Matatiele: Threat to ‘hit streets’

Activists in Matatiele have threatened to ‘hit the streets again” over the area’s incorporation into the Eastern Cape, despite winning a Constitutional Court challenge to the Twelfth Amendment Act.

And following the judgement — which invalidated the Act but gave Parliament 18 months to remedy it — the former cross-border municipalities of Moutse in Mpumalanga and Merafong in North West have said they will jointly file an urgent case against the government.

Last week’s Constitutional Court judgement was in response to an application brought six months ago by the Matatiele/Maluti Mass Organising Committee (Maoc), supported by business, schools and other organisations. It applied only to Matatiele, formerly part of KwaZulu-Natal.

The court invalidated the Twelfth Amendment Act — which controversially scrapped cross-border municipalities — on the grounds that KwaZulu-Natal authorities had not adequately consulted the public on the legislation. The Eastern Cape legislature did stage public hearings.

Maoc’s Mandla Galo said the 18 months accorded to Parliament to remedy the legislative process had ’caused a lot of confusion” in Matatiele. Residents wanted a referendum on the incorporation issue, rather than the public hearings Parliament would have to conduct in terms of the Constitutional Court ruling.

‘If the 18 months means we will remain [part] of the Eastern Cape until Parliament fixes this problem, then we will hit the streets again,” he warned.

Mothiba Ramphisa of the Moutse Organising Committee said the judgement on Matatiele had opened the way for residents of Moutse and Merafong — two of the 16 former cross-border municipalities not covered by the judgement — to challenge the Act in the Pretoria High Court in two weeks’ time.

Moutse has already brought a case in the Pretoria High Court over the transfer of municipal assets and administrative dutie. The case has been postponed to an undisclosed date.

The South African Communist Party’s West Rand spokesperson, Nkosiphendule Kolisile, said the judgement ‘helps in resuscitating the struggle”. However, it was unclear what the requirement to consult really meant.