Well done!

The ‘Musina-Makhado Special Economic Zone’, a 60 Km2 China-South Africa state-backed steel manufacturing industrial zone – the largest such industrial development in South Africa’s history – will drive the strip-mining of the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve for coal, laying waste to the visionary plan to create a landscape-scale conservation area in this wild but fragile region, along with its prospects for truly transformative growth.

There are numerous serious and debilitating flaws in these amendments. They will significantly increase the administrative burden and costs on private security providers, and severely curtail their ability to render services to their clients. With over 580 000 security officers employed serving millions of clients, the industry is a cornerstone of South African safety — these amendments threaten to destabilize it entirely.

This exemption would allow healthcare providers, funders, and other stakeholders to collectively determine tariffs for healthcare services, diagnosis and treatment codes, and quality metrics. It would ultimately give them greater power when dealing with hospitals and drug companies, achieving better prices and benefitting medical aid members.

The BHF is concerned that the Department of Health would manage the block exemption negotiation process, arguing that it is actively keeping private healthcare expensive to justify the NHI.