Latest news with #InstituteofRaceRelations
IOL News
3 days ago
- Business
- IOL News
Expropriation Act: How many expropriating authorities are empowered by the Act?
The Expropriation Act is written so broadly that every form of property in South Africa is now subject to expropriation below market value. From homes to farms to businesses to savings to pensions, all forms of property are, in terms of the Act, vulnerable to expropriation, says Makone Maja, IRR Strategic Engagements Manager. The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) will this week write to the Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure, Dean Macpherson, requesting clarity on a crucial matter related to the Expropriation Act, for which the Minister is responsible. The Act grants sweeping powers to expropriating authorities to expropriate any form of property below market value. It offers weak and contradictory measures to property owners to protect their rights through the courts. Yet, just how many authorities in South Africa are granted expropriating powers by the Act is unclear; by IRR calculations, the number could exceed 400. Says Makone Maja, IRR Strategic Engagements Manager: 'The Expropriation Act is an unpopular piece of legislation. IRR opinion polling in March and April this year found that 68% of registered voters oppose the Act. It's easy to understand why. The Act is written so broadly that every form of property in South Africa is now subject to expropriation below market value. From homes to farms to businesses to savings to pensions, all forms of property are, in terms of the Act, vulnerable to expropriation. And yet there seems to be no clarity from the government on the exact number of entities the law empowers to confiscate property on astonishingly flimsy grounds.' As illustrated in the IRR's flagship Blueprint for Growth series, property rights are a vital means of economic participation and empowerment only if they are secure. Weaken the certainty with which people can own what's lawfully theirs and the knock-on consequences range from undermining food security to wiping out pensions and savings. Says Maja: 'It is the height of policy recklessness for this door of vast state power to be opened to an unknown number of expropriating authorities. If the number of these authorities is unknown, how can South Africans have any trust that the sweeping expropriating powers granted by the Act won't be abused? 'We have all heard the horror stories of extortion by state officials – from kickback mafias to corruption. We are a country familiar with the disgusting abuse of state power. The Expropriation Act empowers a vast expropriation network at all levels of the state. The IRR has thus far tallied at least 426 such authorities, yet the number might rise to close to a thousand. This is a terrifying prospect. The Minister has a duty to provide urgent clarity on this matter.' The Institute of Race Relations Johannesburg
IOL News
21-05-2025
- Business
- IOL News
IRR to equity consultants: Will you recommend firing employees who refuse racial classification?
The government blatantly refuses to comply with its racial directives while compelling the private sector to obey. The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) on 21 May wrote to ten employment equity consulting firms across South Africa to ask for clarity on a core issue of liberty and law: will they advise their clients to dismiss employees who refuse to racially classify themselves under the Employment Equity Amendment Act? This direct engagement follows the implementation of coercive sectoral race quotas in April 2025, now enforced by more than 50 newly deployed equity inspectors. These officials have been tasked with upholding a system built on mandatory racial categorisation. This policy undermines merit-based hiring, punishes success, and promotes job-killing regulations at the expense of economic growth and personal dignity. Says IRR Strategic Engagements Manager Makone Maja: 'Not only do the regulations undermine the rule of law, with evidence of the state's unwillingness to adhere to its own rules, but they highlight the challenge of compliance with the draconian and arbitrary red tape they entrench.' The Commission for Employment Equity recently reported to Parliament that of the 29 269 reports from public and private companies employing nearly 7.7 million people, or 45% of the share of the employed in the last quarter of 2024, only 1.9% of the reports were provided by government entities and state-owned entities. This demonstrates the state's blatant refusal to comply with its racial directives while compelling the private sector to obey.
Daily Maverick
21-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Maverick
Race vs unemployment — the changing axis of our politics
Since we became a democracy, the issue of race has overshadowed our political narrative and our elections. It has been the dominant axis of our politics. There may now be some evidence that this is changing, and that the party that can literally change the axis, to change the subject, could grab the initiative. It is well known in politics that when planning a campaign, a party will want to choose the ground on which the campaign is fought. If you can determine what the main argument will be, if you can control the ground, you often win. Because of our history and the racialised inequality which still largely defines our society, race has obviously been the major issue. Even parties that would lose out because of this, such as the DA, have accepted this. In previous elections, the DA has sometimes simply elected to provoke a discussion about race on the grounds that if it cannot control the subject, it could at least control the timing. There is some evidence that this may now be changing. This week, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) released more data from a poll conducted during March (the poll saw 807 respondents comprising a diverse cross-section using Computer Assisted Telephonic Interviews). While some of the headlines on it, such as the claim that 'most' people prefer appointments on merit rather than race, will be hugely contested, other findings are less controversial. Unemployment, job creation Among the more interesting findings is that nearly 30% of voters believe that 'unemployment and creating jobs' should be the main priority of government. This is far higher than 'illegal immigration' or even 'crime and security', which are seen as the main priority by less than 10% of respondents. While seeking an objective view of 'what is the most important issue' facing a country is probably impossible, it is true that in most democracies, the economy is the most important political issue. Generally speaking, if an economy is growing quickly, the party in charge will win an election. If an economy is stumbling, it will lose support. Both the last US election and our last election are examples of this, and there are many, many more. Inflation rose during the Biden era (largely because of the pandemic), and our economy has not grown significantly in years. This finding by the IRR follows consistent previous findings and would appear to confirm an old insight in our politics: that if all those who were unemployed voted for one party, that party would dominate our politics. But strangely, despite this apparent truth, not one of our political parties has been able to gain traction with an economic plan. From time to time, some parties have played around with their own version of a 'New Deal' that was so effective for President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression. Groups like the DA, Action SA, and even the ANC, from time to time, have claimed to have a plan that would finally move the needle on our economy. And yet, despite the obvious need for it, none has been able to make this the axis of our politics. 'Liberation dividend' wanes Perhaps this might change. As support for the ANC recedes, and as it loses political power as a result, so it loses the ability to control the narrative. Bluntly, the 'liberation dividend' for the party has run out. Attempts to talk about the past, to focus on what it did during the struggle, no longer appear to have the power they once did. At the same time, due to its internal contradictions (and the fact that it is so diverse), it has not been able to craft a new message. There is no singular message that it is sending to voters to encourage them to stay with the party. What is less clear is whether this will result in less support for programmes like BEE. While the IRR says this is the case, there are certainly factors that could make it true. It could be that changing attitudes are a function of both the weakening of the race-based narrative and the focus on our past. But it may also be a reaction to perceived corruption relating to deployment, and how so many people appear to have been appointed to jobs without being properly qualified. Even former Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has claimed that cadre deployment is unconstitutional. Failing government services However, this feeling might also be driven by frustration that so many government services are failing. For many voters, the issue may no longer be about who is getting certain jobs, but whether the jobs are being done and the services are working. This plays into what could become another axis in our politics – which party is better able to provide services. The DA has tried to bring this issue to the fore, to make it the ground on which elections are fought, for many years. It is true that on an objective basis, many services appear to work better for many people in the Western Cape. Read more: Head and shoulders above — Cape Town's success could become a key issue in 2024 elections But this is also highly contested; the Western Cape received more money from the apartheid government in the past (for racist reasons), and it does not have any former homelands. The DA's attempts to improve service delivery in other metros where it has governed, such as Tshwane, do not appear to have won significant traction with voters so far. Unpredictable politics It is also entirely possible that other issues come to the fore. Our democracy is nothing if not unpredictable. It is entirely possible, for example, that someone new to politics might capture the public imagination in a way that is currently unimaginable. The fact that there is so much consistent speculation that someone like Patrice Motsepe or Mcebisi Jonas could mount a campaign for the leadership of the ANC shows an appetite for something new. Both in the US and Lesotho, business people with no previous interest in politics have risen to the top job. Were someone new to enter our politics in a big way, the new dividing line, the new axis of our politics, could then be whether you support a rich person being President or not. It should also be remembered that while some may wish for issues around race to no longer dominate our politics, our racialised inequality means the issue will always come back. Just as issues around land ownership ebb and flow in our politics, so will race. In the US, many thought the election of Barack Obama in 2008 marked the end of race as a political issue. How wrong they were. It was arguably the single biggest factor behind the election of Trump both in 2016 and last year, and is driving his agenda right now. There is plenty of evidence that our society is changing. But there is no difference between South Africans and anyone else. Everyone wants a better life for themselves and their children. Voters can see that economic growth and job creation are key to this. The opportunity for someone to make this the new axis of our politics may now be opening. But someone will have to grab it and use it effectively. DM
Bloomberg
16-04-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
South Africa's ANC Lags Main Rival in New Voter Opinion Poll
Support for the African National Congress, which ruled South Africa outright for three decades after apartheid rule ended, has slipped further since it lost its parliamentary majority in last year's elections and now lags that of its main rival for the first time, a new opinion poll showed. Of 807 respondents canvassed by the Institute of Race Relations by phone between March 27 and April 3, some 29.7% said they backed the ANC and 30.3% the business friendly Democratic Alliance. Support for the DA among registered Black voters jumped to 18% from 5%. The poll had a margin of error of about 4%.
The Guardian
17-03-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Lou Kushnick obituary
My father, Lou Kushnick, who has died aged 86, was a lecturer and a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester with a particular interest in race relations. In the 1970s he set up a third-year degree module entitled 'race and class in the US', a course that was taken by the black activist Olive Morris. He was vice-chair of the Institute of Race Relations for 20 years from 1978, and a regular contributor to its journal, Race & Class, as well as an editor of the academic publication Sage Race Relations Abstracts. In 1996 he founded the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah race relations resource centre in Manchester, named after a schoolboy who had been killed in a racist attack at the city's Burnage high school 10 years earlier. It holds a collection of books and other material about race relations that Lou had gathered since the 1960s. Towards the end of his career he was awarded an honorary professorial fellowship in race relations at Manchester University. Lou was born into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. His father, Alex, was a manager at the Ceil Chapman dress company, and his mother, Evelyn (nee Levin), was a taxi dispatcher. After attending Manual Training high school (now John Jay high school), he gained a degree in sociology from Columbia University in New York before undertaking a PhD in political science at Yale University. In 1961 he married Pat Fiske, a teacher, and two years later they moved to the UK so that Lou could take advantage of a scholarship to Manchester University. The idea was to stay for a year, but they both fell in love with the city and its people, and never left. Fortunately for Lou, the university had recently set up an American studies course, and he accepted an offer to become a lecturer in the subject in 1964. He was happy at the turn of events, and for the university it was quite a coup to secure a genuine American to teach the subject – and one with a broad Brooklyn accent, to boot. He stood out in 70s suburban Manchester, with his long hair and beard, driving an original VW campervan and bearing a passing resemblance to Jerry Garcia, the Grateful Dead guitarist. Lou remained in his post for 30 years, later as a senior lecturer, until in 1996 the American Studies department was amalgamated with English and he moved to the department of sociology, staying there until his retirement in 2007. After leaving the university he continued his involvement with the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah race relations resource centre, staying on as its director until his death. A lover of food and wine, he often travelled to France for culinary reasons on a regular basis. He also entertained friends with his great cooking, wonderful vintages and even better stories. Lou is survived by Pat, me and a granddaughter, Lexi.
