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In an article in the SACP journal Umsebenzi yesterday SACP General Secretary, Blade Nzimande, labelled the DA and other critics of the proposed National Health Insurance plan as "capitalist vultures".

In the tradition of communist parties across time and across the world, the SACP wants the chance to play with people's lives to implement a massive, uncosted and untested experiment. When this experiment goes wrong, it will not be the SACP secretariat that faces the consequences. Nzimande earns about R2.7 million a year in his two jobs and will not struggle to pay for health care wherever he can find it. Rather it will be the millions of poor South Africans who rely on the state.

The SACP's declaration that it is acting in the interests of the poor in promoting the NHI is deeply hypocritical; it simply wants the chance to dive into the public purse, with no thought for the effects on the economy or for the people who have to bear the consequences.

South Africa does not need thousands more well-paid bureaucrats to run the proposed new NHI Authority. We need to make the system that we have work better by paying our doctors and nurses properly, by employing capable managers for hospitals and clinics, and by putting in place proper systems to monitor delivery and ensure accountability.

Nzimande uses money as the scapegoat for all the problems in the public health sector. He ignores completely the issues of mismanagement which are the direct responsibility of the ANC government, which he is part of. Only five out of 31 hospital managers in the Free State have the necessary qualifications to do their jobs. The solution is to put capable managers in place first, to make sure that more money goes to the right place, not pour more money into a system which is plagued by too many problems for this money to have an impact.

South Africa has limited opportunity to spend more money on social delivery. We must not fail the people who need the help of the state by spending beyond our budget on the reckless projects of an ANC/SACP elite.

DA: Statement by Niekie van den Berg, Democratic Alliance shadow minister of communications, on the party's refusal to support an ANC-aligned SABC board (18/06/2009)
The Democratic Alliance (DA) will not support the dissolution of the entire SABC board if it means that the ANC will replace current board members with partisan appointees. We will work with all other parties on the Portfolio Committee on Communications to find a solution to the present situation, however we believe that the ANC's callous attempts to overthrow the Corporation's entire board, and install their own Jacob Zuma-aligned cadres, is cause for serious concern.

We cannot continue to have a situation where the SABC is merely an extension of the ruling party. However, this will be the case if the ANC gets its way and installs an interim board that will be handpicked by Luthuli House - without any public participation or transparency in the process.

Today at 14h00 the Portfolio Committee will be holding its inquiry into the SABC board, and we fully expect that the ANC will motivate for the remaining four members of the SABC board to be fired, and for an interim board to be constituted. We will continue to argue that the first priority ought to be replacing the board's chairperson, and thus reconstituting the board and allowing board members to return to the urgent business of managing the Corporation's affairs.

The argument that the entire board needs to be replaced simply does not stand up to scrutiny. Indeed, the acting Director-General of Communication, Gerda Grabe, has made it clear to the portfolio committee that restoring the quorum of the Board can be achieved merely by appointing replacement Board Members. Eight board members have already resigned, and attempting to remove the four remaining board members at this stage smacks of partisanship rather than a genuine effort to bring stability to the state broadcaster.