The FF Plus in the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) voted against the Department of Health's budget due to the government's utter failure to prepare adequately for the Covid-19 storm that is busy destroying the country.
Initially, South Africans were patient because they knew that the Covid-19 pandemic could not be weathered without enough hospital beds, health care workers and personal protective equipment (PPE).
South Africa still finds itself in the doctor's waiting room, while professionals in the health care sector are forced to decide who will live and who will die.
Health care workers are warning that there may be a severe shortage of beds and high-pressure oxygen systems that will save the lives of those who fall seriously ill with Covid-19.
According to the latest figures released by the Johns Hopkins University, South Africa is eleventh on the list of the countries in the world with the most infections. We must be careful not to sugar-coat South Africa's infection rate in relation to the mortality rate. We are still approaching the feared peak of infections. Only time will tell whether the mortality rate is truly that low.
Corruption and mismanagement under the ANC government's rule is the cancer that has made South Africa's health care system so sick – and over the last 26 years, vitamin ANC has done nothing to restore it to health. Why will it work now?
The ANC is trying to cover up its own incompetence by presenting the National Health Insurance (NHI) as the wonder cure for all the country's health care problems.
The NHI is nothing but a strategy to punish those who have by forcing them to provide for those who do not have due to the ANC's sheer incompetence since 1994.
The "us-and-them" approach is an extremely dangerous one for the failing health care sector in South Africa to adopt.
The Health Department's misuse of taxpayers' money over the last 26 years is causing the public health care sector in South Africa to die a slow and very painful death.
This is clearly evident in the R10 million that the Eastern Cape Department of Health recently wasted on purchasing so-called motorbike-ambulances. Initially the Minister of Health announced that these motorbikes will be used as multipurpose vehicles that will transport, among other things, patients to hospital but now it appears as if they are being used to run an Ubermeds service.
The North West Premier's decision to go for treatment in a Gauteng hospital and not one in the North West raises serious questions regarding the province's ability to provide proper health care to its people.
Ordinary South Africans must also be allowed to choose where they want to receive treatment, they must enjoy the same privilege as the North West Premier.
The FF Plus salutes every single health care worker who has worked tirelessly over the last few months as well as the doctors who are currently losing their income due to Covid-19.
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