The gravy train is not taking on any more passengers.
As part of the belt-tightening to bring the budget deficit down to 2.5% over the next three years, Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene has frozen the personnel budgets of all government departments.
He also pegged spending on non-essential goods and services at this year's levels.
Nene said that civil servants should forget about business class flights, using expensive catering for meetings and paying for consultants to lighten their workload.
He aims to save as much as R1.3 billion over the next two years.
Similar measures introduced in February have already saved the government purse R0.5 billion in only eight months, Nene said.
But this is small change compared to the impact salary increases could have.
Public sector trade unions have tabled demands of 15% and Nene has previously stated that the state would not be able to afford more than one percentage point above inflation. The average inflation rate was 5.8% last year.
In this Medium Term Budget, Nene and his team factored in an increase of 6.6%.
“We are operating in a very constrained fiscal environment,” he said.
And higher salaries could cost jobs.
“If we end up paying more for the employed personnel, we will end up sacrificing the growth in employment.”
To free up resources for other areas, Nene said that funding will also be withdrawn for posts that have been vacant for some time.