27 May 2025
It is with great pride that the Free Market Foundation (FMF) announces the appointment of long-serving directors Eustace Davie and Temba A Nolutshungu as the concurrent Presidents of the Foundation.
Davie has been involved with the Foundation since 1977 and Nolutshungu since 1989.
“With a veritable lifetime of service to the cause of liberty, Temba and Eustace have been an example to us all here at the FMF,” says David Ansara, Chief Executive Officer of the FMF.
The FMF was founded in August 1975 and held its inaugural congress in 1977, where Davie, a Harrismith chartered accountant, first encountered the Foundation. He assumed the full-time role of Administrative Director in 1981.
Since then, Davie has been at the forefront of the FMF’s work on reforming basic education and generating large-scale employment in South Africa.
In the former respect Davie authored Unchain the Child, a groundbreaking work that rethinks the whole inequitable approach to standardised, one-size-fits-all education. In the latter respect Davie wrote Jobs for the Jobless, which pioneered the idea of a job-seekers’ exemption certificate (JSEC) for the millions of unemployed.
The FMF was awarded the Templeton Freedom Award by the Atlas Network in 2009 for Davie’s work on JSEC.
Nolutshungu, a former anti-Apartheid militant, became involved with the FMF as part of his conversion away from communism in 1989, when he joined the FMF’s Free Market Training. Through the With Justice for All programme, almost 1 million workers throughout South Africa were introduced to basic free market concepts in the run-up to the democratic transition.
During the transition Nolutshungu played a key role in coordinating FMF briefings and lobbying of politicians from across the political spectrum. These efforts contributed to the presence in both the interim and current Constitutions of South Africa of various classically liberal institutions, including protection for property rights and limits on state infringement of freedoms.
In 2023, Nolutshungu was awarded the Sir Antony Fisher Achievement Award by the Atlas Network in recognition of his service to the people of South Africa.
Together, Nolutshungu and Davie have sought to work with legitimate traditional leaders throughout South Africa to secure more appropriate recognition of their authority and autonomy after they were largely excluded from the 1990s constitutional scheme.
Nolutshungu and Davie have also played decisive roles in the FMF’s Khaya Lam land reform project, which has helped transfer over 18,000 full-ownership titles to deserving families across the country.
“These are but some highlights from a cumulative 84-year career striving for individual liberty, private property, free enterprise, and limited government,” concludes Ansara. “And their work will continue unabated.”
As Presidents of the Foundation, Nolutshungu and Davie will serve a renewable three-year term.
Ends.
