South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has dismissed claims that his new cabinet is bloated and says he is committed to restructuring the government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen on Thursday asked President Ramaphosa in parliament if it was fair for ministers to be \u201cliving like rock stars\u201d while ordinary citizens suffer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c[They have] 98 mansions worth over a billion rand, free generators, free electricity and high-end luxury vehicles,\u201d Mr Steenhuisen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWell, I don\u2019t know about rock stars,\u201d the president responded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr Ramaphosa denied the opposition leader’s claims that South Africa had the largest cabinet across the globe, saying the country was \u201cbasically in line with others\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The DA has said it will picket on Monday against the “luxurious” lifestyles of ministers, local media reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The president made changes to his executive early this week \u2013 including the creation of two new ministries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
South African ministers are amongst some of the highest paid in Africa, drawing annual salaries of up to $135,000 in addition to personal staff and luxury cars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Public outrage over their remuneration has been common in the face of a floundering economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has dismissed claims that his new cabinet is bloated and says he is committed to restructuring the government. Opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen on Thursday asked President Ramaphosa in parliament if it was fair for ministers to be \u201cliving like rock stars\u201d while ordinary citizens suffer. \u201c[They have] […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":30104,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80,12],"tags":[1648,4899,6728,3782,5520,11555,4024,1384,246,9742,913,9697,5196,5800,2264,9698,9383,6864,8353,1198,3805,4497,1748,1013,6978,10334,244,1213,3954],"class_list":["post-30103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","category-world-news","tag-africa","tag-african","tag-alliance","tag-cabinet","tag-cars","tag-citizens","tag-common","tag-corruption","tag-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-da","tag-democratic","tag-democratic-alliance","tag-economy","tag-electricity","tag-government","tag-john-steenhuisen","tag-luxurious","tag-ministers","tag-outrage","tag-parliament","tag-president","tag-president-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-president-of-south-africa-cyril-ramaphosa","tag-ramaphosa","tag-rock","tag-salaries","tag-south-africa","tag-south-african","tag-will"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}