Salary hikes for Joburg officials – while the city crumbles

The City of Joburg’s leadership has approved a 3% hike to remuneration for leaders and councillors, with the latest coalition all in favour despite the poor optics and anger from residents suffering amid power cuts, water restrictions and the continued collapse of infrastructure.

In an extra-ordinary council meeting on Wednesday (20 November), 146 councillors voted in favour of approving new salary levels gazetted by COGTA minister Velenkosini Hlabisa in October.

There were 33 votes against the hike, while the 70 members abstained.

During the meeting, those opposed to the hike said that a salary hike would have negative optics, given the anger expressed by Joburg residents over the state of the city.

However, the city’s new leadership—an ANC-led coalition enabled by the EFF, ActionSA, the PA and other minority parties—saw the additional R4.2 million needed to be spent on salaries are negligible and pushed ahead with the increases.

This would take the mayor’s salary up to R1.54 million, and regular councillors up to just under R580,000.

While the national government does not determine the salaries for municipal managers—this is determined by the council in terms of their budget plans—it does set the limits for their salaries and pay.

Municipal employees’ salaries are based on a point system that considers municipal income and the population served by the municipality.

Typically, the bigger the municipality and the greater the population, the higher the salary for the mayor and other officials.

Municipalities are graded using a point system based on the following tables:

The number of points received from adding these two factors gives the municipal council a grade, outlined below:

The pay of mayors, deputy mayors, speakers, mayoral committee members, executives of sub-councils, and whips is determined using the table.

The City of Joburg is a grade 6 municipality, which means it gets the top level of salaries.

The table below outlines the upper limits of how much these government officials get paid based on their grade.

Other perks

• Car Allowance: Councillors can structure their salaries to include a car allowance, and may, with approval, use a municipal vehicle for official purposes. A councillor who uses their own privately used vehicle for official duties will be reimbursed for the official kilometres travelled.

• Out-of-pocket expenses: A councillor may be reimbursed for reasonable and actual out-of-pocket expenses incurred during the execution of official or ceremonial duties.

• Phone allowance: A councillor may also receive a cell phone allowance of R3,600 per month in accordance with the applicable municipal council policy. The councillor may also receive an allowance on the use of data bundles not exceeding R317 per month.

• Special risk cover: The municipality must also take out risk insurance to cover the loss or damage to a councillor’s personal immovable or moveable property and assets, as well as life and disability cover, for any loss of damage caused by riot civil unrest, strike or public disorder. The special risk insurance for residential property is limited to R1.5 million and R750,000 for vehicles. The life and disability cover is limited to two times the total remuneration package of the councillor.

Any place where a councillor has been overpaid in terms of the regulations, it is up to the municipality to recover those payments.

Pay increases

The changes in pay for local government officials can be found below. The salary increases are 3.0% across all positions. These are effective June 2023.

Executive Mayor

Speaker, Executive Deputy Mayor or Deputy Mayor

Member of the Executive Mayorial Committee, Whip or Chairperson of a Subcouncil

Chairperson of Oversight Committee

The official salary changes can be found here.

Not included in the gazette but available in other documentation are the salaries of councillors. These are outlined below:

Councillor

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