The National Council of Provinces (NCOP) gave the final green light to controversial legislation doing away with cross-boundary municipalities on Wednesday.
The Constitution Twelfth Amendment and the Cross-Boundary Municipalities Laws Repeal and Related Matters Bill affect 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 North West province.
The community believes it will receive better services from the wealthier Gauteng province, which it claims to have helped build through its economic contributions.
Residents have threatened to take their protest to stay in Gauteng to the Constitutional Court.
Similar violent protests to those in Khutsong have also taken place in other areas, including Matatiele.
In debate on the issue in the NCOP on Wednesday, speakers were at pains to point out that the changes would have no detrimental affects on communities, and should in fact improve their lot.
Minister of Provincial and Local Government Sydney Mufamadi said the demographic and economic concentration patterns of the past gave rise to a tendency towards underdevelopment and stagnation.
”It effectively red-lined millions of South Africans from the national economy in a kind of cynical geography of exclusion,” he said.
”The cross-boundary municipalities with their less-than-optimal effects on the quality of life of our people have indeed proved to be an embodiment and source of underdevelopment rather than its solution,” he said.
The legislation before the House was an important step in solving this problem, and promised to help extricate some people out of their collective condition of indigence.
Managing transition
Mufamadi said his department is working closely with the affected provinces and municipalities to design a process of managing the transition of disestablished cross-boundary municipalities.
The necessary resources, both human and material, for facilitating the transition are also being mobilised.
”Government has also taken note of the concerns raised by affected residents … [and] appropriate steps are being taken to ensure that the geographical reordering of provincial and local spaces does not result in further impoverishment of our people.
”On the contrary, it must result in the betterment of our people’s condition of life,” Mufamadi said.
Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Johnny de Lange said provincial boundary changes are not meant to disrupt the lives of those living in the affected areas.
Cross-boundary municipalities had made it difficult for the government to provide services to communities in an equitable and sustainable manner and to promote integrated social and economic development, and effective local government, he said.
”The proposed changes should be approached on the basis of the need to improve service delivery, rather than sentimental and perception of an effective and efficient service delivery by one province in relation to another.
”Our ultimate objective, therefore, is to ensure that local government fulfils its constitutional mandate to service provision, development and poverty alleviation.
”Therefore, the benefits to communities of ensuring that municipalities fall under a single provincial government include that budgets and service-delivery programmes will come from one source of provincial government.
”This will, therefore, ensure that service delivery should be faster and of a better quality,” De Lange said.
It remains for President Thabo Mbeki to sign the legislation into law. — Sapa