Thomas Johnson - The Blog

 I was shocked to read entry-level medical officers in public health earn R80-90,000 a month excluding overtime. This compared to R15-20,000 for other professionals like engineers, lawyers, accountants, etc. This reveals how unrealistically high public sector salaries are. It's well-known these workers, in all disciplines, earn more than their private sector peers - 30% is often given - for typically a lower standard of service. The unsustainable and irrational public employee costs over the past 30 years is partly to blame for SA being driven to a fiscal cliff in recent years.  According to the internet the average annual salary for an (experienced, private) general practitioner doctor is about R540,000. This excludes benefits like medical aid, pension etc that public workers take for granted. Private doctors must fund their own. The starting salary is around R222,000, similar to other junior professionals. They too, like white-collar workers in the private sector, work or ar...

 In 2000 South Africa's GDP was $152 billion. Its peers - developing and middle income countries - achieved an average 4.5% growth annually, including the bounce back after 2008 and Covid. Had SA reached that, or even a modest 3%, it would be around $1 trillion by now. The ANC has collectively made us poorer. Despite the evidence and suggestions and advice year in year out of what ought to be done, for the most part impartial experts, they refuse to change, the tax and spend policy being one of them. What's driving them is anybody's guess - communist/socialist ideology, their cornerstone NDR, fuelling their patronage and corrupt networks or just stupidity and naivete, or all of that. This week Ann Bernstein of the Centre for Democratic Enterprise wrote about her interview with Argentina's Minister of Deregulation and State Transformation Federico Sturzenegger. As she describes, Argentina had similar conditions to SA but incoming president Javier Milei told citizens ...

Recently Daily Maverick's Rebecca Davis wrote about the severe dysfunction at the Cape Town Master's Office (see Groundup's investigation 2019). Among other problems, Davis reported staff allegedly demanding payment from users to speed up paperwork and bypass queues. I'm curious why this is new news. She omitted to mention the Justice Department has known about this for a long time. In January 2022 then deputy minister John Jeffery made an "unannounced" visit and was "surprised" (sic) it was not operating effectively.  My mother died in July 2017 and the Master has still not finalised her will. The executor has had to submit the same documents numerous times (apparently they're getting lost) and make numerous visits, all in vain. In December 2021, at his suggestion, I emailed the master, Zureena Agulhas, to complain. She forwarded my email to staff directing them to attend to the matter. Only then, four years after the will was lodged, did he rec...