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Archive for the ‘Law’ Category

David Lewis Launches Thieves at the Dinner Table at The Book Lounge

by Amy on May 28th, 2012

David Lewis

Author, activist and academic, David Lewis, was welcomed at The Book Lounge early last week for the launch of his book, Thieves at the Dinner Table: Enforcing the Competition Act – a Personal Account.

Owen Rogers and David Lewis Thieves at the Dinner Table Lewis, who was instrumental in drafting South Africa’s competition law, has a prestigious CV.

He is currently the Executive Director of the NGO, Corruption Watch, and was joined by Advocate Owen Rogers in a frank and scintillating discussion, permeated with wit. His personal account of his experience serving on the Competition Commission makes for riveting reading.

Rogers launched the discussion with the question, “Who are the thieves? And at whose dinner table do they sit?” Lewis replied that, when they tackled the case of the bread cartel and those involved became contrite and admitted guilt, the Human Rights Commission referred to those who fixed bread prices as “thieves at the dinner table”. This struck Lewis as an apt description of the scenario and completed the task of finding a suitably exciting title for his book. However, he noted that some readers had bought the book under the misapprehension that it is a thriller.

Rogers highlighted the 15 years Lewis spent as a trade unionist in the anti-apartheid movement and asked whether this time gave him an accurate and fair insight into the world of business or whether it had skewered his perception of the way business operated. Lewis said he’d gained a healthy skepticism and, although he has never worked in a business, his work has always been involved directly with business: “I was always fascinated by business, and even in the union movement grew to a grudging respect of certain business people. I did come into it with a strong skepticism and strong awareness of what damage could be done without countervailing forces,” he said.

Owen recalled that Lewis was no “lover of lawyers” and had been known to call down plagues and poxes upon the heads of his esteemed colleagues. Additionally, competition law is a highly complex mix of economics and law. When Owen asked Lewis what the challenges to the legal profession in the field are, Lewis said he “loved to hate lawyers” and really enjoyed the theatre of the law. While he takes pleasure in television court room dramas, seeing them in person is “fantastic”!

The lively and entertaining discussion concluded with questions and answers from the floor, in which a number of Lewis’ colleagues participated.

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Liesl Jobson tweeted from the launch using #livebooks:

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David Lewis Delivers a Personal Account of the Competition Commission in Thieves at the Dinner Table

by Amy on Apr 26th, 2012

Thieves at the Dinner Table The Competition Commission (together with its Tribunal) is one of the success stories of the new, democratic South Africa, an institution that has won respect and admiration for its fearless, professional regulation of the market in the interests of the consumer and the citizen. David Lewis was one of the chief architects of the new competition authorities set up after 1994 and then became a leading actor in their work.

Thieves at the Dinner Table is a personal account of David Lewis’s headship of the Tribunal and tells, with insight, lucidity and often a fine sense of humour, of the way this new body dealt with the anticompetitive practices of South African big business. Three main aspects of the Commission’s work are dealt with in the book: mergers, abuse of dominance (i.e. monopolies) and cartels, and with each Lewis provides telling case studies drawn from the experience of the Commission. These are often enlivened by the author’s coruscating wit and by his delightful thumbnail sketches of the characters involved in the disputes, including the powerful and arrogant captains of industry, the wily Johannesburg competition lawyers, and the interfering and self-promoting politicians.

This is a book for people in business and in law, for those who want to understand how a key institution of post-apartheid South Africa came to be so successful, and for all those interested in the story of how some of the country’s most powerful businesses got their comeuppance after years of ripping off consumers.

Praise for Thieves at the Dinner Table

“This is a book on competition law that reads like a thriller. David Lewis has taken what might have been a dry, textbook topic and turned it into compulsive reading. But in giving the history of South African competition law some flesh and colour, he also imparts advice and opinions, which, whilst sometimes controversial, challenge the way we should think of economic regulation and the institutions that regulate.” – Norman Manoim, chairperson, South African Competition Tribunal

About the author

David Lewis, who taught at the Gordon Institute of Business Science after his term at the Competition Tribunal ended, is now head of the NGO Corruption Watch.

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Ronnie Kasrils Says the Latest Version of the Information Bill is More Dangerous Than Before

by Amy on Aug 22nd, 2011

The Unlikely Secret AgentRonnie Kasrils, author of award-winning The Unlikely Secret Agent, says the revisions to the Information Bill favour secrecy over preserving the spirit of our constitution. He says the latest incarnation of the bill cites vague concepts such as “the public good” and “survival of the state” as reasons for protecting information from “unlawful disclosure”.

Kasrils argues that the new legislation poses a risk mostly for whistleblowers, journalists and social activists, who could be put away for five to ten years for “unlawfully disclosing classified information”:

The latest version of the Protection of Information Bill being discussed by the ad hoc parliamentary committee is looking more dangerous than ever.

Just what manner of creature are we seeing emerge? The committee is bogged down in a cut-and-paste job, and the legislation is becoming a web of ill-conceived notions, biased towards secrecy and less and less expressing the spirit of our constitution.

When I was considering the need to replace the 1982 Protection of Information Act, which presently governs us, the late Kader Asmal quipped: “Better let sleeping dogs lie.” Agreeing that the apartheid-era law needed repealing, however, he advised that I involve human rights lawyers to draft the new legislation. This I did. Our aim was to limit secret information to explicitly defined areas; contribute to a culture of openness befitting our new democracy; and release at the stroke of a pen tons of needlessly classified information from the apartheid-era to the present.

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