Would you donate your monthly salary to a noble cause? Given an alternative source of income, of course.
It’s been done by former presidents including Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama.
President Cyril Ramaphosa pledged in 2018 to donate half his salary to charity — administered by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
But when a former criminal, author, speaker and businessman-turned politician is elected to cabinet and pledges to do the same — what do we make of it? Public relations? Empty promises? Or a precedent that cabinet colleagues should emulate?
The general rule of thumb is to take what politicians say with a pinch of salt. A tablespoon, if necessary.
Enter our new sport, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie, who has pledged to donate his entire parliamentary salary to charity, after his first pay cheque as MP assisted a struggling art gallery in Kagiso.
McKenzie announced last week he would donate 100% of his parliamentary salary to the Joshlin Smith Foundation for missing children. Joshlin, 6, disappeared from Saldanha, north of Cape Town, in February.
We’ve seen the businessman, not immune to controversy, do the same before with his R22,557 salary as mayor of the Central Karoo District municipality.
The message conveyed is: “I'm not here for the money but to serve the people.”
Taste the salt? Time will tell.
Let's not forget there are a lot of other perks thrown into the pot for our ministers.
Multimillion-rand mansions in Cape Town and Pretoria that are immune from load-shedding, 24/7 home security and at least 88 free single air journeys in economy class per financial year on any domestic airline. It's a package hard to resist.
Which raises a question — how will DA ministers, now in cabinet, regard their new perks, vociferously opposed in the past?
During the sixth administration, the DA's Leon Schreiber, now home affairs minister, wrote to former public works and administration minister Patricia de Lille about ministerial perks, we reported recently.
Schreiber and his party expressed outrage at the R967m spent to house “ANC ministers and deputy ministers”.
“On average, each ministerial house is valued at nearly R10m, which means every ANC minister and deputy minister lives in two mansions (one in Cape Town and one in Pretoria) valued at a collective R20m — courtesy of South African taxpayers,” he said.
DA spokesperson and newly sworn-in communications minister Solly Malatsi said: “We will have to make a decision on this going forward, but our principled position is that whatever fat we can do without, we will take out.”
Gayton McKenzie, we hold you to your pledge and hope others follow suit. Let's hope we cut the fat and spend prudently.
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