If you hadn’t already noticed the ever-expanding waistlines of most of our politicians – a tell-tale sign of a political class feeding feverishly at the public trough – then you might have missed the latest bulging of their other ‘stomach’: salaries.
If you hadn’t already noticed the ever-expanding waistlines of most of our politicians – a tell-tale sign of a political class feeding feverishly at the public trough – then you might have missed the latest bulging of their other ‘stomach’: salaries.
Following enabling recommendations from the ‘Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers’, President Zuma signed off on the most recent salary hike for the country’s national and provincial politicians that further cements South Africa’s status as one of the best places in the world to be a politician.
As a result, Zuma himself, 34 Ministers, 33 Deputy Ministers, 52 Parliamentary Chairpersons, 53 Parliamentary Whips, leaders of opposition parties, around 200 Members of Parliament (MP), nine Premiers, 90 Members of the Executive Committee (MEC) and 331 Members of the Provincial Legislature (MPL) will pad their already hefty pay packages with another 5% windfall (backdated to April last year).
But it is not the percentage increase – a somewhat misleading measurement, which ironically allows these politicians to claim that they are somehow getting short-changed due to the increase falling below the inflation rate – which should concentrate the focus of our gaze.
It is rather the actual amount of the yearly increase and the commensurate salaries.
Through this lens, we can see that President Zuma will receive a yearly increase of around R140 000, which now puts his overall salary at just under R2.8 million a year.
Ministers will receive an additional R100 000 to raise their annual salary to R2.1 million.
National MPs and MPLs will have to make do with R45 000 and R43 000 yearly increases respectively, taking their corresponding annual salaries to R934 000 and R904 000.
Local politicians in Makana have followed suit with a 5% across the board increase.
Despite the explosion of community protests over lack of service delivery alongside rampant corruption and mismanagement at the local government level, Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs Minister Lechesa Tsenoli further extended risk benefits to mayors and councillors that include life cover and personal security.
Let’s put this all into a larger societal perspective.
According to the latest available information from Stats SA, the median wage of those South Africans fortunate enough to actually have a job stands at R2 800 per month or R33 600 per year.
What this means in comparative terms is that President Zuma’s recent pay hike is over 4 times greater than the average annual salary of a worker.
As for the lowest paid South African politician, a local councillor, the pay hike for the Johannesburg variety is only slightly less than a worker’s median yearly wage.
Almost unbelievably, even the monthly cell phone allowance of Metropolitan mayors is R500 more than what an average South African worker earns in the same period.
For our politicians, talk is clearly not cheap.
A comparison of worker and politician wage increases only further confirms the huge wage gap.
Worker demands for wage increases, which politicians (as well as capitalists) continually decry as excessive, have, according to the Labour Research Service delivered an average increase since 2007 of R957 per month.
Meanwhile, a quick calculation of the same average for national politicians rings in at five times that of the workers.
When it comes to the global picture the wages of our top-tier politicians even beat out their colleagues from some of the world’s wealthiest countries.
President Zuma now earns around R1 million more than British Prime Minister David Cameron and anastounding R2 million more than French President Francois Hollande.
South Africa’s national Ministers edge out their British peers by a cool R300 000+and have raced ahead of the French by almost R1 million per year.
Even if by smaller differentials, our national MPs are also better paid than their British and French counterparts.
What we have now in South Africa is a political class that economically stands so far above the vast majority of people it governs that it cannot be said, with any seriousness, to either identify with or represent them.
Dr McKinley is an independent writer, researcher and lecturer as well as political activist. – SACSIS
