Martin van Staden
http://www.martinvanstaden.com
Dr Martin van Staden is the Head of Policy at the Free Market Foundation and Editor of the Race Law Project at the South African Institute of Race Relations. He earned a Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) from the University of Pretoria and is widely published and featured on popular and academic platforms. Van Staden additionally serves as a director of both the Hayek Council for a Free World and the Free Speech Union SA, and as a fellow at both the Consumer Choice Center and Initiative for African Trade and Prosperity. Visit www.martinvanstaden.com for more.
Articles By This Author
A restrained DA does not have what it takes to fix Joburg
Last week in The Common Sense, David Ansara outlined what it would take to arrest Johannesburg’s accelerating collapse.
Bad men doing good: A parable of capitalism’s true genius
Advocates of free-market capitalism often note that this ordering of society does not seek to change imperfect human nature but rather channel it constructively. A short and honest parable about how this might look in the real world, could be illustrative:
South African elite psychosis and the personality of Donald Trump
Much has changed in South African civic discourse since the beginning of 2025, to the point of being jarring to many of us. What could explain the about-face, especially among those who used to portray themselves as the moderate middle?
What’s happening to the FW de Klerk Foundation?
The reformer FW de Klerk left politics having secured for South Africa a constitutional federation and commitment to non-racialism, which the political elite began breaching before the ink on the Constitution was dry. Why, then, has his presidential foundation come out swinging in favour of unitarism and race law?
Stop treating “representivity” as an unassailable gospel
News24 deputy politics editor Bongekile Macupe last week undertook a racial bean-counting exercise in the finest tradition of South Africa’s old census bureaucracy by naming all the new leadership figures and
MK’s pro-Tobacco Bill turn: The lady doth protest too much
As a non-smoker, I have written about South Africa’s Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill more times than I care to count– and will continue to write about it.
Why does South Africa need an “AI policy”?
With the recent AI policy scandal in the Department of Communications, South Africa should ask whether it needs a restrictive artificial intelligence policy framework in the first place. Emulating Europe’s regulatory straitjacket would stifle our low-growth economy and impose unaffordable compliance burdens on start-ups. America’s light-touch approach proves the better path.
Against “historical injustice” exceptionalism in South Africa
South Africa’s public discourse often treats Apartheid as a uniquely evil system that was unmatched in its destructiveness. This exceptionalism claims that our history justifies policies – like never-ending race-based laws – that other states recovering from injustice have largely rejected. In reality, we must learn from what has worked elsewhere after tyranny and discrimination: secure property rights, limited government, and market-driven growth that lifted millions out of poverty.
Understanding value subjectivity would lower the temperature of discourse
Grasping basic value subjectivity would dramatically cool South Africa’s toxic debates on unemployment, immigration, and “exploitation”.
Traoré is right about democracy (but nothing else)
Ibrahim Traoré, the dictator of Burkina Faso, recently declared on state television that “people need to forget about the issue of democracy”, adding: “We have to tell the truth: democracy isn’t for us.” He said that “democracy kills” and invoked Libya as a cautionary tale of bloodshed and instability whenever outsiders attempt to impose the system. “Democracy is slavery”, he concluded.