11 March 2025
The Free Market Foundation (FMF) is deeply saddened to announce the passing of its chairman, Rex van Schalkwyk.
“We will all remember Rex as an exceptional intellectual who cared deeply about freedom and justice and who undoubtedly contributed greatly to the cause of liberty in South Africa. This is a great loss to the FMF; he will be dearly missed,” says FMF CEO David Ansara.
“We are saddened by Rex’s untimely passing,” adds Gail Daus-van Wyk, Deputy Chair of the Board. “Rex was a man of principle who fought quietly but robustly for liberty and restrained state power. His absence is and will be felt.”
Van Schalkwyk’s involvement with the Foundation stretches back to at least 2015, when, alongside Director Eustace Davie, he played a key role in establishing an advisory board on the rule of law for the FMF. He was subsequently the Rule of Law Project’s inaugural chairman – a position he has held since.
In September 2020, Van Schalkwyk was elected as the Chairman of the Board of the Foundation and re-elected annually up to and including this year, when he was unanimously re-elected chair in February.
The FMF owes Van Schalkwyk a significant debt of gratitude for, as chair, helping steer the Foundation through some of its most trying times in 2020 and 2021. Without his stewardship, it is doubtful that the FMF would have been able to make such a quick recovery.
Van Schalkwyk was formerly a judge in the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court, a positioned he resigned from in the 1990s. The rule of law was Van Schalkwyk’s major passion.
He was the author of three books. The first, Enigma’s Diary (1998), is a novel. The second, One Miracle is Not Enough (1998), deals with the failures then already evident in South Africa’s majoritarian democracy. The third, Panic for Democracy (2009), concerns the equivalent failures evident for many years in the democracy of the United States.
Besides his intellectual exploits, Rex was a lover of art, music, and classic cars.
The thoughts of the FMF board, executive, and staff are with Rex’s daughters, Yvonne and Karen, and their loved ones during this difficult time.
Ends.
