The Pretoria High Court on Tuesday dismissed urgent applications by four municipalities to stop the transfer of their assets and services to other provinces.
The Merafong Demarcation Forum applied to restrain government from handing over at midnight on Tuesday their assets and service duties from Gauteng to the North West province.
A similar application was brought by the Mpumalanga Joint Forum Alliance, which consists of the communities in the municipalities of Greater Groblersdal, Tubatse and Marble Hall.
Parliament ordered on December 23 that they be incorporated from Mpumalanga into the Limpopo province.
Both groups asked for a stay in handing over their assets and service duties, pending an application by them to the Constitutional Court disputing their incorporation.
The applicants told Judge NM Mavundla that leaving things be for the time being would save the state a lot of money, no duplication would occur and safety and stability in the municipalities would be assured.
They argued that if the Constitutional Court later ordered in their favour, everything would have to be reversed.
”The taxi violence for one will cost lives, because new operators will take over existing routes. Children have already abandoned schools because they are unhappy with the education department’s performance in Limpopo and the North West,” community leaders William Ramphisa and Nkosi Kolisile said in papers before the court.
Ramphisa told Mavundla that his community was sick and tired of being incorporated into a different municipality every five years. He said they had no stability.
Advocate Ishmael Semenya SC argued on behalf of government that nothing would change at this stage. Existing licences and other permits would stay in force for now, until the host province issued new legislation in this regard.
Semenya said the community leaders could not show that they would suffer irreparable harm if all was handed over to the new host provinces at midnight.
The judge told the two community leaders that it was perhaps the duty of the politicians to explain to the communities the practical implications of demarcation.
Mavundla said the community had valid concerns and that government created insecurity among the people because the implications of incorporation were never explained.
He ordered the government to pay the legal costs.
”I am not going to punish you for turning to the court,” he told the community leaders. – Sapa