SACP welcomes President’s assent to the National Health Insurance Bill

15 May 2024

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s signing of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill into law today is an epoch-marking event, towards the provision of quality healthcare for all regardless of class position and income, race, gender and geographical location.

Solly Mapaila, the General Secretary of the SACP, along with other members of the Party Central Committee and rank-and-file activists, will gather at the Union Buildings in Tshwane today starting at 12pm. Through a picket, we will be expressing our active support for President Ramaphosa’s signing of the NHI Bill into law.  

This is a watershed moment towards aligning our healthcare system with the principles of equality and social solidarity. Universal quality healthcare coverage – the purpose of the NHI – is in line with the constitutional right to life.

The NHI epoch must represent an irreversible rupture with the present unequal two-tiered healthcare regime, which is underpinned by income and wealth inequalities. These racialised and gendered class inequalities are the conditions, results and levers of the accumulation of our society’s wealth on a capitalistic basis.

To tackle the class inequalities in access to quality healthcare, the NHI has a focus on redistributing healthcare resources to benefit all the people, the majority of whom are the working class and poor. This requires system-wide structural transformation and development. The SACP reiterates the importance of progressive redistribution from high incomes, above all else from the economic surplus appropriated by capitalist bosses, to deliver quality universal healthcare coverage.

In alignment with the democratic aspirations of the masses, the NHI Bill underwent extensive public consultation over a decade. Once signed into law, the monumental task will be the full implementation of the NHI, which includes the provision of robust primary healthcare. Part of this work will be the establishment of an NHI Fund, guaranteeing free, quality and comprehensive healthcare coverage for all.

The SACP calls on the working class and other progressive sections of our society to unite to defend the advance to quality healthcare for all, against the reactionary elements and class forces who want to perpetuate inequality in healthcare.

On the electoral terrain, the best way to defend the advance to quality healthcare for all is to vote for the ANC on 29 May 2024.  

Issued by Alex Mohubetswane Mashilo, National Spokesperson, SACP, 15 May 2024