A staggering R800m of taxpayers’ money is spent each year on salaries for hundreds of suspended public servants at national and provincial level — many of whom have been suspended for years.
The Sunday Times can reveal that in one case, a deputy director in the department of women, youth & people with disabilities, who was suspended in 2018 and subsequently found guilty of financial misconduct, has received more than R5m despite his position having been filled by someone else.
The department says it is “in the process of completing his transfer” to another division while the case, now in the labour court, is finalised. Spokesperson Cassius Selala said the official was no longer suspended, but being “transferred to a different unit that does not deal with supply chain management as a precautionary measure”. He declined to give further details.
Currently 674 provincial and national officials are on suspension — 516 of them for longer than 90 days, despite the public service disciplinary code stipulating that a disciplinary inquiry must be finalised within this time frame.
A further nine have been suspended for more than a year and five for more than two years, according to the department of public service & administration.
These figures do not include suspensions at South Africa’s 257 municipalities, for which no centralised figures are kept. However it is believed many, if not most, government suspensions occur at local government level.
Last month it was revealed that an Emfuleni municipality accountant and senior clerk who were suspended seven years ago have so far been paid R9m in salaries while at home. They are among 22 staff from the cash-strapped municipality in the south of Johannesburg who have been paid a combined R23.9m without doing any work as their suspensions drag on.
DPSA spokesperson Sakhikhaya Dlala said it was noticeable that “precautionary suspensions of senior managers tend to be prolonged”.
He said delays in finalising cases were most commonly caused by postponements and appeals, non-availability of initiators and chairpersons, poor records, interference and underreporting of cases.
However, legal experts say they are often a warning sign of deeper governance failure.
Alex van den Heever, chair of social security system administration and management studies at the Wits University School of Governance, said two patterns were especially concerning.
“First, suspensions may be used to remove officials who refuse to cooperate with improper procurement, irregular appointments or unlawful dismissals. Acting officials who are more compliant can then be placed in those roles,” he said.
“Second, suspensions may be used to protect implicated officials. They remain on full pay for months or years, creating the appearance of accountability while the disciplinary process is allowed to drift.
Long suspensions may reveal how corruption protects itself: honest officials are removed, implicated officials are protected, and public money is used to sustain the arrangement. In many of these cases, the people involved earn very big salaries.”
— Alex van den Heever, Wits University School of Governance
“This is particularly worrying at municipal level, where there is no clear consolidated public picture of suspensions and delayed disciplinary cases. That lack of scrutiny creates space for abuse.
“Long suspensions may reveal how corruption protects itself: honest officials are removed, implicated officials are protected, and public money is used to sustain the arrangement. In many of these cases, the people involved earn very big salaries.”
In the third quarter of financial 2026 (October-December 2025), the department of correctional services accounted for most of the suspended employees: 130.
But correctional services spokesperson Logan Maistry said this figure now stood at 52 officials, 29 of whom had been suspended for more than 90 days.
Among those suspended was a regional commissioner, a director, a deputy director, two assistant directors and 47 employees at lower levels, Maistry said. Common reasons for suspensions were:
- fraud;
- breach of security protocols;
- corruption; and
- maladministration.
Other departments with high numbers of suspensions, according to the DPSA, are higher education & training (18) and the police (16).
In a particularly egregious case in the department of education, a Mpumalanga teacher, Ndifelani Ligege, was finally dismissed in 2023 after being on fully paid suspension for nine years.
Ligege had reported a suspected ghost worker after allegedly coming across a pay slip of a teacher who had already left the school. He reported the matter to the district office, which he claims led to him being victimised, intimidated and physically attacked by members of the school governing body (SGB).
When I arrived, there was talk about this person who came to the PSC who had been on suspension for 12 years with full pay. He had come to complain that bonuses were being paid and he was left out
— Somadoda Fikeni, Public Service Commission chair
Ligege was asked in 2014 to report to the circuit office while the department was attending to his dispute with the principal and the SGB. Over the years, Ligege launched several labour court applications, saying the SGB was blocking him from going to work.
He was dismissed two years ago for absconding from work, though he disputes this interpretation of events.
Public Service Commission (PSC) chair Somadoda Fikeni says it is “very common” to have public servants on suspension for seven years or more, but the situation had improved in the past five years.
“When I arrived, there was talk about this person who came to the PSC who had been on suspension for 12 years with full pay. He had come to complain that bonuses were being paid and he was left out,” Fikeni said.
He said the commission had written to the DPSA about the issue and the need to keep track of the cases for follow-ups.
Labour lawyer Trevor Ntaka said the majority of suspensions in the public service, which often lead to “double payments of salaries”, were avoidable. He said accounting officers and heads of legal departments were quick to use suspensions unnecessarily and that senior posts in the public sector were “highly politicised”.
“Suspensions are used mostly to punish, not precautionary. Most suspensions are unnecessary, as an employee can continue working while investigations are ongoing. This approach is cost effective,” Ntaka said.
Van den Heever said the law did not support indefinite suspensions.
“For municipal senior managers, the disciplinary hearing must commence within three months, failing which the suspension lapses. In national and provincial departments, precautionary suspensions are also meant to be short-term and actively managed, with disciplinary hearings generally expected to proceed within 60 days. Where these timeframes are exceeded without proper justification, the matter becomes a governance and public-finance concern.
“Continued salary payments during an unjustified or unlawfully prolonged suspension may amount to irregular, fruitless or wasteful expenditure.
For years we have been hearing issues around unaccounted monies, funds going missing and many municipalities failing their audits. It shows that we have given up on local governance and allow if to be run by delinquents who have no intention of serving our people
— Phethani Madzivhandila, labour analyst
“Accounting officers are responsible for ensuring discipline, recovering losses where appropriate, and reporting suspected criminal conduct. If they fail to act, their failure should be investigated as possible financial misconduct — which may lead to dismissal, criminal referrals and personal liability for the losses."
But he said this was often not done as those unfairly suspended pursued their issues as labour matters. “And those who can take action, who are MECs or ministers who sit high up, are often very conflicted, so they keep quiet as they are part of networks of extraction at play.”
The Sunday Times has established that 75 metro employees are currently on suspension across Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni and Cape Town. Ethekwini could not provide a number.
City of Cape Town spokesperson Luthando Tyhalibongo said 22 staff were on suspension, three of them for more than 90 days. None had been suspended for more than a year.
Ekurhuleni said 17 employees were on suspension, eight for more than three months and three for more than a year.
Tshwane, which suspended its CFO Gareth Mnisi recently, has 35 employees on suspension, 21 of them for more than 90 days and 13 for more than a year. Spokesperson Samkelo Mgobozi said the city spent more than R30m a year on remuneration for suspended staff.
In Johannesburg, only one employee is on suspension.
Labour analyst Phethani Madzivhandila said that of the three spheres of government, local government was “the worst managed and the least paid attention to”.
“For years we have been hearing issues around unaccounted monies, funds going missing and many municipalities failing their audits. It shows that we have given up on local governance and allow if to be run by delinquents who have no intention of serving our people.”
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