How much South Africa’s kings, queens and traditional leaders are paid

Government has published the official salaries it pays to kings, queens and other traditional leaders in South Africa.

The gazette – which applies retroactively from 1 April 2019 – covers a wide range of roles, including the national and provincial houses of traditional leaders.

Traditional kings and senior leaders are symbolic figureheads in the country with little political power.

However, these rulers play an important role in local disputes as well as in playing advisory roles to government – as well as in the lives of the traditional rural populations.

All these traditional leaders are paid by the South African government.

Note: NHTL = National House of Traditional Leaders | PHTL = Provincial House of Traditional Leaders

Wage freeze

In a government gazette published at the end of February, president Cyril Ramaphosa also confirmed that a number of senior officials including the deputy president and ministers would not be receiving an increase this year.

Other lower-ranking officials earning less than R1.5 million can expect to see increases of around 3%.

This aligns with comments made by finance minister Tito Mboweni in his 2019 Budget Speech in which he indicated that the public wage bill is unsustainable and emphasised that the national and provincial budgets will be reduced by R27 billion over the next three years.

To reduce the expenditure on remuneration, Mboweni said that members of Parliament, provincial legislatures and executives at public entities will not receive a salary increase during 2019/2020 financial year.

The official salaries are outlined below.

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