ANC government sacrifices health care for cheap votes

6 December 2023

Today the ANC government sacrificed both the public and private health sectors for the sake of votes when the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) followed the National Assembly’s suit and bulldozed the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill through Parliament.

The ANC government has proven that it cares not one iota about the very people the NHI is ostensibly meant to serve. None of the many submissions raising concerns and questions about the NHI Bill was ever taken into consideration, despite the fact that the Constitutional Court judgment on the Traditional and Khoi-San Leadership Act has it very clear that “a reasonable opportunity to participate in legislative affairs must be an opportunity capable of influencing the decision to be taken. It is unreasonable if the content of a public hearing could not possibly affect Parliament’s deliberations on the legislation”.

Nor has the Minister of Health, Dr Joe Phaahla, or his Department ever definitively revealed how the NHI would be funded – a real calamity as the Minister of Finance, Enoch Godongwana, has repeatedly said that the country cannot afford the NHI.

The truth is that the NHI Bill is nothing more than cheap electioneering ahead of next year’s election. The ANC government knows that its legacy of cadre deployment, corruption and failure is unpalatable to the South African public, and instead of actually addressing the myriad of problems in the public health sector and the rest of the country, it put forward the irrational NHI in the hopes of deceiving voters into believing it’s a government that cares.

Unfortunately, the NHI is not the answer to South Africa’s health care problems. The only answer to that problem is the amputation of a cancerous ANC government whose callous corruption infected every sphere of government.

Issued by Michele Clarke, DA Shadow Minister of Health, 6 December 2023