LETTER: Wake up from Stockholm syndrome, Adrian Gore

Hello Adrian,

So, National Health Insurance (NHI) is now a law of the land. I must admit that President Cyril Ramaphosa’s signing of the bill 13 days before the election was a brilliant stroke of electioneering. I wonder if you saw it coming? You must have, since the National Assembly had already approved it and Ramaphosa’s pen was all that was missing.

I would think that Discovery and many others will run to the courts, but it’s done and dusted. Dusted, as in our world-class private health care now being a thing of the past. So much for our titans of industry having a co-operative relationship with this government (all those government partnerships you started a year ago).

Yes, Ramaphosa is right in that it’s mostly “well to-do, rich people” like you and me who oppose it; we are the ones who know that no province except maybe the DA-controlled Western Cape can run a public hospital. The irony of course is Ramaphosa’s personal wealth. He just happens to have $580,000 of cash lying around, making him a very “well-to do, rich person” — probably one of South Africa’s richest and most well-to-do.

On a personal note, many of my friends have emigrated and more continue to do so. I am sure you are in the same boat. We moved from Joburg to Cape Town, and our London asset manager jokes: “You have a first-class life in Cape Town, but you are still on the Titanic.” 

One of those first-class benefits that has kept us here is the brilliant, world-class private health care. But with the stroke of a pen, Ramaphosa has just started writing the obituary for another aspect of South African life for us. And those “well to-do, rich white people” pay the majority of South Africa’s taxes. So this is never going to end well, for anyone.

Yet to me the real news last week was that on the same day as the NHI Bill was signed, Stats SA reported that unemployment is up again by 300,000, for an official total of 8.2-million. That’s one unemployed person for every two employed people. This is fertile ground for a revolution.

There are 60 parties contesting the election next week. Is a dysfunctional Weimar Republic our future? And we know how that ended for Germany. Or a coalition with Juju or Zuma? I can’t believe that maybe I want Ramaphosa to get 50% after all, because the alternatives are too ghastly to contemplate, and that the NHI thing will save us, at least for the next five years.

My request to you again: please stop being friends with this government and do something before it really is too late. Stockholm syndrome and IG Farben refer.

Robert Breyer
Llandudno, Cape Town

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