MATTHEW PARKS: ⁠Why Politicians Want Raises While SA Pays More Tax

A nurse will take 25 years to earn what a minister makes in 1 year.

Does COSATU take a view on issues like BELA, issues like EWC, and issues like our Islamified foreign affairs policy?

We went to Congress, met with Democrats, and they punched us in the face about Ukraine.

Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on any country trading with Iran. I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever to even someone with half a brain for us to be doing business with Iran.

We're increasing taxes upon working middle class families, but we have money for politicians to get imprisoned.

Tell me about your involvement, Kasatu, when it comes to the politicians paying themselves more money than anyone else in South Africa proportionately. Where did you stand on that one?

So we've raised it every year because you have this creature called the Public Office Bearers Remuneration Commission. So they look at public representatives, so members of parliament, legislatures, councils, including ministers, etc.

Including lawyers, including judiciary.

They also cover the judiciary in terms of judges and magistrates. It's unfortunate they've clubbed the two together. We've long been grumpy and irritated by increases for politicians. We've always made a noise at, you know.

Are they unionized?

No, they're not. Okay.

So you're representing the country in this discussion.

Representing the country, representing nurses. Okay. A nurse will take, it'll take her 25 years to earn what a politician makes in one year, a minister makes in one year. We represent a police officer who earns so little, he can't afford his own house, can't afford a car. Um, yet he must risk his life every day trying to deal with well-resourced criminals. And also would represent taxpayers. And everybody's a taxpayer. There's always a myth that it's only the wealthy pay taxes. It's not true. Anybody who buys sweets at a shop pays for electricity.

Sales tax.

Yeah.

Um, but so where did you stand on this? So politicians wanted to be paid way more than they deserve.

So the commission said this year they should give them a 4.1% increase across the board. We said, no, that's nonsense. We felt politicians should show a bit of humility, take a 0% increase. And we were particularly irritated by municipal councillors because the state and local government is a disaster, to put it politely. Yes, the City of Cape Town might be well run largely, but there is challenges within City of Cape Town as well. But you go to some other municipalities where they don't pay the staff for 3 months at a time, where they don't pay pension funds, they don't pay taxes, water, road, sanitation are—

And yet they want an increase.

They want an increase. So I said, well, what's— So how do you deal with that?

I mean, there's federal or government, national and municipal.

So he said, let's separate, let's give magistrates an inflation increase of 3.5% because those people, they go to university, they get their legal degrees, they go practice and the advocates who appear before them in court earn far more than they would. So you want to avoid a brain drain of a skilled profession. So similar to doctors, you need to pay doctors a salary which is competitive with the private sector, otherwise you will lose them. You don't want to see further backlogs in the court system, which is already a major impediment to dealing with crime. But we said politicians know they should forego any increase. We made a noise deliberately because every year the Commission makes these recommendations which we feel are excessive, tone deaf. Fortunately, the President normally ignores the Commission. He either gives us 0% or he gives us 1 or 2%, something which is far more modest. And the Minister for Finance actually agreed with us. He said, look, let's separate magistrates from politicians. Give magistrates, he said 4.1, which we're fine with. We think it should be 3.5 though. He's to give politicians 3.5, which we don't agree with. Because also this year we had a, well last year now, we had a circus at Parliament where they said, the state doesn't have money, let's have a 2% VAT hike. Then they got, it was a whole drama, had 3 budgets in 1 year. Then they got a tax increase by not adjusting income tax brackets for inflation. Bracket creep for the second year in a row. So basically we're increasing taxes upon working middle-class families, but we have money for politicians to get an increase. Now for us, we just thought it's immoral, it's politically tone deaf, shouldn't do it. So we made a big noise about it. Ministers were very unhappy with us across party lines, which is a good thing then.

I guess so.

So I hope for the president, we are engaged with the presidency, that they should reject the commission's report. Proposal. At the very least, give politicians 1 or 2%, something which sends a message to society, you're hearing society's frustrations. But we need to have a conversation. The other thing we've raised that, well, if you want to give politicians increases, why don't you do what you do for public servants, have a performance management system? Because if a council can't provide basic services, they can't get unqualified audits, audited reports from the AG, they can't pay salaries or taxes, then what exactly are you rewarding them for.

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So let me ask you about Bella, for example. So on Bella, on the one side, you've got the very evil teachers union, the worst of the worst, okay? In your portfolio, and then you've got Solidaritat, also union. And fighting on the BELA issue. I mean, do, does COSATU take a view on issues like BELA, issues like EWC, and issues like our Islamified foreign affairs policy? You know, do you have views on that or because it's not directly in the—

We do. So like on the BELA, we had a lot of discussion that like with the different unions. So aside from our fold, but the other unions as well. In Fadusa, it is NAPTOSA. It's also SAW, which is the Afrikaans Teachers Union. We had discussed quite a few things. People often, unfortunately, because of our politics is so polarized, Bella is much more than the one issue that people talk about, which is language. One of the things we were very excited about is making Grade R a form part of the school curriculum. So kids must now go to Grade R The idea is to give them a better foundation when they go to grade 1, longer-term improvements, etc., etc. So we were quite keen on that because that's, you know, long-term investment in education.

How old are kids in grade R?

They would need to be 5 or 6.

5 or 6.

I think grade 1 is 6 or 7. And that's a useful thing. Other things, it was about giving teachers more powers to search kids, especially in places like Cape Flats, kids' bags or lockers. Are you bringing alcohol? Are you bringing drugs? Are you bringing weapons into schools? Because many of our schools, many of our teachers, they live in fear of their lives. Even in primary schools, you go to a place like Haderfeld and the teacher tries to enforce discipline in the classroom, the kid just says, I'll go fetch my brothers in a gang.

Or I'll sort you out.

Yeah, there's other issues about making sure that school governing bodies are held accountable around corruption and so forth. So good things. We try to also find the right balance around the issue of language. Admissions, etc., etc. And that's a delicate issue, and that needs to be— we need to have more discussions about it because the idea is not to displace Afrikaans. Afrikaans is an official language, must be promoted, respected, protected. But just to try to find the right balance where you have no other school available to kids who are not Afrikaans speaking, can you have a dual thing?

And so you have input on policy?

Yeah.

And then let's take foreign policy.

Foreign policy too, we've had lots of discussions. I mean, so for example, on we got involved in the kind of relation with the US for the past 4 years. How? We went to the US maybe 2022, just for some, the Africa Leadership Summit. And we thought, let's have a discussion around AGOA, because nobody was discussing AGOA. It was coming to expire in about, what, 3 years' time. And we went to Congress, met with Democrats, and they punched us in the face about Ukraine. And we raised it with ministers and government that we have a problem with our bilateral relation with the US. Our embassy is understaffed, it's weak. We're not paying attention to this strategic relationship. Doesn't mean you must love the US, that's fine, but it is the world's biggest economy. Right. It's our second or third trading partner.

Second. After China.

Yeah, depending if you count the EU as a bloc or not, but yeah, it's a big boy. Yeah. And our citrus, our agricultural exports, our multi-manufacturing exports, mineral exports are linked to US. Investment from the US is key here. There's 600 companies, probably hundreds of thousands of workers. That is under Biden, we can see those issues. We spend a lot of time working with the US colleagues in the unions, in Congress, in government to just calm down things, resolve it. Then an election took place, new president, new basket of irritations. So I think we've been to the US about 10 times in the last 3 years trying to—

As COSATU? Yeah.

Okay.

We'd always go, most of them would go with government and business. So it's kind of like a social partner. Thing. So we went in 2023 with the Minister for Finance, you know, Godongwana, Minister for Trade, Patel, and so forth. Colleagues in business too, you know, people like AD Enthoven, Rick Minow, etc., etc. I know them both. We went with a wonderful chap called Johann Kutzer from AgriSA in March this year. Because look, we have the same interests. We want to see trade, we want to see investments, we want to see South African goods going there. US investments coming here, there's jobs linked to it. And so when there's bilateral irritations, it doesn't help. Um, so we work quite a bit to see how do you address the issues? How do you put in place a reset package? How can we have a long-term thing? So we need good relationship with the US, just like we need a good relationship with the EU, with Russia, with Brazil, with China.

So yesterday, Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on any country trading with Iran. I mean, it makes no sense whatsoever to even someone with half a brain for us to be doing business with Iran. So we check entirely ideological.

So I don't think we do much business with Iran.

I know, but we used to do business.

I think it's minimal. So I checked, um, we used to get a lot of our oil from Iran. We stopped about 5 years ago because of sanctions, UN sanctions. You know where we get our oil from now? Venezuela. No, I think that's, I think Texas. Yeah, baby. Drill, baby, drill. But look, I think my point is that we have—

But I just want to know, does Casati kind of, can you say, guys, makes no sense to—

No, we do all the time. And we might not always do it publicly. Okay. When we see things popping up that we think government needs to be aware of or that we're not happy with, we will call government and say, this isn't a smart move. We did a statement after the G20 drama when Trump issued a statement, you know, criticizing us and We were often asked, Gavin, just in our response, let's just be calm, let's be measured. So even when Ibrahim Rasool was PNG'd, we had discussion with the government to say, can we have a calm response? Let's not be emotional. Because when you look at the strategic long-term goal, the issue is not today's emotions, the issue is longer-term having a decent relationship, having investments and also recognizing real power.

But Cyril and the gang don't seem to care about having any relationship with America. They do everything possible to poke the bear in the eye or the eagle in the eye.

They do. They've done a lot of work behind the scenes quietly to try to calm things down. It's not always easy because also much of the US politics is fractious and it's noisy between Democrats and Republicans and within Republicans you've got Ben-Avied.

I think it's bipartisan on their pissed-offness with South Africa.

It is, but for different reasons, also different levels. Um, but also here we've got fractious, noisy politics. So it's also difficult kind of walking a tightrope for the president too, to say, well, okay, I can manage this. I can't manage that. But the fact that government has now said to the Iranians, you can't be part of the naval exercise. Did that happen? It happened.

So the Iranians didn't run away. We told them, basta.

Good. It's a signal. The fact that, you know, there's been a lot of tweets at 2 in the morning and often government has not responded. I'm not saying government's been perfect. I think there's been times it's been clumsy. But, you know, to be fair, government has got to manage different contradictions. Um, we've also tried to tell government, you know, maybe we need to be more forceful putting South Africa first. Um, hallelujah. So we protect our jobs, protect investments. Oh, we shouldn't get into other countries' punch-ups with other countries.