The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) is pressing ahead with controversial proposals to limit intellectual property (IP) rights, including patent rights. This has significant implications for healthcare and other sectors in South Africa.
Latest from the IRR
The Patent Rights Grab
29 October 2014 - The State is seeking wide powers to take or bypass patent rights. Patents are important because they help to quicken the growth rate, generate jobs, and counter poverty.
Neil Emerick says government interference has cost us dearly, with our post-2009 GDP growth averaging just 1.9% a year.
South Africa continues its downward slide on the index of economic freedom compiled by the Fraser Institute in Canada, says the IRR in a policy paper published in its @Liberty bulletin today.
The current trajectory of policy thinking in South Africa could in time trigger a Venezuelan-style economic collapse, according to a policy paper published earlier this week by the Institute for Race Relations.
EFF lacks understanding of economic freedom – IRR
14 October 2014 - True economic freedom stimulates investment and employment. It makes for faster economic growth and increased prosperity for all, including the poorest 10%. The EFF's call to expropriate land and nationalise mines, banks, and other businesses shows that it has no understanding of economic freedom.
BEE: Helping or Hurting?
6 October 2014 – Is black economic empowerment (BEE) achieving its goal of correcting past injustices and opening up opportunities for black South Africans?
Although the ANC realises that dissatisfaction at local level may translate into electoral losses in 2016, it can’t fix local government as long as it sticks to its revolutionary and racial ideology. The chickens are coming home to roost.
Frans Cronje outlines what he believes to be the solution to our crisis.
South Africa on brink of an e-revolution – IRR report
30 September 2014 – The report found that access to electronic communications devices and infrastructure and the use of electric communications had increased far faster than the delivery of any other type of basic service.
Intieme vroueslag is nou die grootste oorsaak van moord op vroue in Suid-Afrika.
Liberation for the ‘born frees’
10 September 2014 – A voucher system for school education would do more than anything else to liberate South Africa's generation of ‘born frees’.
Give all pupils school vouchers worth R12 000 each!
South Africa should introduce a comprehensive system of educational vouchers to level the educational playing field, says the IRR. The vouchers – which could be spent solely on education – would be tantamount to a universal bursary system.
Mark Oppenheimer and Cecelia Kok analyse draft law's erosion of property rights in context of the ConCourt's AgriSA judgment.
THE more the government fails with the basics, the more it takes refuge in fantasy. It cannot keep the lights on, stop rhino poaching, or get the teachers it employs to spend more than three hours a day in class, but it will now mass-produce black industrialists and black farmers. That’s in addition to achieving "energy sovereignty", setting up a Brics bank, establishing our own shipping fleet, and creating a "mining champion".
ACCORDING to Business Day, longstanding proposals to require doctors and other providers of health services to obtain "certificates of need" from the government before they are allowed to practise have once again been put on hold. That is no reason, however, why we should not explore extending this concept.
The state should get out of the business of running schools. Instead, it would divide its schooling budget into bursaries in the form of vouchers given to parents to enable them to buy education from the provider of their choice.
South Africa should adopt a better foreign policy on Israel
In an article written for Politicsweb the IRR has argued that South Africa should revise its foreign policy on Israel towards one of constructive engagement.
"Condemn us when children die of contaminated water." That, according to Cyril Ramaphosa, deputy president of the African National Congress (ANC) and the country, is one of the media's jobs. He was speaking on 20 June at the annual Nat Nakasa award for courageous journalism hosted by the South African National Editors' Forum.
Time to wake up to affirmative action dangers
Official data on wastewater management at municipal level show that very large numbers of people are potentially at risk, says the IRR (Institute of Race Relations).
Government poisoned by a toxic mix of policies
South Africa's system of government is poisoned by a "toxic mix of affirmative action, cadre deployment, and impunity", according to the IRR (Institute of Race Relations).
The best and the worst
Seven of the top ten performing municipalities, based on service delivery indicators, are in the Western Cape. Eight of the ten worst performing municipalities are in the Eastern Cape.
Affirmative action is killing babies and must be scrapped
The CEO of the IRR, Dr Frans Cronje, says that it is time to scrap race-based affirmative action in South Africa given the damage the policy is causing to poor and vulnerable communities.
We applaud the business-friendly noises coming from some of your ministers despite the gains of the Economic Freedom Fighters in the recent election. However, we don't believe them. This stocktake will tell you why.
Different policies required to fix the future
Instead of merely criticising ANC policies, it is necessary to put forward fundamentally different policies and ideas. So says the Institute of Race Relations.
As Freedom Day and this week's election approached, a number of foreign journalists asked me how South Africa was doing on the race relations front. My answer: "There are threats down the road arising from racial laws, but so far, very nicely, thank you."
One reason why financial corruption under African National Congress (ANC) rule has become systemic is that it was not strangled at birth. And we won't stop it by deploying the red herring that current problems are merely hangovers from the apartheid past, as some commentators do.
How the African National Congress (ANC) handles Public Protector Thuli Madonsela's Secure in Comfort report into the Nkandla affair is likely to confirm beyond reasonable doubt one of the key differences between financial corruption under National Party (NP) and corruption under ANC rule.
Press Release: DA increases share of eligible votes by 400%
The Democratic Alliance (DA) increased its share of eligible votes by 400%, from 2% in 1994 to 10% in 2009.
Press Release: Worst spenders of wasted billions
KwaZulu-Natal accounted for 41% of all unauthorised expenditure in the 2011/12 financial year, followed by Gauteng with 36%.