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South Africa’s new multi-party administration must prioritise reviving state-run port, water and power networks and work to automate processes to attract investment and boost lagging growth, Business Leadership South Africa chief executive officer Busisiwe Mavuso said.

President Cyril Ramaphosa of the African National Congress put together a government of national unity after a May 29 election failed to produce an outright winner. 

Some voters opted for other parties after 30 years of ANC-majority rule ended in rolling power cuts and logistics snarl-ups, an economy that has barely grown over the past decade, a jobless rate of 33 percent, endemic crime, and corruption.

“The beauty of what we have right now in the GNU is that policymaking has been liberated from Luthuli House,” Mavuso (45) said in an interview on Thursday, referring to the ANC’s headquarters. “There are going to be a whole lot more robust conversations about the policies that are put in place.”

This includes talks about the National Health Insurance Act, which Ramaphosa signed into law less than two weeks before the national elections after years of wrangling. 

The legislation bans the private sector from offering cover for treatment available under the NHI, and opponents say it will neither remedy the health-care system’s shortfalls or be affordable for the state.

“The NHI as it stands is a farce — it’s unimplementable, it’s unfundable,” said Mavuso. “What it does seek to do is to decimate the private health-care system,” she said. – Bloomberg