Paul Hoffman | 03 April 2025 Paul Hoffman says if compulsory mediation is legislated in SA, parliament must insist all mediators be qualified independent professionals Farriers are the folk who shoe horses. The demand for their services dwindled sharply when the...
How to resolve the GNU Budget dispute over raising VAT
By Paul Hoffman There is currently some R89bn swilling around in the financial services sector that is unclaimed. It emerged during the interview that there is currently a pool, or more accurately pools, aggregating some R89-billion swilling around in the financial...
LETTER: State could take over R89bn in unclaimed funds
Many South Africans appear not to be too careful about their money. According to media reports sourced from Erica Liebenberg of Just Money, there is a pool of R89bn swilling around in the financial services sector that is unclaimed by those who are entitled to claim...
LETTER: Rasool dug his own grave
Former SA ambassador was bound to be expelled after badmouthing the US When the new SA was born some three decades ago “we the people” declared our intent to “build a united and democratic SA able to take its rightful place as a sovereign state in the family of...
LETTER: Cosatu stuck in the past
Federation deputy president says changing NHI legislation would be unconstitutional You reported a grievous misapprehension by union federation Cosatu as to the meaning and import of the concept “unconstitutionality” (“Cosatu urges Ramaphosa not to negotiate sections...
LETTER: Steinberg asks the wrong question
The president does not get to choose whether to follow the rule of law, he takes an oath to do so In an otherwise insightful piece, Jonny Steinberg poses the wrong question when he asks, “Does he [President Cyril Ramaphosa] really want an efficient justice system if...
Do SA politicians take countering corruption seriously?
In the carefully chosen words of the Constitutional Court, “(t)here can be no gainsaying that corruption threatens to fell at the knees virtually everything we hold dear and precious in our hard-won constitutional order”. These words are in paragraph 166 of the joint...
Mashatile’s irresolvable, intractable and unmanageable conflict of interests on SAA CEO
By Paul Hoffman The part that Paul Mashatile played in the appointment of John Lamola as the new SAA CEO is a direct conflict between the interests of the ANC in cadre deployment and his overall official duties as deputy president. The canary in the coal mine for...
Is there a place in the sun in SA for Afrikaners?
Paul Hoffman 27 February 2025 Paul Hoffman notes that in 2004 ConCourt stripped whites of their protection against racial discrimination The fluidity in politics worldwide seems to be stimulating push-back in SA against the 140 odd race based laws introduced since...
Instead of hiking VAT, let’s aggressively recover the trillions looted in State Capture
By Paul Hoffman About R60-billion a year would have come in from the additional VAT in the aborted proposal to raise it by 2%. The loot of State Capture is estimated in trillions. There has been a wide range of different reactions to the postponement of the Budget...
LETTER: Foster business confidence
March version of budget should address absence of new investment Your columnist Peter Bruce is spot on when he points out that the proposed hiking of VAT “as the only answer to a 20-year-old funding problem is intellectually lazy, politically disconnected and morally...
LETTER: National Dialogue should decide NDR’s fate
ANC continues destructive national democratic revolution opposed by GNU partners 17 February 2025 - 20:58 After it was able to muster only about 40% of the votes cast in the May 2024 general election the ANC was obliged to invite other parties represented in...
Is NACAC a serious contributor to solving SA’s grand corruption conundrum?
The National Anti-Corruption Advisory Council, NACAC, via its most voluble member, David Lewis, has set out its stall [see ....
LETTER: Anti-corruption advisory council of no use
Bringing the crooked to book requires a single agency outside executive control David Lewis is on a dangerous, unconstitutional, and ill-informed trajectory when it comes to formulating the long-overdue reform of the anti-corruption capacity of the criminal justice...
Ramaphosa’s Sona was singularly underwhelming on anti-corruption reform
By Paul Hoffman While secure peace, sustainable progress and shared prosperity remain the goals of good governance everywhere, it is undeniable that these desirable qualities do not flourish in any society in which endemic grand corruption has taken root and goes...