By ‘weaponising’ the Competition Commission in a ‘sustained campaign hostile to entrepreneurship, enterprise, and the free market’, the ANC government is undermining the ‘key catalysts for innovation, job creation, and poverty reduction’, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has warned.
The Commission’s latest report on the Online Intermediation Platforms Market ‘attacks successful commercial enterprises in the digital domain and puts recent tech breakthroughs under threat’, the IRR says in a statement.
The IRR calls on the Commission to ‘act constructively by freeing markets instead of restricting them and to cease being a proxy for the ANC’s ideological battles’.
The Institute says the Commission’s latest report ‘displays an evident distaste for the commercial success of companies like Takealot that have thrived by giving consumers convenient access to goods and services’.
‘Masquerading as the protector of “historically disadvantaged” businesses, the Commission proposes damaging “remedies” to thriving digital platforms that will result in higher costs and less choice for consumers.
‘These skirmishes in the ANC’s crusade for the National Democratic Revolution send a chilling message to entrepreneurs: outperform the state and you’ll be marked as a counterrevolutionary. In an increasingly risk-averse global economy, South Africa needs to liberalise the investment environment, not strangle it. This is a far cry from the restrictive vision portrayed in the Commission’s report.’
Says Hermann Pretorius, IRR head of strategic communications: ‘South Africans need economic policies that boost private enterprise and economic growth instead of stifling opportunity and ingenuity. As a country, we need a government that cultivates an environment where prosperity and socio-economic advancement are within everyone’s grasp.
‘Economic policy must be about prioritising the real economic needs of South African consumers rather than indulging the ideological whims of Minister Patel and his comrades. Unless it abandons its relentless push for state control over socio-economic upliftment, the ANC will ensure its own downfall by this decade’s end – with no one to blame but itself.’
[Image: Gerd Altmann from Pixabay]