Marianne Merten
If the dispute with traditional leaders gave the Municipal Demarcation Board headaches earlier this year, dealing with small, white, conservative towns wanting to maintain their status quo is proving even trickier.
Many of these predominantly rural administrations have told the board – which is in charge of redrawing boundaries ahead of the November local government election – they want to remain as they are because they “have been municipalities for 150 years”.
“A municipality must be structurally sound and economically and financially viable. You can’t do that with tiny little hamlets,” said board chair Michael Sutcliffe.
In any case, “historically white parts, in almost all areas, have been built by South Africans who are not white … Traditionally white municipalities have gained wealth through black shoppers in their areas … even though outlying areas have not been developed.”
He added there was frequent confusion between a municipality’s functions, for example the provision of bulk services, and its status as a community based on shared social and cultural values.
In contrast, Sutcliffe said, concerns by traditional leaders that the new municipal structures will undermine their authority in tribal areas are a constitutional issue, not one of demarcation.
Confusion around what the new system of elected local government officials meant for traditional leaders led to a meeting in January with President Thabo Mbeki and Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi. The trigger for this meeting came when it emerged that in some cases tribal land would be split between different municipalities – as in the case of the Ingonyama trust land in KwaZulu-Natal and Flagstaff in the Eastern Cape – even though the demarcation board decided to avoid this wherever possible.
The demarcation process, including periods for objections and comments on ward boundaries, must be completed by the end of May. From then until the end of August, the Independent Electoral Commission will compile voters’ rolls.
There will be six metropolitan areas or mega-cities, Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Pretoria, East Rand and Port Elizabeth; 232 local (category B) councils and 46 district (category C) councils. For example, in the Western Cape, boundaries for five district councils, 24 local councils and one metro council have already been finalised, reducing the number of municipalities from 136 to 30.
Sutcliffe told members of the National Business Initiative in Cape Town that South Africans generally are not well informed about the increasingly important role of local government. The new system will be a strong move away from provincial administration, which will remain only in charge of training local government officials, monitoring municipal administration and, in limited instances, intervention.
Under the new system, councils will be in charge of day-to-day administration and financial accountability. And some, like the Cape Town unicity with its R8-billion revenue base, will be in charge of budgets greater than several provinces.
Local governments will have greater financial responsibility and accountability. According to Sutcliffe, municipal integrated development plans mean, for example, local and district councils in the flood-ravaged areas of Mpumalanga and the Northern Province could rebuild roads and infrastructure to support local development.
The challenge for local government after the election will be to change mindsets, not only of officials but also of citizens and, he added, to create “a model that works for getting local solutions”.