OWN CORRESPONDENT, Bisho | Tuesday
A DATE for South Africa’s much-postponed municipal elections could be announced by the end of the week after a committee reviewing the concerns of traditional leaders over new municipal boundaries finalised a report for President Thabo Mbeki.
“We’re almost there,” said Provincial and Local Government Minister Sydney Mufamadi.
The announcement of a date for the municipal poll was at the weekend postponed for the third time because of the objections of traditional leaders to some newly-demarcated municipal boundaries.
The amakhosi are concerned that government’s proposed local government system would erode their powers, and had sharply rebuked Mufamadi for contemplating the “premature declaration” of an election date.
Mufamadi declined to give an indication of the contents of the committee’s report, saying he had not studied it, but provincial and local government director-general Zam Titus said the report contained “several compromise proposals”.
Mufamadi denied that the government had underestimated the concerns of the traditional leaders.
“We have not. It is important that you don’t underestimate a problem. But it also important for those who feel aggrieved not to overestimate their grief to a point of running roughshod over everybody else,” Mufamadi said.
Appealing to government to move the date of the local municipal elections to January, a combative Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) said the hold-ups were the government’s own fault for not consulting widely enough on new municipal demarcations, but at the same time slammed traditional leaders for holding local elections to ransom.
Earlier, PAC leader Dr Stanley Mogoba dismissed the African National Congress’ election manifesto – unveiled by President Mbeki in the Karoo town of Beaufort West at the weekend – as nothing new and “belonging in the people’s dustbin”.
Mogoba said Mbeki’s sharp focus on the poor revealed that poverty was the major crisis facing South Africa after six years of ANC and 46 years of National Party rule.