Did you know there’s an outfit called the Playhouse Company in eThekwini? If, like me, you don’t live in KwaZulu-Natal, you’ve probably never heard of it.
That’s no great surprise. It’s a small company with annual revenue of just R90m-odd. Yet, in a feat of financial acumen, it’s managed to turn that into a monstrous R23m deficit. Not bad going.
In fact, in the past five years the Playhouse has not once turned a profit.
By the way – did I mention that it’s a public entity? And that R72m of that R90m revenue came from government grants. And that CEO Lynda Bukhosini – in place for more than those five years – currently takes home a not-insubstantial R3m a year. That’s according to sports, arts and culture minister Gayton McKenzie, responding to a parliamentary question from the DA.
To put this in context, Bukhosini’s remuneration package is more than that of the head of the National Arts Council itself. It’s more than the amount paid to the heads of the Border Management Authority, Nedlac and the Competition Commission – which you will have heard of. And of the National Radioactive Waste Disposal Unit. Because who needs radioactive waste disposal when you could, as the Playhouse puts it, have “a space for healing and the spirit of ubuntu”.
In fact, our intrepid Playhouse CEO’s salary ranks in the top half of the salaries of 160-odd national public entities. And in case that’s not enough, her sterling leadership abilities earned her an increase of 12% – way above inflation – between 2024 and 2025. Nice work if you can get it.
By Currency’s calculation, those 160 entities – a list drawn from schedules 2 and 3 of the Public Finance Management Act, the public entities list on government’s website, as well as responses to parliamentary questions from the DA – accounted for R580m in total CEO remuneration for 2023/24 or, where the figures are available, for 2025 (thanks, DA).
That R580m is for just 160-odd of 700 public entities, so you can imagine what the bill is when you include all subsidiaries, as well as provincial and municipal state entities.
For 2023/24, the list also includes only entities where a CEO – or acting CEO – was in their position for the full financial year. That means it’s not exhaustive; it doesn’t include Eskom, for example, where Dan Marokane for a month in the 2024 financial year walked away with about R750,000. Or the Industrial Development Corporation’s former CEO Tshokolo Nchocho (R7.12m for nine months). Still, the top 20 earners on this list account for a chunky R165m.
CEOs behaving badly
Not all of those CEOs would seem to be deserving of such taxpayer largesse.
Among them, some are under investigation. The head of the Housing Finance Corporation, Azola Mayekiso (total 2024 remuneration: R5.11m), for example. Delightfully, one of the accusations levelled against her by whistleblowers is that she conducted a Zoom meeting from the bath, Daily Maverick reports. She says the allegation is clearly spurious, because the company uses Microsoft Teams. Potato potahto.
There’s also the expected rash of precautionary suspensions, including of the South African Social Security Agency’s Busisiwe Memela-Khambule (R2.94m), and Unemployment Insurance Fund commissioner Teboho Maruping (R1.74m).
The acting CEO of the National Film and Video Foundation, Thobela Mayinje (R1.81m), resigned after being put on “administrative leave” pending an investigation. She reportedly spent millions last year taking 40 people to Cannes “for exposure”. Incidentally, the new CEO, Vincent Blennies, resigned last month after McKenzie apparently nixed another exorbitant Cannes trip. This in an outfit that’s supposed to spend 75% of its funds on filmmakers.
Also suspended was Nozipho Mdawe at the deeply compromised Air Traffic Navigation Service (ATNS).
Mdawe – one of the top 20 earners on our list, at R6.12m – did oversee a leap from a R41m loss to a profit of R23.3m in 2024, but that hardly justifies the almost R1m bonus she’s just received, given the parlous state of a vital organisation. A monstruous 326 instrument flight procedures – central to air safety – were suspended in 2024, and skills shortages are endemic. There has been a decrease in what you’d assume are key metrics: safety rate, and safety management systems, which didn’t meet their targets in 2023/24 (though they still fall within regulatory requirements). So, arguably, the money there hasn’t been going where it should.
Then there’s the reward for value destruction.
Take the insolvent Road Accident Fund. Now-suspended CEO Collins Letsoalo earned a total R7.1m in the 2025 financial year, with bonuses not yet finalised. That’s not quite the R9.42m of 2024, but it also puts him among the top 20 earners in SOE country. This for a man with the management skills of a lump of coal and who, apparently, hails from the Hlaudi Motsoeneng school of ethics.
Consider, for example, that he’s earned a hefty R6m-odd in bonuses since taking up his position in 2021 – during which he’s taken the fund from a profit of R1.78bn to negative R1.6bn. He’ll probably point to the fact that the losses for 2024 are a fraction of 2023 – but most of that is simply thanks to the RAF not paying out claims.
And don’t forget the various probes by the Special Investigating Unit into the RAF, including into Letsoalo ignoring the bid evaluation committee recommendation on a lease deal. (For more on Letsoalo and the disaster that is the RAF, read some of Tim Cohen’s stories here, here and here.)
Also in the top 20 is the CEO of the Central Energy Fund (CEF). That state-owned entity careened from a profit of R1.77bn in 2023 to a loss of R522m in 2024. It blames “external market pressures, internal operational inefficiencies, and increased costs”. Just incidentally, CEO Ishmael Poolo took home R6.15m in 2024/25. That’s after receiving an incentive bonus of R1.11m for 2023/24. See how well that worked out.
Or another basket case: imploding Ithala SOC. The bank’s CEO, Thulani Vilakazi, earned R3.68m in the 2024 financial year – a 12.5% increase on the year before. This for a bank whose losses between 2008 and 2024 amounted to R520m, according to the Reserve Bank. In 2024 alone, losses were just north of R90m.
Then there are the sector education training authorities (Setas), where the average salary is nudging R3m and bonuses run wild. Particularly egregious is the Fibre Processing and Manufacturing Seta, where CEO Felleng Yende (R3.25m) walked off with a bonus of R773,000 in 2024 (she’s received R700,000-plus bonuses every year since at least 2021). This for an entity with revenue of just R425m – and with losses stretching back at least as far as 2021, hitting R82.32m last year. So much for paying bonuses in line with an entity’s financial standing.
#NotAllCEOs
Of course, you can’t tar all CEOs with the same brush. Some would seem to be doing more than others.
Take the performance of the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa), under Hishaam Emeran (R7.8m). It leapt from a R3bn loss to a R10bn profit in 2023/24. It met 87% of its performance targets – a huge jump from just 19% two years prior. The company spent its full capital budget of R12.9bn – and then some – on infrastructure and asset improvement; it exceeded its targets in recovering and rebuilding lines; and brought online new electrical train units. Train trips were up 50%, and passenger trips were about double the target, at 39.4-million.
Not that there aren’t issues. As City Press reported recently, Prasa is wasting R7.5bn on repairing its old grey-and-yellow fleet, only for that stock to be left to rot (the new electrical units more than serve the agency’s needs). That’s courtesy of a deal that dates back to 2022, under then acting CEO David Mphelo.
And in the 2023/24 financial year, it apparently awarded two R18bn train-signalling tenders in two months to a noncompliant company, the publication says.
The issue is that SOE CEO remuneration and bonuses are seemingly entirely decoupled from the performance of the company. Private sector companies make public the metrics by which they measure CEO performance, and shareholders – in theory – have a measure by which to hold CEOs to account.
Outside of generalised company targets for SOEs, no similar metrics seem to exist for CEOs themselves – which raises questions about individual accountability. Of course, profit and loss metrics – and their effect on CEO accountability and longevity – are perhaps not as straightforward as at private sector companies. While a surplus, for example – or a reduced deficit – could be indicative of good management, it could simply mean money is not being spent on a core mandate. The RAF is Exhibit A.
But when you consider companies that are serial loss-making offenders and the CEO is well-remunerated relative to the size of the entity and they’re landing a juicy bonus, well, accountability should be front and centre.
With SOE CEOs ultimately appointed by the shareholder (the government), there are also questions around lines of accountability to boards versus the minister in charge. Complicating matters is that appointments could be politically motivated.
Of course, things may change somewhat with the introduction of provisions of the Companies Act last year.
Going forward, state-owned companies – think Eskom, the SABC, Prasa, Transnet, the CEF, ATNS and the like – will need to provide the shareholder with remuneration policies (and, incidentally, wage-gap information too) and a remuneration report. With these companies having to justify the remuneration policies of their senior executives, there may be more accountability in the execution of their duties.
In theory, at least. If remuneration committees in the private sector bend over backwards to ensure ample rewards for their executives, what would make the public sector any different? As for those SOEs that don’t fall into the companies basket … well, that will remain the Wild West of random remuneration for the foreseeable future.
An earlier version of this article referenced politically connected individuals being mooted for Seta CEO seats. They were in fact endorsed for board chair positions. We regret the error.
Top image: Rawpixel / Currency collage.
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