State jobs with perks — R3bn’s worth

Civil servants have pocketed almost R3bn in performance bonuses, 13th cheques and other “incentives” over the past five years even as tax revenues come under increasing strain.

In the same 2019-2024 period, nearly R129m was paid to about 400 government officials who were on suspension on full pay, some of them for as long as 42 months.

The government also forked out more than R42m to procure 56 luxury vehicles for 23 ministers and their deputies for their official use in Pretoria and Cape Town.

The spending is detailed in written replies recently submitted to parliament by public service & administration minister Noxolo Kiviet in response to questions from DA MP Leon Schreiber.

Kiviet revealed that national departments spent just over R726m to reward the performance of their staff between 2019 and 2024 — nearly half of it, R321m, was paid out in financial 2022.

Provincial administrations, which employ the bulk of the country’s public servants including doctors, teachers and nurses, accounted for more than twothirds of the bonus expenditure — R2.2bn.

Staff in provincial employment received their biggest bonus bonanza — R819m — in financial 2021, in the midst of the economic paralysis caused by Covid.

Government employees are guaranteed a 13th cheque, equivalent of one month’s salary, usually paid on their birthdays. Those who enter into performance agreements get an extra bonus if they pass performance assessments.

When he presented his budget in February, finance minister Enoch Godongwana reported that tax revenue for 20232024 was expected to come in R56bn lower than his earlier projections, due to the economy’s poor performance.

Moses Mushi, spokesperson for the department of public service & administration, said this week the 13th cheque or “service bonus” was an incentive to “encourage the employees where appropriate to stay in the public service. This has been a standard remuneration philosophy across the public and private sectors.”

Mushi said that in the five-year period the government spent just over R2.4bn on

performance bonuses alone. The amount was shared between 706,000 civil servants.

However, he indicated that spending on bonuses was being trimmed as part of efforts to cut the state wage bill. The number of staff earning performance bonuses had dropped from 218,792 in 2018 to just 3,767 this year, said Mushi.

“This reflects a consistent management of the wage bill. But this is not the only intervention in the management of the national fiscus. Managing the wage bill continues to be aligned with the delivery of services,” he said.

In her written response to parliament, Kiviet said government employees, especially those at senior management level, earned their performance bonuses based on the audit outcomes of their departments, among other measurement tools.

“The performance assessments of heads of department and members of the senior management service take into consideration the auditor-general’s findings and opinions and the department’s performance against the planned targets included in its annual performance plan,” she said.

“Employees are rewarded based on the outcomes of their moderated performance assessment, on whether they have performance above the expected level.”

Schreiber slammed the government for its spending on performance bonuses, which was “astounding” at a time when the country was going through “hardships and misery”.

He criticised the amounts spent on ministerial vehicles and on salaries for people who were sitting at home on suspension, saying the figures revealed by Kiviet flew in the face of pledges to cut public spending and rein-in the wage bill.

“Looking back over the [President Cyril] Ramaphosa administration, we can conclude that it has utterly failed to build a capable state and has instead continued to reward its deployed cadres for collapsing the South African state,” Schreiber said.

“That the Ramaphosa government has dished out performance bonuses, luxury vehicles and years-long paid vacations dressed up as suspensions to the very officials who plunged the country into hardship and misery, is the ultimate slap in the face for South African citizens.”

At least 158 civil servants in national government received a total of R21.8m in pay while on suspension, according to Kiviet’s figures, while 237 suspended officials in provincial governments received a total of R107m. One of these, a staffer in the Northern Cape department of agriculture, sat at home for 42 months on full pay.

Mushi said allegations against those on suspension ranged from fraud and corruption to harassment and assault on school pupils.

He said his department had run a special project at the end of last year to speed up suspension procedures, intervening in 176 cases at national level and 192 in provincial departments.

“To enhance the resolution of suspension cases and to address the average resolution rate of 53% at the end of December, followups were initiated in January with the heads of departments and there was improved progress,” said Mushi.

Kiviet herself is one of the ministers who benefited from a new vehicle, taking delivery of a R772,000 BMW X3 in January.

Mushi said she needed a new vehicle because the Audi A8 she had inherited from her predecessor had exceeded the 120,000km threshold stipulated in the Ministerial Handbook. It had also exceeded the age threshold of five years, was no longer covered under a maintenance plan and had become unviable to maintain.

The Ministerial Handbook sets an upper price limit of R800,000 for a minister’s car.

The government buys two cars for each minister and deputy minister, one for use in Pretoria and the other for Cape Town.