Health and education are too important to be left at the mercy of the state alone: Ayanda Zulu
Key topics:
BELA Act weakens school autonomy over language and admissions policies
NHI Act centralises healthcare, reducing patient choice and quality of care
FMF's Liberty First pushes for decentralisation and individual agency
Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.
Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.
If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here.
The auditorium doors will open for BNIC#2 on 10 September 2025 in Hermanus. For more information and tickets, click here.
By Ayanda Sakhile Zulu*
The Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA) Act and the National Health Insurance (NHI) Act, both passed into law in 2024, represent some of the most far-reaching expansions of state power in post-apartheid South Africa. While presented as reforms meant to improve access to education and healthcare, both Acts undermine individual freedom and reflect a deeper shift toward centralisation and state control.
With BELA, the central issue lies in the erosion of school autonomy, particularly over language and admission policy.
Clauses 4 and 5 empower provincial education departments to override decisions made by school governing bodies regarding admissions and the language of instruction. This effectively opens the door for the state to phase out Afrikaans-medium schools under the guise of “transformation,” while stripping communities of their right to preserve their linguistic and cultural heritage.
Rather than promoting diversity and inclusion, the Act risks homogenising the education system and undermining constitutional protections for language rights. It weakens the decision-making power of parents and local stakeholders and transfers that authority to disinterested political bureaucracies.
What results is a one-size-fits-all approach to education that disregards the country’s rich cultural pluralism.
The NHI Act poses an even broader threat to personal liberty. Centralising healthcare financing and delivery gives the state sweeping control over who receives care, how it is delivered, and under what conditions.
The promise of universal coverage masks the underlying reality of diminished choices, longer waiting times, and declining standards of care. The role of private healthcare providers is not merely reduced; it is also deliberately weakened, thus creating a climate of uncertainty for both practitioners and patients.
As the viability of private medical schemes is undermined, millions of South Africans risk being placed at the mercy of a system already buckling under corruption, mismanagement, and inefficiency. Far from expanding access, the NHI strips individuals of their ability to make timely, informed decisions about their own health and places their lives in the hands of an overstretched state bureaucracy.
In response to these concerning developments, the Free Market Foundation (FMF), through its Liberty First policy initiative (www.LibertyFirst.co.za), offers a principled and practical alternative. Rather than doubling down on centralisation, it proposes a shift toward decentralisation and communal and individual agency.
In the education sector, it calls for the protection of constitutional rights that allow schools and communities to shape their own language and admission policies. It opposes top-down interference in school governance and defends the autonomy of school governing bodies as vital to educational quality and accountability.
Read more:
This is not simply about Afrikaans. It is also about the broader principle that education should be responsive to the communities it serves, rather than dictated by distant, necessarily unaccountable authorities with little understanding of local needs.
The same logic applies to healthcare.
Liberty First rejects the monopolistic and coercive model presented by the NHI in favour of a competitive healthcare environment that values individual choice. In such a system, patients are empowered to select from a variety of public and private providers, thereby encouraging responsiveness and innovation.
The initiative also calls for a regulatory framework that removes unnecessary obstacles to private investment in healthcare and allows medical schemes to operate with flexibility and independence. This approach preserves quality, recognises that the state is not equipped to centrally plan a system as complex and personal as healthcare, and encourages affordability.
The common thread running through both BELA and the NHI is the state’s increasing distrust of the individual and its growing appetite for control. These Acts are not about service but rather control.
In contrast, the FMF's proposals reaffirm the role of families, communities, and individuals as the rightful decision-makers in education and healthcare. Liberty First offers a vision of society that thrives when people are free to take responsibility for their own lives.
At a time when the state is encroaching deeper into the private sphere, this initiative stands as a timely and necessary defence of liberty.
*Ayanda Sakhile Zulu holds a BSocSci in Political Studies from the University of Pretoria and is an intern at the Free Market Foundation.