Consensus on NHI is not optional, Ramaphosa

The best way to bring about equality – or as near as you can get to it – in a society is to raise up those who are disadvantaged, rather than pull down those who are advantaged.

Clearly, the ANC has failed in the former and now seems hell-bent on pursuing the latter course, if its recent actions on the proposed National Health Insurance (NHI) are anything to go by.

President Cyril Ramaphosa is about to blithely sign the Presidential Health Compact, well aware that most of the private stakeholders in our critically important health sector are a long way from buying into the ANC’s grandiose dreams of enforcing medical equality.

The fact that the president has, seemingly, excluded many of the major players from the signing ceremony because they won’t sign a document they believe could spell doom for efficient and equitable medicine, shows that he is little more than a hypocrite when he likes to crow about his “consensus” approach to solving the country’s problems.

Consensus and cooperation is the raison d’etre of the government of national unity, but it appears that it is “my way or the highway” when it comes to the ANC’s big ticket policies.

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The ANC, which is already reeling from its worst electoral performance since 1994, desperately needs to ensure that the NHI rabbit is pulled out of the hat without any interference from what its more radical elements might term capitalists or racists or, to revive a phrase from the state capture years, “white monopoly capital”.

This is not a race issue… just look at how many black middle-class people have medical aid.

This is about creating a system where a well-funded state health sector can co-exist with a profitable private one.

Democracy, Mr President, is all about consensus and compromise.

Don’t forget that.

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