The NHI in South Africa is part of a health care financing reform that is designed to pool funds to actively purchase and provide access to quality, affordable personal healthcare services to the population based on their health needs, irrespective of their socioeconomic status. NHI is intended to move South Africa towards universal health coverage (UHC) by ensuring that the population has access to quality health services and protected from catastrophic expenditure. This policy document provides guidelines on how the NHI is supposed to be implemented.