In March 2020 in my TV programme, I declared “there will be Covid corruption” as the Covid pandemic was about to set in.
Almost every corner of government was gearing up for multiple deviation frenzy. Even departments that had nothing to do with health, such as education, had their own scandals about the plunder of state resources. The figures were mind-blowing. Big NGOs were primed for backhand schemes before the president could announce the Covid relief fund. What added salt to the wound of public resentment was in his declaration of Covid funds, the president promised that there will be no corruption and that the monies for the special fund will be used correctly. The same president was soon signing proclamations for the investigations of Covid funds theft.
Comrades were ready at the trough and so my pronouncement that “there will be Covid corruption” was less of a prophecy and more of corruption continuous present tense. Of course, comrades dismissed me as a pessimistic mad uncle where levels of no-confidence in the Ramaphosa administration was exaggerated and at an all-time low.
The extent of this corruption was so shocking it cost the minister of health his job, various MECs and officials in the health sector had to resign after unfathomable allegations of graft in the face of a pandemic.
The new market for personal protective equipment was so frenzied it even saw collusion between the private and public sector. The Competition Commission had its hands full trying to stop corporate giants such as Pick ’n Pay and Dis-Chem from profiting from people’s misery during a pandemic.
The stories of the corruption in the midst of a pandemic were endless across all levels of government and the private sector. Frankly you need to ask yourself, if such a crass and unscrupulous stealing could happen in a pandemic where PPE money was stolen, putting lives at risk, how much more theft can be expected in the envisaged NHI financial arrangements?
If the current bill passed by parliament is anything to go by, a multibillion-rand fund will be centralised, essentially under a new parastatal agency. This will be the new Big Brother who will be the sole buyer of services in the health industry. We are expected to trust the process in the face of overwhelming evidence of failed monopolistic parastatals that are currently bankrupt.
We have sadly reached a stage where government cannot be trusted with such a financial arrangement purely on its own dismal track record.
This is a corruption time bomb that will take down whatever little functionality there is in the public health sector. It is hard to find a parastatal that the NHI can be modelled on to avoid daylight graft like we saw during Covid. No doubt comrades are already rubbing their hands with glee. It is no longer a conspiracy theory but a South African reality that we are led by people who care little about life when there is money to be made. Examples abound — people are dying from asbestos in the Free State when millions were set aside to deal with that problem. Forty-three people have just died of a Stone Age disease when millions have been stolen from money designated for treatment plants to keep water purified. We are truly being tested, to be asked to trust that this time there will be no theft.
We have sadly reached a stage where government cannot be trusted with such a financial arrangement purely on its own dismal track record. This is the first negative of the envisaged universal health insurance. Civil society that saw 300,000 people die in the name of no resources for ARVs when government was already wasting billions across all spheres of government during the Aids denial years, must be ready to fight to prevent what will be akin to a new genocide. The NHI financial model must simply be stopped as a terrible experiment.
The health sector seems to be a playground for politicians to experiment on failed policies or projects. Who can forget the Eastern Cape scooter ambulance scandal? Or the North West mobile clinic scandal? What about the Life Esidimeni disaster in Gauteng? Should we maybe conveniently forget the vaccine purchasing fiasco during Covid 19? As if this is not enough, projects designated as pilot sites for NHI failed to engender any confidence, with health workers across the country declaring them a dismal failure. One of the flagship hospitals on cancer treatment, Charlotte Maxeke, was torched and took months to fix. I suspect if it were a private hospital it wouldn’t have taken so long to fix.
All these examples show a culture of financial mismanagement in this sector and active citizens must be vigilant so it never happens again.
Finally, the warning about the state of the public health sector is graphically described by the health ombudsman in his recent report on the Rahima Moosa Hospital. It paints such a frightening picture of neglect that it would be foolhardy to believe this will simply be fixed by a fanciful scheme whose motives look suspect.
Universal health care must happen. All sensible South Africans have to support the idea to fix the unacceptable inequality in access to health services. However, such a great and noble idea must be executed through a well thought-out process and strategy that includes a partnership model between the private and public sectors — something that has so far not been fully explored.
Placing the entire future of health care in people’s hands who can hardly fill up potholes, leave babies to be born in cardboard boxes instead of proper incubators and oversee children drowning in toilets, is simply not viable and if we collectively let it happen, in the current suspicious form, we will have ourselves to blame when the whole sector implodes and endangers our lives.
Dr JJ Tabane is editor of Leadership Magazine and Anchor of Power to Truth at eNCA
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