16 January 2018 - The “Buffalo Man” is a moniker for Cyril Ramaphosa that is likely to stick, not only because of his investments in rare game, but because his maiden January 8 statement sets the stage for a buffalo market as a feature of his administration.
Our own writing in the media
Every year our analysts and policy experts, in promoting new ideas and policies, contribute a wide range of articles to newspapers across South Africa.
15 January 2018 - Expropriating commercial farms without compensation will condemn the agriculture sector to a similar fate.
14 January 2018 - In July 2016, that court criticised the civil rights group Afriforum for "advancing illegitimate sectarian interests through legal stratagems" by making use of the constitution and the courts. At issue was an attempt by Afriforum to prevent the changing of certain street names in Pretoria. This was held to be an intolerable attempt to perpetuate apartheid.
12 January 2018 - So goes the narrative around the controversial policy stance adopted by the ANC’s 54th elective conference last month. For supporters and detractors alike, it is a policy aimed at South Africa’s farmland and its farming economy, something which most of the country will watch – with anticipation or trepidation – from afar
11 January 2018 - In our contemporary setting, curbing rights to property will more likely deepen rather than alleviate poverty.
10 January 2018 - Frans Cronje says the country, and business, needs to get out of the current ideological rut.
10 January 2018 - As a policy direction, expropriation without compensation rests on the premise that the failure of South Africa’s land reform programme has substantively been the consequence of resistance, both direct and indirect. Since 1994, only around 10% of agricultural land has been transferred out of white ownership through state programmes. In this narrative, the state has had to negotiate a labyrinth deliberately constructed to stifle transformation. This includes uncooperative property owners, malicious and venal price inflation, these having been enabled by compromises made in the writing of the Constitution – a "compromise tilted heavily in favour of forces against change", as former Minister Ngoako Ramatlhodi once put it. In some quarters, the very notion of private ownership is suspect.
10 January 2018 - Advocating land grabs without compensation distracts from the real issue: farming is hard, risky and uncertain work.
9 January 2018 - As the year begins, there is little for South Africa's unemployed to celebrate. With an unemployment rate sitting at historic highs, and nothing in the country's current growth trajectory - riding at below 1% - millions of South Africans lack not only work, but the prospect of finding any. This lethal combination of deprivation and retarded prospects constitutes the single biggest threat to the country's future.
9 January 2018 - The political and economic environment, which addresses education, health and unemployment, is what changes inequality. By SARA GON
7 January 2018 - If nothing else, however, electoral considerations give the ANC an interest in getting rid of Mr Zuma as soon as possible. Whereas impeachment is a quasi-judicial process, at the end of which removal would require a two-thirds majority, there is a much swifter, cleaner, and simpler solution. This is the parliamentary no-confidence vote, which is a political remedy that requires only a simple majority
5 January 2018 - If there was ever any doubt that a reckless mishandling of land policy represented a real threat to South Africa’s future, the ANC’s recent national conference has put that to rest. Its resolution on land expropriation without compensation constitutes a profound danger not only to the agricultural sector, or to the economy as a whole, but to the rights and prospects of South Africa’s citizens.