When confronted with hostile policies, it is tempting to seek compromise as a way of placating your opponents. Rather endure some discomfort now than a lot of pain in the future by meeting the government halfway, so the thinking goes. Don’t fall for this trap. Bad policies should be rejected out of hand.

You can’t always get what you want.

As an adult, you need to find ways of cooperating with family members, friends, and colleagues, all of whom have different interests and priorities. Compromise is the oil that keeps the gears of interpersonal relationships running smoothly. At a macro level, the various communities in South Africa must necessarily find ways of co-existing harmoniously.

However, when it comes to the world of politics, particularly in low-trust societies such as ours, compromise is often a bad thing.

This is especially the case when hostile actors seek to take advantage of your goodwill and weaponise it against you. Sometimes conflict is unavoidable and confronting bad policies head-on is a preferable, not to mention safer, approach.

Policy Agenda

Although the African National Congress (ANC) has recently experienced a waning of its electoral fortunes, it is still remarkably effective at framing and driving the policy debate in South Africa. The ANC has had more than three decades to establish its ideological hegemony – a habit that is hard to break.

Consequently, South Africa has no shortage of damaging laws still on the statute books.

Whether these are proposals to nationalise the private healthcare sector (the National Health Insurance [NHI] Act), to expropriate property for “nil” compensation (the Expropriation Act), or to impose strict racial quotas on the workforce (the Employment Equity Act), the list of bad ideas is very long indeed.

In response to some of these pernicious policies, many commentators and leaders often succumb to the impulse to compromise. This is risky.

Unhealthy Habits

Take NHI as an example. Government proponents of NHI present it as a morally urgent intervention to address the inequality of access to healthcare in South Africa.

But you don’t need to be a genius to know that the reason there are unequal outcomes between the private and public sectors in South Africa is because of the state’s own inability to manage healthcare resources prudently and efficiently (and remember that any “resources” the state has are taken from us in the form of taxation).

Regardless of how well-managed or not the public sector is, private medical schemes are just that: private. The state should have no claim on the personal funds of ordinary South Africans.

Despite this self-evident fact, when NHI was in its long gestation phase, many business leaders in the healthcare sector responded by saying that of course they share the noble ambition of universal healthcare, they just have some problems with how NHI will be implemented.

In doing so, they accepted the premise that NHI was legitimate and found themselves negotiating over the details. This was a strategic mistake.

Access is Overrated

I distinctly recall a meeting I had a few years ago with a senior healthcare executive to discuss strategies for resisting NHI. When I asked him if his organisation would consider going to court to challenge what was at the time draft legislation, he responded by saying that “litigation is not in our DNA as a company”.

At any time, this executive noted, he could pick up the phone and speak to Nicholas Crisp, the deputy director-general in the Department of Health responsible for NHI, to express his views on the policy. He wouldn’t want to jeopardise the access he enjoyed to a top decision-maker in government, he explained.

But what has this access achieved, I asked? He could not tell me.

Various industry bodies and civil society groups made over a hundred presentations – and thousands of written submissions – to the Portfolio Committee on Health during the consultation period on the NHI Act.

Yet the ANC was not remotely interested in the views of those who would be most affected by this legislation. The NHI Act was eventually rammed through Parliament in December 2023, and the president hurried to sign it into law on the eve of the general election in May 2024. Hardly any substantive changes were made to the original draft.

Although it is lamentable that NHI is now on the statute books, I am relieved to see medical practitioners, medical aids, and a range of other industry bodies belatedly introducing litigation into their corporate culture by vigorously contesting NHI in court.

The lesson here is that while dialogue is important, it has its limitations. There is a point at which you must acknowledge that you are dealing with fundamentally bad actors who wish to destroy your business – and respond firmly in defence of your interests.

“No” Is a Full Sentence

I was reminded of this when sitting on the hard benches of the Western Cape High Court in Cape Town earlier this month where the Rule of Law Project – an initiative of the Free Market Foundation (FMF) – joined litigation against the Expropriation Act as an amicus curiae (friend of the court).

While other parties were tying themselves in knots trying to explain how “nil” could indeed be a form of just and equitable compensation for the expropriation of property by the state, our counsel easily demonstrated that the Act was unconstitutional by simply referring to the plain language in section 25 of the Constitution.

It’s okay to oppose bad policies. You can often just say “no” and leave it at that.

You don’t need to be reasonable or accommodative with people who threaten your vital interests. Being reasonable in this context is like negotiating with a knife-wielding mugger.

Demographic Diktats

Similarly, leaders of businesses, universities, and other institutions must now ask themselves whether they are comfortable complying with the social engineering requirements of the Employment Equity Amendment Act.

This law compels them to submit the demographic information of their staff members to the apparatchiks at the Department of Employment and Labour to meet quotas of race, gender, and disability in the workplace.

When confronted with unjust laws, compliance becomes complicity. Conversely, as Thomas Jefferson is misattributed to have said, “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.”

Balance of Forces

I often write about the so-called National Democratic Revolution (NDR), the Marxist-Leninist dogma that guides the ANC’s policy and political programme. The NDR is a totalitarian agenda that seeks to consolidate political control of all levers of power in the hands of the revolutionary vanguard of the ANC.

One of the NDR’s strategies is to advance the revolution gradually and in stages, through a careful reading of the “balance of forces”.  If a policy or a proposal is met with substantial resistance, then a strategic retreat is necessary.

However, this is merely a temporary withdrawal to lull the “reactionary forces” into a false sense of security. At the opportune moment, a good revolutionary will then reapply the pressure and continue to pursue his socialist objectives.

For those of us who wish to check the advancement of socialism through our society, it is therefore necessary to provide firm and responsible forms of resistance. The alternative is to seek compromise, but the best that can achieve is to buy you a little time.

The ANC understands and appreciates the balance of forces. So should you.

Ansara is CEO of the Free Market Foundation.