in partnership with African Students For Liberty UCT, #IsUCTFree?, seeks to re-open the space for debate that has been closed by radical identitarian student movements over recent years.
"Over the past few years at UCT, we have seen a declining tolerance of controversial and potentially offensive opinions, especially those labelled as ‘liberal’, ‘capitalist’ or ‘conservative’."
Indicative of its no-holds-barred approach, Progress has taken aim at university staff who facilitate the destruction of freedom of expression and association. One of its posters quotes Dr Lwazi Lushaba, a known militant racialist, who said, "White people need to know universities belong to [black people]." One if Progress' other edgy posters, which asserts that black people, too, can be racist, was placed on a notice board close to Lushaba's office at the University of Cape Town.
This initiative will, no doubt, start a much needed conversation about the imperatives of liberty, property rights, and the open society.
Visit their website at www.progress.org.za
Martin van Staden is a South African classical liberal author and jurist whose work has appeared in national and international media. He is the Head of Policy at the Free Market Foundation.