Nelspruit - Mpumalanga finance MEC Eric Kholwane earned R2.086 million in the 2014/15 financial year, compared to premier David Mabuza’s salary of around R1.9 million, the Democratic Alliance said on Sunday.
This was revealed in the 2014/15 annual reports for Kholwane’s two departments - finance and economic development.
“The report indicates that Kholwane, who is also a member of the South African Communist Party (SACP), drew a salary of R1.771 million from the department of economic development and tourism, and a further R315 000 from the finance department, bringing the total to R2.086 million,” DA MPL Bosman Grobler said in a statement.
This was in total contravention of the proclamation by President Jacob Zuma on the determination of the upper limit of salaries and allowances of premiers, MECs, and MPLs. The upper limit was currently R1.734 million for MECs.
“The MEC’s four-month stint as the curator of the health department cannot be used to justify his ‘extra pay’. MEC Kholwane is not new to controversy; a few months ago he was suspended as an SACP member pending an investigation into his failure to deliver on the communist mandate. Despite his suspension, Kholwane remains a member of the executive,” Grobler said.
“Such actions remind us of the words of former SACP leader Chris Hani on 29 October 1992 when he said, ‘What I fear is that the liberators emerge as elitists, who drive around in Mercedes Benz, and use the resources of this country to live in palaces and to gather riches’.”
Grobler said the DA had written to the auditor general to ask for an investigation into Kholwane’s salary and the violation of the presidential proclamation.
African News Agency