Sasha Planting is a seasoned financial journalist and Associate Business Editor at Daily Maverick Business.This is so in many societies, but here it is acute. A 2020 paper produced by researchers at Wits University’s Southern Centre for Inequality Studies and the World Inequality Lab noted that the top 10% of South Africans own 86% of the aggregate wealth, while the top 0.1% own close to one-third. We all know that this is not sustainable in any society, let alone one as fragile as ours.
This has provoked a storm of commentary, according to ENSafrica chairperson Michael Katz, who served on the committee advising the Department of Trade, Industry and Competition on the proposed amendments to the Act. But will it? Would it matter to Numsa-aligned workers in the steel industry who have downed tools if the pay gap was 58x, as it was in 1989, or 278x, as it was in 2019, according to the US’s Economic Policy Institute? Or would executives earning 375x the lowest worker, such as those at AVI, be shamed into lowering their salaries?
With greater transparency and shareholder power comes greater responsibility – from shareholders, trade unions and other stakeholders. The other remuneration-related proposal in the Bill is that all audited companies must clearly disclose the remuneration of directors and prescribed officers in the annual financial statements.