Cape Town - President Jacob Zuma has been urged to get rid of his 37 deputy ministers, who have no executive powers, as a cost-cutting move.
Zuma has been urged to follow in the footsteps of his colleagues in the US, UK and other African states who have fewer deputy ministers than South Africa, or none at all.
Deputy ministers are said to be milking the state of millions of rand that could be spent on other projects.
Wits University law school’s Paul Kaseke said Zuma was spending R70.3 million a year paying 37 deputy ministers.
He was backed by Stellenbosch University politics department Professor Amanda Gouws, who said on Thursday that deputy ministers did not improve policy implementation.
Each deputy minister earned R1.9m a year. But if Zuma got rid of them, it would contribute to the cost-cutting measures the National Treasury introduced last year.
Gouws said it was unusual for a country to have so many deputy ministers.
“The deputy ministers are there so that you have them to be trained to be ministers once the ministers leave their portfolios. But you don’t need them for all the portfolios, except for the key ones like finance,” she said.
“There has never been a case where you have a deputy minister for every portfolio in the government.”
Gouws said the presence of so many deputy ministers did not improve the government’s policy implementation.
If it did there would not be so many problems in the country, among them poor service delivery.
“We know a lot of things that are going wrong in this country because of a lack of policy implementation. If the deputy ministers were there to improve policy implementation that could be different,” Gouws said.
Kaseke said the R70.3m paid to deputy ministers every year could be saved for other projects.
He said each deputy minister earned R1.9m a year.
That figure excluded other perks, including allowances, vehicles, accommodation and travel expenses, which pushed the amount up.
Each deputy minister owns a house in Pretoria and Cape Town, and a car for each of the two cities.
Deputy ministers do not have executive powers, do not sit in cabinet meetings and cannot not act on behalf of their bosses, as per the constitution.
Earlier this year, the president increased ministers’ and MPs’ salaries following the recommendations of the Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office Bearers.
The country pays Zuma R2.8m a year and Deputy Pre-sident Cyril Ramaphosa R2.7m.
National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete takes home R2.7m. Ministers are paid R2.3m, deputy ministers take home R1.9m and MPs earn R1m a year.
Zuma has 35 ministers and 37 deputy ministers at the moment.
Gouws said the budget that went to the salaries and benefits of the ministers and deputy ministers was huge.
In comparison to the US, where there were 15 cabinet ministers, Zuma had 35 ministers. The US had a population of 320 million and South Africa 55 million.
In the UK, there were 21 cabinet ministers and a population of 65 million.
Political Bureau