David Lewis Delivers a Personal Account of the Competition Commission in 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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