Politicians vs executives salaries

While President Jacob Zuma may have one of the biggest and most expensive homes in South Africa, his annual paycheque is quite small in comparison to the heads of some of the country’s top tech, telecom and banking houses.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is widely known to command the highest salary of any politician in the world.
In 2012, after concerns about his basic salary, the leader took a 28% pay cut, dropping his basic salary from US$2.75 million to US$2.2 million.
According to MyWage, politicians across the globe earn anywhere from a few hundred thousand rand – to as much as over R5 million, as is seen in the USA.
MyWage is part of the WageIndicator group, whose data is compiled from trade unions and online surveys – with VIP and politician data compiled from the latest publicly-available information.
Additional reports indicate that Hong Kong’s highest political office – chief executive – boosted annual salaries by 10%, taking total pay to around US$585,000 (R6.1 million).
Despite the increases and cuts, however, the paycheques of the men and women in charge of running entire countries compare unfavourably to those of the heads of large tech and telecom firms and financial houses in South Africa.
The comparisons below are done on basic salaries, and do not include bonuses and incentives or take into account presidential costs to state – such as the security upgrade of Nkandla.
World leaders (latest reporting)
Name | Title | Basic salary (ZAR millions) |
Lee Hsien Loong | Singaporean Prime Minister | R23.14 |
Leung Chun-ying | Hong Kong Chief Executive | R6.134 |
Barack Obama | US President | R5.061 |
Angela Merkel | German Vice Chancellor | R3.975 |
Dmitry Medvedev | Russian Prime Minister | R3.341 |
Vladimir Putin | Russian President | R3.020 |
Jacob Zuma | South African President | R2.600 |
Raila Odinga | Kenyan President | R2.391 |
David Cameron | British Prime Minister | R2.338 |
Xi Jinping | Chinese President | R0.406 |
The top execs at South Africa’s biggest mobile operators take home multi-million rand salaries – and CEOs, Shameel Joosub (Vodacom) and Sifiso Dabengwa (MTN Group) earn as much as three times what President Zuma and some other world leaders take home.
Amongst the tech and telecom CEOs, top overall earner, MTN Group chief executive Sifiso Dabengwa also commands the largest guaranteed (basic) payload.
Tech CEOs (latest reporting)
Name | Title | Basic Salary (ZAR millions) |
Sifiso Dabengwa | MTN Group CEO | R8.913 |
Pieter Uys | Vodacom Group CEO (former) | R7.157 |
Shameel Joosub | Vodacom Group CEO | R6.700 |
Pinky Moholi | Telkom Group CEO (former) | R6.402 |
Mark Levy | Blue Label Telecoms joint CEO | R6.312 |
Brett Levy | Blue Label Telecoms joint CEO | R6.303 |
Zunaid Bulbulia | MTN South Africa MD | R2.057 |
Amongst the banking CEOs, while Nedbank’s Mike Brown is the top earner in total package (R32.8 million) – Capitec’s retired CEO, Riaan Stassen actually took home the largest guaranteed salary.
Banking CEOs (latest reporting)
Name | Title | Basic Salary (ZAR millions) |
Riaan Stassen | Capitec CEO (retired) | R8.859 |
Ben Kruger | Standard Bank co-CEO | R7.962 |
Sim Tshabalala | Standard Bank co-CEO | R7.648 |
Maria Ramos | Barclay’s Africa CEO | R6.658 |
Mike Brown | Nedbank CEO | R6.532 |
Michael Jordaan | FNB CEO (former) | R4.917 |
For even greater perspective, the salaries listed above are nowhere near the salaries of some of the world’s largest tech companies.
Samsung’s CEO took home a base salary of R11.93 million in the past financial year, while Apple’s chief, Tim Cook took home a basic salary of R14.31 million.
Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison; Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg; and Google’s top executives Larry Page and Sergey Brin all took home a measly $1 in basic salaries in the past financial years.
Don’t feel bad for them, though – they padded the single dollar amount significantly with millions of dollars in stock options and bonuses – resulting in Ellison as the top paid executive in the world, taking home over $73 million (R766 million) in 2013.