LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025 LIBSEM 2025
THE PATH TO LIBERTY AND THE VOICES BEHIND IT
21 and 22 November 2025
Lagoon Beach Hotel and Spa
1 Lagoond Gate Drive
Cape Town
LIBSEM 2025
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Key Note Speaker - Congressman (Rep) Thomas Massie, Kentucky, and leading US libertarian.
Your hosts: Mike hull and Garth Zietsman
What is
LIBSEM 2025?
LIBSEM 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of South Africa’s longest-running gathering of liberty-minded individuals. A landmark event for thinkers, doers, and disruptors who believe in individual freedom, responsibility, and innovation.
This year, we celebrate with a two-day Cape Town program featuring:
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National and international speakers
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Debates, panels, and bold ideas
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40th Anniversary Dinner honouring the founders of the movement
From economics to AI, from policy to personal freedom.
LIBSEM 2025 is where critical thinking meets courageous conversation.
WHY ATTEND?
Where ideas ignite, conversations matter, and real connections are made.
Find out whats on the mind of some movers and shakers in the business and political world.
Engage in meaningful discussions and think tanks.
Develop actionable insights to take back to your work, community, and network.
Connect with liberty-minded individuals from across sectors.
Speakers / entertainers and panel
Thomas Massie, Leon Louw, Bonang Mohale, Vivian Vermaak, and many more
Executive Director, Freedom Foundation
Leon Louw
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Business Leadership South Africa
Bonang Mohale
Economics: Not just for the Economists
Unlock the real-world impact of economic principles. How policy, inflation, and incentives shape your life more than you realise.
Power, Panic & Policy
Energy security, government control, and global brinkmanship. Is nuclear the future, or just the states favourite toy?
Possible Futures: Can We Still Choose?
Do we still have agency in an algorithmic world? Examine liberty in an age of nudging, tracking, and compliance. begin?
The True State of South African Prosperity
Rethink wealth beyond money. Freedom, opportunity, and enterprise. What prosperity really means in the South African context?
Clash of Libertarian Titans
Expect sparks, stats, and subversion in this no-holds-barred debate between two icons of principled provocation.
Behind closed doors and what's keeping you up at night?
Legacy Relay
At the 40th Anniversary Dinner, we honour those who helped carve the path to liberty in South Africa through perseverance.
In a Legacy Relay, six distinguished speakers will each take the mic to reflect on their chapter in the liberty movement. Together, they’ll trace the evolution of thought, activism, resistance and renewal and their personal path to libertarianism.
Programme
Outline
Lagoon Hotel and Spa
Cape Town
Day 1 –Friday, 21 November : 9am - 5pm.
Day 2 - Saturday 22 November : 9am - 5pm
Breaks and lunch provided
Entrepreneurs, scientists, economists, media disruptors, political commentators, policy specialists, medical experts, data analysts, and cultural critics. These are individuals who’ve stood firm in uncomfortable conversations and carved new paths in their fields.
Audience participation is encouraged throughout the day via open-floor Q&A, and you'll leave with more questions than answers. By design.
Programme
Outline
Lagoon Hotel and Spa
Cape Town
Day two continues the momentum with a mix of legal insight, global perspective, cultural reflection, and provocative debate culminating in a full day of challenge and conversation for those who believe liberty is not a luxury, but a necessity.
Lawyers, political thinkers, entrepreneurs, economists, reformers, tech innovators, and public intellectuals. These are voices who’ve worked inside the system and those who’ve worked around it.
Libsem Program 2025
Friday- 21 November 2025
09:00-09:30
Attendee Arrival & Registration (coffee/tea)
09:30-09:45
Welcome - Mike Hull & Garth Zietsman
09:45-10.45
Rand Paul (online) How small minorities can influence political majorities
10:45-11:15
Tea
11:15-11:45
Christo Wiese (or Graham Giles) Property rights, our most urgent priority
11:45-12.15
Vivienne Vermark: Ozempic - The good, the bad and the libertarian
12:15-13:15
Lunch
13.15- 13:45
Gail Daus-van Wyk - Sandton Rent Boycot as model for civil disobedience
13.45-14.15
Princess - Nuclear
14:15-14:45
Phumlani Majosi - What black people have done for themselves
14.45-15.15
Afternoon Tea
15:15-15:45
Petrus Potgieter - The Death of Ownership: Copyright, Markets & New Feudalism
15.45-16.15
Nick Hudson
16:15-16:45
Andrew Kenny - Climate Change
16:45-17:15
Bryan Caplan (online) - Why democracies choose bad policies
Cape Town Legacy Dinner
Friday- 21 November 2025
18:30-19:00
Arrival & Welcome Drinks
19:00-19:05
Opening Remarks - Mike Hull & Garth Zietsman
19:05-19:35
Entrée served
19:35-20:05
Frances
20:05-20:20
Theresa, Trevor, Ria etc
20:20-21:00
Dinner & Conversation
21:00 +
Reflections & Close
Saturday- 22 November 2025
09:00-09:30
Attendee Arrival & Registration (coffee/tea)
09:30-10.30
Keynote: Thomas Massie - Does the government shutdown cause less harm
10:30-11:00
Martin Brassey - Legal regulation of power, market and social, in a developed economy. Focus on the Competition Act
11:00-11:30
Morning tea
11:30-12:00
Leon Louw
12:00-12:30
Neil Emerick - The Morality of BEE - challenging the ethics of redress
12:30-13:30
Lunch
13:30-14:30
Debate: Garth Zietsman vs Jaco Strauss - Israel's action in Gaza was justified and reasonable
14:30-15:00
Temba Nolutshungu - Journey from radical to libertian
15:00-15:30
Paul Harris (or Carl Sammeli) - Why the government does not adopt high growth policies
15:30-16:00
Afternoon Tea
16:00-16:30
Busi Mavuso - How business can ensure pro-business polcies
16:30-17:00
Rob Hersov - South Africans long-term scenarios and strategies
17:00-17:30
Robin Hanson: Cultural Creep, the erosion of societal cultural foundations
17:00+
Networking
JOHANNESBURG
Programme
Outline
THE VENUE
Morningside
Sandton
Day 1– Saturday, The Venue, Morningside
Liberty Horizons with Key Note Speaker - Thomas Massie
9:00-9:30
Morning Coffee and registrations
09:30 –12.30
Speakers, panel discussions and debates
09:45–10:30
Speaker 8: To Be Announced
11:30–12:15
Think Tank Manifesto
12:30–13:30
Lunch
13:30– 15.30
Speakers, networking, interactive session
40th Anniversary Drinks on the rooftop - weather permitting
10:30–11:15
Speaker 9: To Be Announced
Purchase your tickets
Ticket options - Choose full access, Friday-only, Saturday-only, or just the Gala Dinner. Mix and match your experience from just R500.
Cape Town 21 and 22 November