You may recall my rants about government officials and their relatively massive salaries and perks.
Well, I was pleasantly surprised to hear our Finance Minister, Tito Mboweni, deciding to slice the fat off government substantially by freezing the salaries of cabinet ministers, premiers and MECs.
In fact, they are going to have to watch their spending very carefully, as they have been enjoying above-inflation increases for years, which have ballooned government’s salaries bill.
The possibility of this happening was mentioned a few months ago, and there were a few people desperately unhappy about it.
But the fact is, our economy is in a slump and we are all feeling it.
Last week, Moody’s changed our credit rating from stable to negative, just above investment grade, which is going to hurt us even further.
So it’s only fair that our office bearers share the pain with us, which will hopefully encourage them to do something about it as a matter of urgency.
If they keep getting paid more and more every year, as we grow poorer and poorer, then there’s no incentive to do better.
Hitting their wallets is a good way to motivate and affect change.
Mboweni couldn’t do anything about the pay packets of our MPs, but hopefully Parliament’s presiding officers will take their cue from him and follow suit.