South Africa’s Descent Into Bureaucratic Nightmare
The overreach extends terrifyingly into our private bodies. The government no longer trusts you to decide what to put in your own mouth.
There was a time, perhaps largely theoretical but nonetheless aspirational, when the default setting of human existence was liberty. No, when I was born, there were no speed limits on the roads of South Africa. You were expected to drive in a way that took road conditions into account and drive safely. In that world, you were free to act, to trade, to speak, and to move, provided you did not infringe upon the rights of another. This is the concept of “negative liberty” – freedom from interference.
But in South Africa today, the tectonic plates have shifted. We have quietly but decisively transitioned into a regime of “positive liberty” – where freedom is not an inherent state of being, but a privilege granted by the state. The default answer to any human endeavour is now “no,” until a bureaucrat stamps a piece of paper that says “yes.”
The death of spontaneity
The change did not happen overnight. It was not a single coup d’état against freedom, but a slow, suffocating accumulation of regulatory sediment. From wearing seatbelts to blanket “no smoking zones”. It has accelerated significantly over the last fifteen years as the state adopted the “Developmental State” model, an ideology which posits that economic growth is not the result of human ingenuity, but of government direction.
The result is a society strangled by red tape. Consider the simple act of driving. With the looming implementation of AARTO (Administrative Adjudication of Road Traffic Offences), the state seeks to transform every motorist into an administrative subject. The system’s design, often critiqued for its presumption of guilt, threatens to turn the renewal of a driving license – already a Kafkaesque nightmare of queues and “system offline” errors – into a weapon of control.
The criminalisation of enterprise
The “permission society” is most visible in its war on the small entrepreneur. In a country with catastrophic unemployment, one would assume the government would roll out the red carpet for anyone willing to take a risk. Instead, they roll out the red tape.
Try to set up a stall to sell avocados on a street corner. You are not viewed as a hero of the free market; you are a “nuisance” to be regulated. You need a trading permit. You need to navigate by-laws that differ from municipality to municipality. The proposed “Standard Draft By-Law for Township Economies” and the harsh crackdowns on informal traders in metros like Johannesburg reveal a government that views organic economic activity with deep suspicion. They want an economy they can measure, tax, and control, not one that actually works.
Even the creative arts are not immune. To film in a public street, a space ostensibly owned by the public, requires a permit, often applied for weeks in advance, with fees attached. The spontaneous capturing of public life is codified, regulated, and monetised by the state.
The nanny state tightens its grip
The overreach extends terrifyingly into our private bodies. The government no longer trusts you to decide what to put in your own mouth.
The Tobacco Products and Electronic Delivery Systems Control Bill is the epitome of this paternalism. It does not merely seek to warn; it seeks to obliterate the industry through draconian display bans and plain packaging, treating adults like recalcitrant children. Similarly, the sugar tax (Health Promotion Levy) operates on the arrogant assumption that the poor are too stupid to budget for their own groceries and must be taxed into “better” choices.
The final frontier: The NHI
But the absolute zenith of this statist creep is the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act. Here, the state seeks to nationalise the very mechanism of our survival. By threatening to effectively ban private medical aid for services covered by the NHI, the government is stripping citizens of the most fundamental right: the choice of how to protect their own health. The “Certificate of Need,” a mechanism that would allow the state to dictate where a doctor may practice, treats medical professionals not as free citizens, but as state assets to be deployed on a map like pawns.
The fatal conceit
Why has this happened? It is born of what Friedrich Hayek called the “fatal conceit”, the belief that a central planner can possess enough information to run an economy and a society better than the millions of individuals acting within it.
We have traded the chaotic creativity of the free market for the sterile order of the permit office. We have forgotten that innovation does not ask for permission; it asks for forgiveness. By demanding a license to trade, a permit to drive, and a sanction to heal, the South African government has not just stifled the economy; it has infantilised its citizens. We are no longer pioneers in a rugged land; we are dependents in a waiting room, hoping our number gets called.
Charl Heydenrych is a retired human resources practitioner and a libertarian.
Absolutely! And the effects are devastating in terms of economic progress, let alone the dehumanising of us as thinking human beings with a free will which enable us to create miracles when unbounded by the pathetic bureaucrats...
Excellent article Charl ... a genuine free market would uplift the masses in a way no amount of central planning ever could.
The Establishment however, including ironically economists who are market "friendly", argues for regulation because of "market failures".
In societies wherein Trevor Watkins' Harm Consent Rule, the HCR, coupled to the NoU, the "Nature of Us", would prevail, there would be no market failures.
The free market becomes self regulating as any instance of harm without consent relative to the NoU becomes liable for compensation.
For the NoU see: https://thetaooffreedom.substack.com/p/the-nature-of-us-nou?utm_source=publication-search