The Zuma government’s obese cabinet, compared to the rest of the world

Look, it’s no secret that South Africa’s economy, despite having vast amounts of platinum – 75% of all the platinum in the world –, large gold reserves, uranium, diamonds and iron ore – to name just a few of our valuable resources –, isn’t doing as well as it’s supposed to.

In fact, the country should be outperforming some of the more developed nations globally, but we’re a little stuck. Now, what’s interesting to see is that, despite our faltering economy – we’ve just had to reassess our economic growth for 2015 and it’s been reduced to 2% — we’re sitting with an enormous cabinet. Minister upon minister and deputy minister and deputy deputy minister all drawing a salary paid for by the taxpayer.

So, MyBroadband did a little assessment of some of the world’s wealthier nations as well as some of our African counterparts and it’s a little embarrassing. Our per capita GDP is remarkably low, yet we’re sitting with 35 ministers in our cabinet. Interesting to note that the United States and Germany, the two nations with the highest per capita GDP and strongest economies on the list have the smallest cabinets with 14 and 15 respectively.

Also interesting to note is that with a population six times larger than South Africa, the United States gets shit done with just 15 cabinet ministers.