Johannesburg — DURING the week I had an interesting debate with the deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Johannesburg, Adam Habib, about the public servants' strike. Habib suggested in a leader page piece in Business Day he thought the government should acknowledge the legitimacy of the strike because "public sector wages have lagged inflation for a number of years".

However, Reserve Bank numbers suggest the total public sector wage bill has been increasing at a really rapid rate for as long as the figures have been separately specified. They show the total wage bill has more than doubled since 2003, adding about R140bn to the cost of public service wages.

This is not a direct indication of what has happened to individual salaries, since the absolute size of the public service has increased, but it is possible to argue that the unions are using their muscle within the governing alliance to plunder the fiscus.

Habib said he was actually referring to a much longer period, about 20 years or so. Interestingly, he also noted that the number of very senior positions in the public service had increased rapidly over the past decade.

The question is, why aren't these numbers made public? Surely it makes a big difference to the nature of the debate?