Judges' bid for salary hike rejected by government

A plea by members of the judiciary – including Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng – to be paid more have been rejected by government. Judges currently earn between R1.9m and R2.9m a year, while magistrates are paid between R970 000 and around R1.4m annually, notes a Cape Argus report. The Independent Commission for the Remuneration of Public Office-Bearers, chaired by North West Judge President Monica Leeuw, last month recommended that President Cyril Ramaphosa and his executive not receive salary increases for the 2020/21 financial year due to Covid-19. The list included the country’s nine Premiers, MECs, MPs, MPLs, judges and magistrates as well as traditional leaders. According to the commission, the Ministers of Finance, Co-operative Governance & Traditional Affairs, Communications & Digital Technologies and Home Affairs backed its recommendations, but not the Chief Justice and the lower courts’ remuneration committee. The commission said while Mogoeng, on behalf of the judges’ remuneration committee and other judges association members accepted that public office-bearers had to forgo any entitlement to salary increases, he had reservations. ‘They request the commission to consider and accept, as from 2020/21, the principle that salary adjustments which, at a minimum, are based on the annual cost of living increase as established by the National Treasury, must be considered separately from those of other public office-bearers by virtue of the constitutional prohibition against the reduction of judges’ salaries, allowances and benefits,’ the commission stated. The judiciary argues that the Constitution should be construed so as to ensure that judges are automatically entitled to a determined annual cost of living adjustment based on the consumer price index, which they also noted has been absent from the commission’s recommendations subsequent to the significant adjustment of their salaries in 2008.

But the commission was unmoved, indicating that it noted the view held by judges that the Constitution protects their remuneration from erosion due to the effects or any other factors that may contribute to a reduction of their remuneration. ‘The commission – in relation to the remuneration of judges – is of the view that section 176(3) (of the Constitution) protects only the nominal value of their remuneration and therefore does not guarantee inflationary adjustments,’ it stated in its recommendations, notes the Cape Argus report. The commission explained that it does consider, and has in the past, the judiciary independently of other public office-bearers and, where applicable, has recommended disparate increases. It indicated that the current financial conditions weigh heavily on the entire country and could not be ignored.