Founded in 1975, the FMF was established to further human rights and democracy through the principles of an open society, the rule of law, personal liberty, and economic liberalism and press freedom.

[1] According to The Mercury editor Fikile-Ntsikelelo Moya, the FMF is a "libertarian think tank" wanting "unfettered capitalism" which "eschews all forms of state intervention in the life of the individual citizen".

[5] He stepped down from his position when he joined the Democratic Alliance as an "ordinary card-carrying member," citing the need for the foundation to remain politically impartial.

[6] After a bitter power struggle over several years, Leon Louw, the face of the foundation for nearly five decades, was ousted from the organisation and resigned in July 2022.

[12] According to the Sunday Express, the FMF was founded by "a group of five young professional men", because "Government [was] progressing inexorably toward a greater degree of control over traditional free market forces."

[13] The steering committee consisted of Louw, FE Emary, M Lillard, Fred Macaskill, André Spies and Marc Swanepoel".

Sher continued, saying the FMF was generally "limiting [itself] to the economic field, but there we believe that the fewer restrictions the better, and that all races should be able to compete freely in all sectors".

[12] The foundation published a monthly classical liberal magazine, The Individualist, from its founding in 1975[14] until October 1976, when the FMF was officially registered as a non-profit organisation in South Africa.

According to Du Toit Viljoen, it was necessary to involve all of South Africa's races in the development of the free enterprise system, to avoid this unrest.

[29] Professor Jan A. Lombard, Head of the Department of Economics at the University of Pretoria and Deputy Governor of the SA Reserve Bank,[30] was President of the FMF between 1981[31] and at least 1991.

[32] Louw and Frances Kendall, his wife, wrote the bestselling book South Africa: The Solution[33] in 1986, which put forward a vision for direct democracy broadly based on the Swiss canton system.

Its With Justice For All training program, aimed at teaching "economic principles and also covers politics", which ended in 1988, accounted for 60% of the FMF's total income.

Louw said that, in addition to producing enough wealth to raise the welfare of blacks, privatizing South Africa's state-owned enterprises and industries would depoliticize various economic sectors, like buses and trains, which had been racialized whilst in state hands.

Mavundla had co-founded the Co-Operative for Hawkers and Informal Business in 1986 to fight for the right to enterprise of black South Africans during the time of the apartheid regime's discriminatory legislation.

The FMF further protested the inclusion of "public interest" as a justification for the expropriation of private property, currently found in section 25(2)(a) of the Constitution.

Public interest, it argued, is wide and leads to uncertainty, making it "not only open to abuse, but deprives the courts of clear principles on which to adjudicate property rights disputes".

[48] The FMF has opposed the South African government's plan to amend section 25 of the Constitution to enable the expropriation of private property without compensation.

[51] Later, the FMF condemned Parliament for not inviting the foundation to participate in the oral hearings before the National Assembly's constitutional review committee.

[55] On 25 July 2017, the FMF handed over 58 title deeds in Grabouw in the Theewaterskloof Local Municipality of the Western Cape, which were sponsored by the Two-a-Day Group (Pty) Ltd and the Elgin Foundation.

In thanking Rupert for the sponsorship, FMF executive director Leon Louw criticized government for failing to systematically convert "‘council owned’ and ‘traditional community’ properties to full‚ unrestricted ownership".

[57] Terry J. Markman argued that the Act should be repealed and domestic civil aviation "should be deregulated immediately" and that SAA should be denationalised and required to make a profit.

[60][61] Markman blamed the government's intervention in the finances of Union Airways (subsequently becoming SAA) in 1933 as the cause of South Africa's heavily-regulated civil aviation industry.

[65] By 22 June, however, Peter Davies, the airline's chief restructuring officer, told the Financial Mail, "It will take us five years until 2022 to break even", a timeline apparently approved by SAA's board and by the National Treasury;[66] casting doubts on whether the terms of the wager would be adhered to.

[67] The Free Market Foundation publishes the South African edition of the Fraser Institute's annual Economic Freedom of the World report.

[70] Between 2006 and 2010,[71] the FMF, the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, Virginia, and the Institute of Economic Affairs, London, ran the Enterprise Africa!

Supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, the project investigated, analyzed, and reported on enterprise-based solutions to poverty in Africa.

[74] The FMF has long opposed the introduction of a national minimum wage, claiming that it would be harmful for South Africa's large number of unemployed people.

[84] In March 2018, journalist Eusebius McKaiser referred to the FMF as "libertarians who care little for group identities, structural analysis and protection of workers at the mercy of amoral labour markets".