Marianne Merten
Debates around the size and name of the new local government structure in Cape Town are expected to become heated.
The mother city plans to be a “unicity” by the end of 2000. Already the number of councils in the Cape Town metropolitan area has been rationalised from 69 racially segregated bodies to six councils and the overall Cape Town metropolitan council.
A decision will be made in the next month about the size of the new unicity – whether it will include Stellenbosch, Bellville and Somerset West. By September the demarcation board is expected to have finalised the new boundaries. Then the complicated process gets under way with determining the number of wards, appointing a CEO and merging different accounting and financial systems. The next local government elections will be held in November 2000.
Cape Town city manager Andrew Boraine said the transformation process will provide an opportunity to re-evaluate the effectiveness of service delivery to the mix of upmarket suburbs, townships and Cape Flats communities, which for the first time will be governed by the same structures. “The face of local government as we know it now will change,” he said. “I don’t think it can be business as usual for local government.”
ENDS