Treasury’s crypto crackdown is a betrayal of Mandela’s promise

South Africa's national treasury has drafted Capital Flow Management Regulations that would bring crypto assets under the country's exchange control framework for the first time. The draft grants enforcement officers warrantless search-and-seizure powers, requires written declarations for every crypto purchase, and imposes fines up to R1-million and five-year prison sentences for violations. Economist Dawie Roodt publicly criticised the proposals as unenforceable and technologically illiterate, noting that self-custodied crypto is essentially information that cannot be confined by borders. The author argues the regulations betray Nelson Mandela's repeated promises to phase out exchange controls, that the economic case for abolishing them has been settled for decades, and that the draft will push more South Africans toward non-compliance rather than achieving its stated goals. The piece calls for the draft to be withdrawn and for exchange controls to be scrapped entirely.