Radical liposuction prescribed for state blubber
● Apart from the floundering economy and state capture, President Cyril Ramaphosa has another huge problem: the size of his cabinet.
Unions and opposition parties are pressing Ramaphosa to make good on his promise to trim the executive team assembled by his predecessor, Jacob Zuma.
The DA estimates South Africa could save R4.7-billion a year if the 74-member executive — the president, deputy president, 35 ministers and 37 deputies — was slashed by reducing the number of ministries to 15.
Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the South African Federation of Trade Unions, called on Ramaphosa to act swiftly. “We should be saving a lot of money . . . looking at the salaries, medical aid, fuel, cars, offices, staff, the flights to everywhere in the world and the size of the meetings.”
He pointed out that US President Donald Trump’s cabinet consisted of only 17 people. “Look at the size of their population, the size of their economy and compare it with us, and you will see that the people who should be saving more are the ones who are much more ridiculous in their expenditure patterns,” said Vavi.
“It’s a distribution of patronage . . . all driven by the need to keep the factional mouths happy but dololo [zero] service delivery.”
In his state of the nation address, Ramaphosa said the structure and size of the state must meet the people’s needs and ensure efficient use of public resources.
“We will therefore initiate a process to review the configuration, number and size of national government departments,” he said.
EFF secretary-general Godrich Gardee said some of the departments established by Zuma in 2014 had been set up simply to reward members of his faction.
“You can’t have 259 members of the ruling party in parliament and 72 of them are in the executive. Who are they accountable to? The bloating of the public service is unnecessary and there is a lot that can be saved,” he said.
Alf Lees, the DA’s deputy finance spokesman, said government entities with highly paid CEOs and boards were part of the problem. “It is also a question of consolidation of the actual departments and getting rid of the extra personnel . . . because there is a huge overlap, particularly in the economic activity departments between trade and industry, economic development, small business and so on.”
Cabinet members enjoy a long list of perks ranging from car allowances and meals to accommodation and flights.
Cabinet members can live for free in a state-owned home in Pretoria or Cape Town. The state pays for renovations and a domestic worker for their official and private homes.
Cabinet members and their spouses fly first class for official international trips. Both cabinet member and spouse are entitled to 30 business-class domestic air tickets per year while their dependent children receive six economy-class air tickets a year.
Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba warned in this week’s budget speech that some government departments were at risk of hitting their salary ceilings. The R587-billion public sector wage bill is projected to rise to R630billion by 2020.