Cape Town - President Cyril Ramaphosa has expanded his Cabinet, which was already of considerable size, and immediately announced plans to trim it down.
As it is, taxpayers can expect to fork out more than R74 million annually for the bloated Cabinet of 30 ministers, who are each paid more than R2.4 million annually.
This excludes a raft of deputy ministers’ annual salaries of R2 million per person.
In addition, taxpayers have been footing bills of almost R1 billion on 97 houses for ministers and deputy ministers in Cape Town and Pretoria since 2019, according to a recent parliamentary reply.
The Cape Argus previously reported that some of these ministerial mansions come with generators to protect ministers from load shedding, while ministers free-loaded on water and electricity bills, courtesy of the taxpayer.
In a parliamentary reply to DA MP Janho Engelbrecht on Tuesday, International Relations and Co-operation Minister Naledi Pandor revealed that the department had spent R12.5 million on local and international travel as well as accommodation since June 2019 for herself and deputy ministers Alvin Botes and Candith Mashego-Dlamini.
Against the fresh backdrop of a recent news report that said the government spent R2 billion on ministers’ bloated support staff, Ramaphosa announced his executive reshuffle with a few additions and removals on Monday night at the Union Buildings, making an about-turn from his promise to trim the Cabinet.
He appeared to ditch his promised performance contracts with ministers and reintroduced the Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Ministry to “focus greater attention on the performance of government”.
Ramaphosa also established a new electricity ministry.
He said: “While this will result in an increase in the number of ministries in the short term, as indicated in the State of the Nation Address, I have instructed the Presidency and National Treasury to develop a proposal to rationalise government departments, entities and programmes to ensure greater efficiency.
“This work, which will result in the reduction of the number of ministries, will inform the configuration of the government going into the next administration.”
The addition of more departments go against Ramaphosa’s own commitment he made in 2019, when he trimmed the Cabinet from former President Jacob Zuma’s 36 ministries to 28.
“Today, we are announcing some of the outcomes of the reconfiguration of the national government,” Ramaphosa said in his 2019 address to the nation.
“As I indicated in the State of the Nation Address in February 2018, it is critical that the structure and size of the state is optimally suited to meet the needs of the people and ensure the most efficient allocation of public resources.”
soyiso.maliti@inl.co.za