“SA’s healthcare infrastructure has been failing to keep pace with population growth and demand for decades, long before migration became a political flashpoint,” reported Daily Maverick(15 July 2025).
According to a 2023 Health Ombud report 40% of patients at a Johannesburg mother and child hospital were foreign nationals, highlighting the pressure on certain facilities. The Auditor General flagged R1.8bn in fruitless and wasteful expenditure in the 2022/23 financial year alone.
Meanwhile, no mechanism exists for cross-border billing for routine care, a systemic failure that, according to Professor van den Heever from the University of the Witwatersrand has "drifted for 50 years".
“While the NHI aims to create a more equitable system, it cannot succeed without first addressing the underlying rot. The people waiting in hospital corridors are not there because of migrants; they are there because the system itself is unwell.”