The City of Pretoria no longer exists, the African National Congress’s Tshwane region said in a statement issued on Monday.
”The promulgation of the establishment notice of the Tshwane metropolitan municipality by implication created a new metropolitan City of Tshwane,” said the Tshwane ANC’s regional secretary, Blanco Mabaso.
The notice described Pretoria as ”a block that stretches from DF Malan Road in the west, Nelson Mandela Drive in the east, Pretoria station area in the south and Boom Street in the north”.
”By any stretch of the imagination, this geographic area cannot be regarded as a city and the only logical reference to it therefore would be as a suburb of the City of Tshwane,” Mabaso said.
The statement was released after the party’s strategic planning lekgotla (meeting) at the weekend, attended by its women’s league, youth league and alliance partners.
”The Tshwane municipality is currently consulting its legal advisers about the contents of the ANC statement,” mayoral spokesperson William Baloyi said.
The name-change issue is not as clear-cut as the statement implies, Baloyi said.
A report compiled by a team of academics commissioned by Tshwane mayor Smangaliso Mkhatshwa is to be presented to the municipal council on February 24.
”Media reports floating around that the name change was to be decided on today [Monday] are absolutely untrue,” he said.
”The report will be given the mayoral committee and then to political parties for them to discuss the matter internally before it is put to the council.”
If the council adopts the report, the next stage will be a ”public participation process”, Baloyi said.
The council itself will have to decide in what format that will be done.
Baloyi said all political parties will be given an opportunity to debate the matter before council.
”How they decide to do it is up to each party,” he said.
The Freedom Front Plus expressed concern on Thursday that a referendum on the proposed name change of Pretoria could ”force the tyranny of the majority on to the minority”.
The FF+ said it will propose a motion at the February 24 council meeting, asking for the party’s own expert report to be tabled for consideration.
”The aim of this independent study is to supplement gaps in the official report … which would enable the council to consider all relevant facts before a decision is taken on the issue,” the statement read. — Sapa