Nuclear roulette a dangerous game to play, writes a reader

Thank you Daily News for your help

Thank you Daily News for highlighting the Mobeni Crematorium’s role in serving the community, especially the less fortunate, “Big overhaul for Mobeni Heights crematory”.

Your efforts have brought attention to a vital service that provides dignity and respect for those that need it most. Appreciate your commitment to giving a voice to the vulnerable.

There is a debate about privatising the Mobeni Crematorium, and save the municipality from so many breakdowns.

I suggest the Clare Estate Crematorium, which has a proven track record of efficient and dignified services and also has an impressive reputation as the best-run administration in Africa, to discuss a proposal with the Municipality and with Chairman Mr Pradeep Ramilall and his team in more detail.

By exploring how they can work together to benefit the community, it (the community) may be able to look forward to a brighter future with improved cremation services that prioritise dignity and respect.

Fingers crossed if it all falls in place. | Dhayalan Moodley Mobeni Heights

NHI behemoth a real threat to taxpayers

A spectre is haunting South Africa. It is the implementation of the National[ised] Health Insurance Act (NHI).

Those among us who have sadistic masochistic tendencies and being desirous to satiate this peculiar affliction, have only to study the state of the public health service of South Africa and/or visit the public hospitals.

Then they will be acquainted with the unspeakable catalogue of the direst miseries that the hapless patients are at the mercy of, as typified by the following, inter alia: The Minister of Health has recently announced that 200 nurses, 1 200 doctors and 150 health care workers are to be employed in public hospitals. In direct response to this, the National Democratic Nurses’ Association (Denosa) decries the public hospitals’ state of affairs by stating the “shortage of nurses a devastating crisis”.

The figures to address the staff shortages were further dismissed by Denosa as: “The figures are not only inadequate but are an insult to the nursing fraternity”.Denosa states that in 2023 alone, more than 400 specialised nurses left the country.

More than R50 billion was lost to unauthorised, irregular, fraudulent, and wasteful expenditure in provincial health departments between 2019/20 and 2023/24.South Africa has the second-worst infant mortality rate (32.4 per 1 000 births) among 41 large upper-middle-­income countries, despite having the 10th highest per capita public health spending.

In 2023, the Gauteng Department of Health failed to use R784 million that had been set aside for life-saving cancer treatment. This incurred the wrath of the independent Section-27 Health Rights Programme that took the matter to court and won the judgement.

Consider for a moment, the many desperate cancer patients who succumbed to agonising deaths and the many whose sufferings were needlessly exacerbated.

The intrepid Minister of Public Works and Infrastructure has been shining the light on the R836m budget for oxygen plants for public hospitals, of which R428m has been awarded to a “ghost company” as reported in the media recently.

“Unpaid doctors, food shortages rock Gauteng hospitals” reads a frontpage headline in a Sunday paper. The masochists can study the gory details of this story, while others can also understand the impact on the patients especially being aware of the invisible patients on the queues who wait for appointments – exacerbated health problems and finally death.

Amid all these self-inflicted unmitigated disasters, the National Health Insurance will have the private medical schemes destroyed. This is utterly irrational, morally egregious and unconscionable, to say the least! It should be borne in mind that the private healthcare sector is funded exclusively by the taxpayers who invest in the various schemes with a very minor tax concession via the medical tax credit. They offer medical care that is almost second to none in the global health arena. They also have transnational footprints in developed countries and those under par.

In a futile attempt at trying to allay fears, Mark Blecher (Treasury Chief Director, Health and Social Development) recently stated: “The notion that NHI will entirely replace medical schemes is far from reality in the near future.”

“Not going anywhere soon.” What pathetically politically correct double-­speak!

But Blecher in all honesty, acknowledges the fact of requisitioned taxes by a coercive government to fund this disastrous NHI behemoth. He states that “Raising taxes to fund such a large-scale system is not an easy task. Private financing will continue to be a key player for South Africa’ s health-care needs”. The cat is out of the bag!

When the superficial veneer of populist rhetoric of caring for the people especially the poor, is removed, the bottom-line questions loom large. Statist policymakers invariably resort to populist rhetoric to advance their ideological agenda. This subter­fuge obfuscates what ought to be driven by facts, empirical evidence, rationality and very importantly – economic imperatives. How is it that the very same department/government that has precipitated these very disasters, be entrusted with bringing about positive outcomes in excellent and efficient health-care delivery?

With its existing health-care budget, why does the government not make accessible sophisticated health services from the private sector for those who cannot afford – this category of South Africans being scrutinised and identified on a rigorous means-tested non-racial basis. Why not?

All this mess is demystified by physicist and mathematician Albert Einstein, who had sagaciously advised that, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”. | Temba A Nolutshungu President of the Free Market Foundation

Dangerous, high-stakes game we play

The world’s nuclear superpowers are engaged in a dangerous exercise in political brinkmanship that could spill over into the realm of a deadly atomic holocaust, as the brutal conflict between Iran and Israel assumes increasingly menacing proportions. A lethal game of military chess is unfolding in the Middle East, with nations seemingly prepared to launch their nuclear arsenals in a clash that could destroy the Northern Hemisphere.

Simulated nuclear-war scenarios reveal that even a limited exchange involving a fraction of existing arsenals could alter the global climate drastically – plunging both hemispheres into a long, sunless, frozen night. As few as 100 nuclear detonations could turn Earth into a radioactive wasteland. The ozone layer, which protects the planet from dangerous ultraviolet radiation, would be severely depleted, blinding many terrestrial animals and disrupting life as we know it.

A full-scale exchange, involving 5 000 megatons of weaponry, could kill one billion people instantly from blast, heat and radiation – followed by another billion deaths from delayed fallout and the collapse of life-support systems. With fewer than 2 500 cities worldwide having populations of more than 100 000 people, the annihilation of all major urban centres is within the capacity of today’s nuclear stockpiles. An estimated 13 890 nuclear weapons are linked to some 10 000 intercontinental missiles – each capable of carrying multiple warheads.

Nuclear weapons are instruments of extinction. The last great extinction event occurred 65 million years ago when an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs and countless other species. Today, the threat is self-made. It is human beings who have designed and built these weapons. But nothing about this outcome is inevitable.

We can still choose sanity over suicide – if we are brave enough to act. | Farouk Araie Johannesburg

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