The National Assembly on Tuesday approved legislation giving effect to the Constitution’s Twelfth Amendment that abolishes cross-boundary municipalities.
This affects 17 municipalities, including the four contentious ones of Merafong (Gauteng to North West), Matatiele (KwaZulu-Natal to Eastern Cape), Bushbuckridge (split between Mpumalanga and Limpopo) and Khalagadi (North West to Northern Cape).
As a result of the changes, the Northern Cape’s population jumps from 800 000 to more than 1,2-million.
The changes have sparked vehement protests, particularly in Khutsong — a part of Merafong municipality — where residents have been staging sometimes violent protests over the past two months against their incorporation into the North West province.
The community believes it will receive better services from the wealthier Gauteng province, which they claim to have helped build through their economic contributions.
Residents have threatened to take their protest to stay in Gauteng to the Constitutional Court if the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) gives the final nod to the amendment on Wednesday.
Similar violent protests to those in Khutsong have also taken place in other areas, including Matatiele.
Introducing debate on the Cross-Boundary Municipalities Laws Repeal and Related Matters Bill in the Assembly on Tuesday, Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi did not refer to the protests at all.
He said the legislation will set the scene for the reconstruction of the ”developmental landscape”.
The Bill’s approval will also confirm the country’s preparedness to hold local government elections on March 1 next year.
Mufamadi said the need for the geographical re-ordering of provinces and modification of local government structures was accentuated by the realisation that cross-boundary municipalities were among those that in the past five years registered a relatively weak performance.
”Indeed, these particular areas were trapped in a structural design, which is inappropriate to the task of universalising access to basic services, as well as cultivating conditions for sustainable local economic development.
”We will soon be announcing concrete measures which are intended to enable erstwhile cross-boundary municipalities to tap into the ever-expanding veins of municipal fiscal power,” he said.
”This is necessary because a disproportionately high number of people who live in the cross-boundary municipalities survive on social grants of various kinds.
”The only sustainable way by which those areas can be lifted out of wretchedness and poverty is to ensure that we craft a more even spatial pattern of socio-economic development and that we increase the … capacity of those municipalities who have been battling to carry out their developmental objectives.”
The Bill promises to make a substantial contribution in this regard, Mufamadi said.
The NCOP is scheduled to consider the Constitution Twelfth Amendment Bill — approved by a two-thirds majority in the Assembly on November 15 — before dealing with the Cross-Boundary Municipalities Laws Repeal and Related Matters Bill, both on Wednesday morning.
The Assembly will then consider any amendments emanating from the NCOP process on Wednesday afternoon. — Sapa