The National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union [NEHAWU] denounces attempts by a coalition of big capital and right wing elements to thwart and delay the full implementation of the National Health Insurance [NHI] Act through the Constitutional Court hearings being heard from the 05th to 07th May 2026.

We stand firm in our historic and current commitment in ensuring that Universal Healthcare Coverage [UHC] for all is achieved. This principle arises from the transformative, militant and revolutionary character of NEHAWU, which is informed by our campaigning drive to completely overhaul and dismantle the highly unequal two-tiered healthcare system and replace it with the system envisioned in the NHI Act. For over two decades, NEHAWU has supported the development and shaping of NHI, we participated in the line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill at NEDLAC, made presentations to parliament and mobilised our members and communities for the public hearings.

The Constitutional Court cases represent a massive test to our democracy, to progressive policy trajectory and developmental progress based on the Freedom Charter and Constitution. The parties lodging these cases against the NHI Act represent a front for a well-funded, well-coordinated, anti-transformation and anti-working class agenda. The parties want to ensure that the apartheid legacy’s two-tiered healthcare system remains intact, their primary concern is the multi-billion Rand private medical healthcare insurance system that place profit over the lives of our people.

We therefore wish to use this opportunity, not to delve into the legal issues of the court, but to expose the real motivations of this anti-working class front and call for the immediate mass mobilization of organized labour, civil society and our communities in defense of this revolutionary Act.

The long and necessary public participation process of ensuring that all stakeholders in South Africa are given an opportunity to present their perspectives on any Bill before parliament is one of the cornerstone procedural steps of our hard fought democracy. This was the case with the NHI Act, the records and outcomes of these public, community and stakeholder engagements are testimony to the extensive deliberation and debate that took place.

The entities that have launched over 15 separate cases against the passing of the NHI into law were all part-and-parcel of these lengthy public participation procedures. They all had ample opportunity to present their grievances and concerns and, to convince the public otherwise. They failed to convince the public and their concerns were indeed taken into account. However, once the Act was signed into law, these well-funded and powerful entities then took to the media, who in many instances acted as their mouthpiece, lamenting NHI, creating an atmosphere of fear amongst workers in both private and public healthcare and diminishing the importance of UHC in South Africa, despite the repeated recommendations from the World Health Organisation to do away with the archaic two-tiered healthcare system. 

The Constitutional Court hearings also takes place in the context of worsening conditions facing workers and the poor, the recent increase in the price of fuel will perpetuate a crisis in the cost of living, plunging millions of South Africans deeper into poverty. Most South Africans cannot afford private medical aid, those that can [only 14% of the population] have faced ludicrous increases in charges, not fitting the services they receive. It is these very same multi-billion Rand private medical insurance oligopolies that are coordinating this attack on the NHI Act, they have profited from the lives of our people for decades, and they are therefore the anti-thesis of UHC and must be exposed.

Lastly, the union calls on its members, workers, the alliance, civil society and progressive organisations to join the defense of this revolutionary Act. The Constitutional Court hearings are only the start to what we foresee as a drawn out legal battle to stall the implementation of NHI – we must therefore better coordinate ourselves as a broad progressive front to ensure that this transformative law is not sabotaged by these profit driven entities.

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Issued by NEHAWU Secretariat.

Zola Saphetha (General Secretary) at 082 558 5968; December Mavuso (Deputy General Secretary) at 082 558 5969; Lwazi Nkolonzi (NEHAWU National Spokesperson) at 081 558 2335 or email: lwazin@nehawu.org.za