Quite a shocking statistic when 17% of the SA GDP is paid to over paid civil servants and it gets far worse when you dig deeper. 37 800 civil servants earn more than R1 million per annum which is more than $60K if you convert to dollars. The problem is the productivity does not match the salary and everything is out of sync. When you are seriously over paid and under worked how does one change this because you should be cutting the civil servant bill in half by firing those not required. Roughly 25% of all civil servant managers are not qualified for the roles they are employed to carry out.
28 500 earn just over R1 million, 6 700 earn over R1.3 million and 117 earn over R2.1 million. What makes this worse is most of these government employees are members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions. This means the government will always side with over inflation increases as they each represent a guaranteed vote. Last year many government sectors received close to a 15% increase and this is expected to happen again next year. The civil servant salary bill is more than R43 billion each year and we wonder why there is no money for road repairs. Most of the municipalities are bankrupt and the funny thing is next year the tax man needs to find even more money to plug the civil servant increases. This is a slippery slope that cannot be maintained that will end in chaos.
Back in 1993 before the ANC took over there were 3 police Generals and 35 Brigadiers. Fast forward and present day sees 172 and 600 respectively and one has to ask what do they do and how are they adding any value? The easiest job in the world is being part of the civil service as there is no accountability and in South Africa nothing works and no one cares that nothing works as long as they are being paid. One Deputy police minister openly admitted he has not worked in the last 12 months yet has been paid a salary.
This is so out of sync with the rest of the country when you have unemployment at a reported 34% high which we all know is closer to 50%. One just has to look at every State Owned Enterprise that is failing which is down to the management and who is employed. You also wonder why are these Enterprises so corrupt if everyone is already over paid.
South African Airways went into business rescue and is still finding it's way out of financial difficulty. At one point they had 20 staff members for every passenger travelling which is never going to be a profitable business. Compare that to American Airlines who is the largest airline employer in the world has 1 staff member for every 120 passengers travelling monthly. American Airlines has more than 500K passengers daily.
The biggest problem with South Africa is the country is being lead by uneducated people who could never run a profitable business. Budgets are purely guess work and staffing paying inflated salaries was never a problem 20 years ago, but with annual increases over and above inflation this is now becoming a serious problem.