Martin van Staden
https://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
The unacceptable risks of the safetyist religion
Last Saturday, two Airlink Embraers in Springbok and All Black colours flew over Cape Town’s DHL Stadium just before South Africa played New Zealand. The crowd roared, but pockets of the internet – as it now does with anything that looks like a “near-miss” – turned to hysteria.
We need new permission structures to arrest municipal collapse
The following is based on an address I delivered last evening in a discussion,“Ballot or Build-It: How to Save Our Cities”, with DA mayoral candidate for Tshwane Cilliers Brink at the Free Market Foundation (FMF). The discussion was moderated by FMF CEO David Ansara.
Why liberals should support AfriForum and the Solidarity Movement
For reasons that continue to mystify, many supposed classical liberals cannot help but lay into AfriForum and the Solidarity Movement with criticism they do not give to other non-liberals.
If you still oppose privatisation, you don’t really understand South Africa
The Democratic Alliance (DA)’s recent local government manifesto has predictably provoked a backlash.
AfriForum is clearly right about political interference in school sports
I sometimes have to pinch myself and remember that in 2026 there are still South Africans who have somehow missed that state race regulation remains a living part of our public life. The persistence of this denialism speaks to the difficulty of meaningful reform, as we are not even able to perceive the same objective reality.
Soft coups, self-coups, and pretend-democracy
Several months ago, something scandalous happened that in substance, if not form, broke a part of South Africa’s constitutional integrity, and yet it became a muted and ordinary part of the news cycle. What does our non-reaction to this event say about our democracy?
To level up the DA’s game, the “Blue Brigade” must be permanent
The Democratic Alliance (DA) is not like the “big parties” of South African history.
Do Afrikaners get to be Afrikaners per se?
The recent controversy over Bokkieweek offers a useful lens on a deeper and recurring question in South African public life: do Afrikaners get to exist as Afrikaners per se, or only as scattered individuals whose cultural preferences must remain private and unorganised?
Thunderous applause for Constitutional Court’s abandoning the Constitution
Section 26 of the Constitution reads identically in 2026 as it did in 1996, and there has been no attempt – much less a successful one – to amend it. Yet, this provision of our so-called “highest law” means something completely different today from what it meant three decades ago. How is this possible? Hint: it’s the vibes.
Democracy and deliberation: Dennis Davis must sleep in the bed he helped make
Dennis Davis has published a second edition of his 1999 book Democracy and Deliberation. In an extract from the new edition, appearing in the Daily