Focus on prosecuting the culprits behind spaza shop deaths: FMF

The Free Market Foundation (FMF) has warned that the new bylaw cracking down on spaza shops will in practice have a negligible effect other than to further weaken respect for the law in South Africa.

The foundation made this remark in a media briefing on Tuesday after the department of co-operative governance and traditional affairs had gazetted its standard draft township economies bylaw on November 8.

“Virtually everything in the bylaw is already law in some form or another. These informal, often unregistered, shops do not even begin to have the resources necessary to hire compliance officers or lawyers,” said Martin van Staden, FMF’s head of policy. 

Van Staden said these small businesses were already not complying with the decrees of regulators, “so why do we think just making another law will change that?”

He said the answer was to deregulate and liberalise.

“By reducing the compliance burden, we incentivise businesses to operate within the bounds of law.”

The FMF on Tuesday published “Liberty First: Legal System and Property Rights,” the latest in a series of policy reform proposals for the GNU to bring about economic growth and prosperity.

Van Staden said the focus should not be on anti-growth or xenophobic regulations, but on prosecuting the culprits and making examples of them.

Among its recommendations, the FMF paper advised the government to capacitate South Africa’s criminal justice institutions to focus on real criminal behaviour, rather than being preoccupied with politically contrived “offences” with no discernible victims.

“That is how the spaza shop crisis should be dealt with. Whether intentionally or by criminal negligence, someone caused the deaths of dozens of innocent children.

“Our focus should not be on anti-growth or xenophobic regulations, but on prosecuting the culprits and making examples of them for any future wrongdoers,” Van Staden said.

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