Latest from the IRR

What is the ANC thinking? - Politicsweb, 24 March 2017

Our research has long revealed a close correlation between economic growth, job creation, family income levels, and confidence in the government. Between 1994 and 2003 South Africa averaged GDP growth rates of around 3%. Between 2004 and 2007 that number picked up to over 5%.

Treasury goes all-in with BEE - Politicsweb, 20 March 2017

Black companies will benefit from contracts swung their way. The lucky ones will get paid on time. Many will struggle, the minister of public works, Thulas Mxesi, having recently admitted that late payment by government entities "is still a big issue".

Empathise, dammit! [[[or damn it!]]] - Polity.org.za

Mike Berger (Trump and the crisis of the West, Politicsweb, 15 February 2017) refers to “a growing constituency in academia and the media focused mainly on a limitless smorgasbord of 'minority rights' and Western guilt for all manner of internal and global ills… such arguments [having] powerfully reinforced virulent ethnic and ideological identity politics in an increasing spiral of polarisation.”

Right of Reply: Immigrants work hard, this fact is not an insult to South Africans - Daily Maverick, 16 March 2016

The Institute of Race Relations report on immigrants in South Africa has for the most part been accurately reported as a glimpse into the economic lives of South Africa’s immigrants; the odds they face and the success they have forged despite, but perhaps because of, hardship. However there is often someone willing to take up the role of a sleuth with a preconceived narrative, combing the report for words that will make his analysis stick. By GWEN NGWENYA for the South African Institute of Race Relations. 4

Mining: What the Fraser Index really tells us - Politicsweb, 15 March 2017

There has, quite appropriately, been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over South Africa's lamentable performance in the Fraser Institute's survey of the enabling environment for mining investment. In terms of one of the Institute's two indices – ‘policy perceptions’ – South Africa is the third worst performer on the African continent.

Land reform: what is the real agenda? - Politicsweb, 13 March 2017

What is President Jacob Zuma's government up to with land reform? Not only Mr Zuma, but also his minister of rural development and land reform, Gugile Nkwinti, have on several occasions this year spoken of restitution without compensation. The deputy minister of public service and administration, Ayanda Dlodlo, has done the same.

The slow destruction of our mining industry - Politicsweb, 05 March 2017

During his state-of-the-nation address a month ago President Jacob Zuma declared that "mining has always been the backbone of our economy". Speaking in October 2013 at the opening of an extension of the Venetia diamond mine operated by De Beers in the north of Limpopo, he said mining was "poised for growth and expansion".

Businessmen and politics - Politicsweb, 02 March 2017

We are in the earliest days of a grand experiment to test the validity of the notion that the businessman’s dispassionate acumen can transform our sclerotic federal government into something with private sector efficiency.’

IRR calls for extension of ICC submission deadline

1 March 2017 – The IRR has today written to the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Correctional Services to make the point that the time afforded for submissions on the proposed Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Act Repeal Bill is too short.

Some wartime heroes are less equal than others - Politicsweb, 27 February 2017

Few of last week's numerous newspaper articles commemorating the tragic sinking of the SS Mendi off the English coastline near the Isle of Wight on 21st February 1917 failed to mention that the African servicemen who lost their lives in the First World War had been treated by the then government as second class

Yet another commodity boom might pass us by

16 February 2017 – The unexpected uptick in commodity prices should provide a great boost to South Africa's mining industry, says the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) in a paper published yesterday.

Cutting through racial rhetoric – jobs, service delivery, crime stutter SA’s progress - BizNews, 15 February 2017

Various threats of violence against whites were also reported. Velaphi Khumalo, an employee of the Gauteng provincial administration, tweeted that whites should be ‘hacked and killed like Jews’ and their children ‘used as garden fertiliser’. Other comments by black South Africans called for whites to be ‘poisoned and killed’, urged ‘the total destruction of white people’, and advocated a civil war in which ‘all white people would be killed’.